First, please head to the Philadelphia Inquirer and read Will Bunch’s column, The NYT should tell readers whether it helped crooked FBI agents get Trump elected in 2016.
This week’s stunning corruption charges against a top FBI spymaster who assumed a key role in the bureau’s New York office just weeks before 2016?s “October surprise” — an agent who by 2018 was known to be working for a Vladimir Putin-tied Russian oligarch — should cause America to rethink everything we think we know about the Trump-Russia scandal and how it really happened that Trump won that election.
The government allegations against the former G-man Charles McGonigal (also accused of taking a large foreign payment while still on the FBI payroll) and the outsized American influence of the sanctioned-and-later-indicted Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska — also tied to U.S. pols from Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort to Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell — should make us also look again at what was really up with the FBI in 2016.
How coordinated was the effort in that New York field office to pump up the ultimate nothingburger about Clinton’s emails while poo-pooing the very real evidence of Russian interference on Trump’s behalf, and who were the agents behind it? What was the role, if any, of McGonigal and his international web of intrigue? Was the now-tainted McGonigal a source who told the New York Times that fateful October that Russia was not trying to help Trump win the election — before the U.S. intelligence community determined the exact opposite? If not McGonigal, just who was intentionally misleading America’s most influential news org, and why?
It’s not exactly behind a paywall, but the Inquirer may make you jump through some registration hoops first. It’s worth it.
See also Exclusive: Inside the extramarital affair and cash-fueled double life of Charles McGonigal, the FBI spy hunter charged with taking Russian money at Insider and So Many Dangling Threads at TPM.
George Who Goes by Santos But Who The Hell Knows What His Name Is is stepping down from his committee assignments until the issues surrounding his election are “resolved.”
Also see Paul Waldman, The GOP presidential contenders don’t want to have a beer with you. This is more serious than it sounds. “It has to do with something called the Dark Triad, a concept described by psychologists, which is made up of narcissism (an exaggerated self-importance), Machiavellianism (the willingness to deceive and manipulate) and psychopathy (a callousness toward others),” Waldman writes. A lot of top Republican contenders exhibit these traits. Politicians with these traits attract some voters and repel others.
This is juicy — Another SCOTUS scandal: Chief justice’s spouse makes millions placing attorneys at top law firms that argue before the court.
The New York Times reports that “a former colleague of Mrs. Roberts has raised concerns that her recruiting work poses potential ethics issues for the chief justice. Seeking an inquiry, the ex-colleague has provided records to the Justice Department and Congress indicating Mrs. Roberts has been paid millions of dollars in commissions for placing lawyers at firms — some of which have business before the Supreme Court, according to a letter obtained by The New York Times.”
Yes, it stinks out loud. What can be done about it, though?