Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Let there be snark.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Too inconsequential to be sued

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

What fresh hell is this?

This blog will pay for itself.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

I swear, each month of 2020 will have its own history degree.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

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An Unexamined Scandal

Front Paging an Often Overlooked Bit of American History: The Business Plot to Overthrow FDR

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Sab asked:

Can you frontpage this? My spouse doesn’t read comments but he needs to read this about FDR and Butler

Americans did not revolt and attempt to overthrow the government at any point during the Great Depression. The closest thing that existed to a mass movement against the Hoover administration was the Bonus Army, also known as the Bonus Expeditionary Army orthe Bonus Marchers. A group of WW I veterans who were trying to get the bonus payment they’d been promised disbursed to them. During May and June of 1932 they marched, often with their families, hitching rides on trucks and trains, from all over the continental US to DC where they set up camp on the Anacostia flats. They tried to get a meeting with Hoover, who refused. Congress rushed through enabling legislation, for the second or third time, to give them their $500 bonus ahead of the scheduled payment, which was still a decade off. The closest they got to meeting with a senior leader was when Major General Smedley Darlington Butler went to their camp and spent hours talking to each of the Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines who wanted to speak to him. Butler had been passed over for his next assignment several years before– Commandant of the Marine Corps – and threatened him with false charges of insubordination for his public comments opposing Mussolini and the rise of fascism. Butler retired the year before the Bonus March.

As for the Bonus Army, they didn’t get their bonuses. They also, desperate as they were, didn’t try to overthrow the US government or even just the Hoover administration. They just quietly kept doing what they were doing: camping in DC, accepting what charity in terms of food aid was offered, and quietly pressuring the Hoover administration to give them what they were owed. For this, Hoover put MacArthur in charge of clearing them out as they were irritating him. MacArthur, because he was MacArthur and because the infiltrators he’d put into the camps told him that 1/3 of the marchers were Jews and 1/3 were black and all of them were communists, which was reinforced by J. Edgar Hoover who was already undertaking his plans to turn the Bureau of Investigation into the FBI, ordered the 20,000 Bonus marchers and their families cleared out. Five tanks, 200 cavalry, and several hundred infantry cleared out the marchers who were trying to evacuate peacefully on foot. Tear gas grenades were used on the Bonus marchers and their families. Some were run down by the cavalry and beaten with the flats of their sabres. Eisenhower told MacArthur he was an idiot and refused to participate. Patton, being Patton, clicked his heels and carried out MacArthur’s orders. The irony is that one of the veterans in the Bonus marchers driven out that day, Joe Angelo, was the Soldier who pulled Patton to safety on the battlefield in France, thereby saving his life.

Through all of this – the Depression, Hoover’s and MacArthur’s violent attack on peaceful veterans who merely wanted the bonus payment they’d been promised repeatedly, Hoover’s continued mishandling of the Depression through the election and the inauguration of FDR – Americans did not rise up and revolt. There was no backlash.

Well, that’s not entirely true. There was a backlash, to the election of FDR. And it wasn’t led by those who had been so brutalized by the Depression or Hoover’s failures as president or by MacArthur on the Anacostia flats in July of 1932. It was led by the wealthiest of the wealthy. The men who had actually made money during the Depression. The men who had picked America’s bones almost clean.

In 1933 a group of wealthy financiers and corporate owners decided that the US could not continue as a self governing democratic-republic if they and their peers were going to continue to profit. They decided that the US should instead become a fascistic oligarchy with a democratic facade. After sending a trusted agent to meet with the emerging fascist leaders in Italy, France, and Germany they determined that the easiest way to accomplish their goals in the US was to encourage and promote street level violence and disorder, culminating in widespread attacks in DC to pressure FDR and force him to accept their hand picked co-president. A co-president who would rule the US on their behalf from the shadows while FDR continued on the face of a faux democracy.

In order to achieve these objectives these wealthy financiers and captains of industry and investment determined that the remnants of the Bonus Army of WW I veterans would make the perfect foot soldiers in their campaign of disruption. They approached MajGen Smedley Darlington Butler, who was beloved by these veterans, to lead them. Fortunately, Butler recognized exactly what game was being played, gathered as much information as possible, and then took it to Congress and the news media. While Butler’s actions successfully stymied what we now call the Business Plot, Congress and the news media largely covered it up. As a result it is unclear even today exactly which, if any, elected or appointed officials might have been involved. The known coup organizers and plotters, however, were not some fly by night, nouveau riche group of amateurs. Their leaders included George Herbert Walker and Prescott Bush Sr. The grandfather and father of one president and great-grandfather and grandfather of a second.

They did this despite FDR winning 90% or so of the Electoral College vote and having gigantic majorities in both the House and the Senate. If I recall correctly the Democratic congressional majorities were something like 68 out of 96 senators and upwards of 300 members of the House. FDR’s electoral mandate was enormous and yet they still attempted a coup…

Here’s the Universal Newsreel of MajGen Butler calling out the plotters in an attempt to force Congress and the news media to actually take this seriously and do something about it.

For all of our vaunted lip service and fealty to our revolutionary past, Americans have consistently shown for the past 100 years that there is nothing you can do to them that will make them push back. Let me clarify that: white Americans have consistently shown the past 100 years that there is nothing you can do to them that will make them push back. Hell, as we’ve seen repeatedly over the past 100 years, a significant portion of them will actually be actively involved in creating and perpetuating the problem while another significant chunk will just stand on the sides and tut tut all of the upheaval. And those of good conscience, like all of you (and I mean that sincerely, whatever our disagreements, you’re all good people), will, of course, be willing to put themselves on the line for positive change.

You can’t out organize an extreme gerrymander. Nor extreme voter suppression. If just the Florida and Texas redistricting maps are allowed to stand, it won’t matter what happens in any other state, the Republicans will retake the House. The Senate map, while favorable to the Democrats for the 2022 elections, is still going to be a huge lift. And this is the last favorable Senate map for the Democrats. From 2024 on it gets worse and worse for them.

Those of us that keep beating this drum aren’t telling you all this because we want to be mean. Or because we want to upset you. We’re telling you this because we want everyone to understand just how dangerous this moment is. Just how precarious things are right now. And, as with the history lesson at the beginning of this comment, just how absolutely normal it is in America for extremely wealthy conservative interests to seek to overthrow the constitutional order and establish a fascist system running behind a facade of democracy.

Time will tell if I and the others sounding the alarms are right or wrong. I’d love to be wrong. I’d love for all of you to spend weeks and months dunking on me after the 2022 elections are over and, again, after the 2024 elections are over. Goku got started a bit prematurely in last night’s comments…

But until then, I will beat this drum until we are out of danger.

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Everyone Needs To Stop the Hysterics Regarding General Milley and Read What Is Actually Being Reported

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For the better part of the past two days I’ve been watching people – some smart, some earnest, and a lot who are disingenuous – freak out that GEN Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has somehow single handedly destroyed over 240 years of civilian control of the US military. He hasn’t. The feeding frenzy, however, will continue because it provides the political reporters, the pundits and commenters, Republican elected officials, conservative movement leaders, and conservative news and social media elites what they want the most: the opportunity to make Woodward and Costa’s reporting about anything that is not how deranged Trump might have actually been between October 2020 and January 2021; just how badly he and his political appointees had degraded, warped, and twisted the Federal government over their four years in office; and just how craven, anti-American, anti-republican, and anti-democratic the Republican Party and the conservative movement and news and media systems that sustain the party have become to allow this to happen. And before we jump to the next paragraph, the word reporting in regard to Woodward and Costa’s new book is doing a lot of work. Because while it is being reported that Woodward claims to have a transcript of Milley’s call with Speaker Pelosi, the reality is, as is the case with every one of these books Woodward has done for decades, there is NO WAY TO CHECK THE SOURCING because ALL OF HIS SOURCES ARE ANONYMOUS!

The two items regarding GEN Milley that have everyone up in arms are in regard to conversations that Woodward and Costa report that he had with his Chinese counterpart and his guidance regarding orders to launch a nuclear strike. In both cases the people now in hysterics are not actually paying attention to what was either published in the excerpts or what has been subsequently reported today.

Let’s start with the nuclear strike stuff. The argument being made is that GEN Milley, who has no command authority and is the senior uniformed administrator and military advisor to the president, proactively inserted himself into the chain of command for ordering a nuclear strike to block any potential order to conduct one. And, by doing so, he broke civilian control of the military. But here’s what, according to the excerpt published at CNN, Woodward and Costa are actually reporting that GEN Milley said:

In response, Milley took extraordinary action, and called a secret meeting in his Pentagon office on January 8 to review the process for military action, including launching nuclear weapons. Speaking to senior military officials in charge of the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon’s war room, Milley instructed them not to take orders from anyone unless he was involved.
“No matter what you are told, you do the procedure. You do the process. And I’m part of that procedure,” Milley told the officers, according to the book. He then went around the room, looked each officer in the eye, and asked them to verbally confirm they understood.
“Got it?” Milley asked, according to the book.
“Yes, sir.”
‘Milley considered it an oath,’ the authors write.
Notice what GEN Milley told the senior military officials he wanted them to do: “No matter what you are told, you do the procedure. You do the process. And I’m part of that procedure,” Milley told the officers, according to the book.” Here’s what the actual book, Air Force Doctrine Publication 3-72: Nuclear Operations say is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s role in the procedure and the process:

To maintain credibility, Airmen must be ready at all times to respond to requests from the President and his or her advisors via the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to employ nuclear weapons. The inability of nuclear forces to respond quickly could undermine the value of deterrence and assurance. (p. 3)

The President may direct the use of nuclear weapons through an execute order via the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the combatant commanders and, ultimately, to the forces in the field exercising direct control of the weapons.

Execution of these orders through emergency action procedures allow for a timely response to an emergency action message and ensure the directive is valid and authentic. Air Force personnel involved in the actual employment of nuclear weapons are intensively and continuously trained and certified in these procedures so they can quickly and accurately respond to the order. (p. 9)

The US Air Force’s own doctrine places the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the process, not to countermand orders, not to contradict them, but to transmit them from the president and/or the president’s advisors (Assistant to the President-National Security Advisor, Chief of Staff, Secretary of Defense) to the appropriate combatant commanders. Provided Woodward and Costa’s reporting is correct, what GEN Milley appears to have done was to clarify the doctrinal process and procedure. And there’s a very good reason he did that. There was no lawfully, Senate approved Secretary of Defense. There was no lawfully, Senate approved Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. In the White House, Mark Meadows was the Acting Chief of Staff, whatever acting really means in regard to a position that does not require Senate confirmation and in which the person holding the job serves at the pleasure of the president. Additionally, the Acing Chief of Staff, to the acting Secretary of Defense, was Kash Patel, who is one of Devin Nunes’ stooges.

I think a good argument could be made that the civilian portion of civilian control of the military had broken down. The only people in the chain of command at that point who were lawfully in their positions were Trump who was president and the senior uniformed leadership. The only Senate confirmed civilian leadership at the Pentagon at that point was Secretary of the Army McCarthy. As a result, GEN Milley wanted the appropriate senior commanders in the chain to follow the doctrinal process and procedure regarding command and control over the use of nuclear weapons. He didn’t want them to take such an order if it was passed on by unlawfully serving Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, unlawfully serving Acting Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Ezra Cohen-Watnick, or unlawfully serving Acting Department of Defense Chief of Staff Kash Patel. The orders either came through the doctrinally prescribed channel, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is part of that doctrinally prescribed channel, or they weren’t orders. Between the language in the excerpt, which is the language from Woodward and Costa’s book, and the language in the doctrine for how nuclear launch orders are transmitted, it is very clear what the process and procedure are. What GEN Milley did was to reinforce that to the senior uniformed leadership. That isn’t undermining civilian control of the military. It is insisting that the civilian control be followed precisely as defined in doctrine.

The hysterics over GEN Milley’s reported conversations with his counterpart in the People’s Republic of China is also overwrought and silly. Leaving aside that GEN Milley speaks to his counterparts in a number of nation-states – from allied and partnered to peer competitors to hostile foreign powers – on a variety of matters all the time, We now know, because it was reported today, that GEN Milley was working under instructions from Mark Esper, who was the last actual lawfully serving, Senate confirmed Secretary of Defense.

In mid-October 2020, top Pentagon officials grew concerned about intelligence they’d seen. It showed the Chinese were consuming their own intelligence that had made them concerned about the possibility of a surprise U.S. strike against China, three sources familiar with the situation tell Axios.

  • One of the sources said: “I think they [the Chinese] were getting bad intelligence… a combination of ‘wag the dog’ conspiracy thinking and bad intel from bad sources.”

Then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper worried the Chinese were misreading the situation and that their misperception could lead to a conflict nobody wanted.

  • Esper directed his policy office to issue a backchannel message to the Chinese to reassure them the U.S. had no intention of seeking a military confrontation. The message: Don’t over-read what you’re seeing in Washington; we have no intention to attack; and let’s keep lines of communication open.
  • These backchannel communications were handled a couple of levels below Esper, one of the sources said. U.S. officials involved thought the Chinese received the initial message well. Milley followed up later in the month with a call to his Chinese counterpart to reiterate the message, two of the sources confirmed.
  • It’s unclear whether anyone at the Pentagon told President Trump or the White House what they were doing.

Around the same time Esper learned of the Chinese concerns, he also learned that a long-planned deployment to Asia had been moved up a couple of weeks earlier than previously planned, to accommodate COVID quarantine protocols.

  • Esper told colleagues the last thing the Chinese needed to see at that moment — when they were already misreading Washington’s intentions — was more planes, according to one of the sources.
  • Esper went so far as to delay this long planned exercise in Asia until after the election, to lower the temperature.

Axios has not independently confirmed that Milley told his Chinese counterpart he would give him a heads up if the U.S. planned to attack China.

  • One source familiar with Milley’s conversations with his Chinese counterpart would only broadly characterize them as Milley saying something to the effect of: “We’ll both know if we’re going to war… there’s not gonna be some surprise attack and there’s no reason for you to do a pre-emptive strike.”

Finally, given that the excerpt published at CNN reports that GEN Milley was in regular contact about these concerns with not just Speaker Pelosi, but also former Secretary of State Pompeo and former Director of Central Intelligence Haspel, there was no breakdown in civil military relations. Speaker Pelosi, former Secretary Pompeo, and former DCI Haspel were all legally and constitutionally in their respective offices. Yes, they are not in GEN Milley’s chain of command as he reports to the president as his senior uniformed military advisor, but this makes it clear that GEN Milley was not off the reservation free lancing. Rather, faced with a complete breakdown in legitimate, constitutional civilian control of the Department of Defense at the most senior levels other than the Secretary of the Army, GEN Milley consulted and coordinated with other legitimate, constitutional officers within both the executive and legislative branches, reviewed and reinforced the doctrinal process and procedure regarding nuclear strike authorization with the senior uniformed leadership in that chain of command, and in regard to the PRC, carried out the orders he had been given by the last legitimately appointed and serving Secretary of Defense.

This is what the excerpts from Woodward and Costa’s new book are actually telling us. Was this the high water mark of civil military relations in the US? No. Should there be legitimate inquiry into this by the House and Senate Armed Services Committees? Yes. Should this include GEN Milley having to answer some tough questions in front of those committees? Definitely.

This wasn’t a mutiny. It was not an attempt to break the chain of command or get other senior uniformed leaders to do so. It is, however, right now an opportunity for political reporters, the political pundits, current and former Republican elected and appointed officials, conservative movement leaders, and conservative news and social media figures to change the subject to cover their own hugely exposed tuchases. We’re going on seven years now where almost every member of each of these groups has managed to completely misrepresent, misreport, excuse, explain away, and/or divert attention from their failures to report or act on the fact that Donald Trump was not just grossly unqualified to be president, but that he presented and still presents, a clear and present danger to the United States as a self governing democratic-republic. Focusing on what GEN Milley did, and misrepresenting it, allows them to not focus on all the terrible things Woodward and Costa are reporting about Trump and the sycophantic enablers he surrounded himself with. It allows them to slide right on by the fact that Mike Pence was actively looking for a way to make Trump’s coup attempt actually happen because Trump was mean to Pence. It allows them to ignore or hand wave away their own culpability in failing to use the simple terms in their reporting that actually describe Trump, his behavior, his actions and the behavior and actions of his senior appointees, advisors, surrogates, benefactors/funders, enablers, and his supporters. A failure which continues to this day!

A scapegoat must be found. Phoney baloney jobs must be protected. Access to sources and funding and sinecures must be preserved. And the role of Azazel, the scape goat for this community’s sins on this Yom Kippur, will be played by GEN Milley. Because the political reporters, the political pundits, current and former Republican elected and appointed officials, conservative movement leaders, and conservative news and social media figures are unable to and incapable of atoning their political sins of commission and omission.

Open thread!

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Senator Whitehouse Is Surprised By Something He Should Not Be Surprised About: That the Secondary Kavanaugh Background Investigation Was Rigged

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Germy, in the comments to Mistermix’s post, has brought breaking, though previously known, news to our attention via Senator Whitehouse:

AFTER NEW DETAILS ON KAVANAUGH INVESTIGATION SURFACE, SENATORS CALL ON FBI FOR ANSWERS ON HANDLING OF ‘TIP LINE’

4,500 tips to FBI went uninvestigated following supplemental investigation, newly released FBI letter shows

Washington, DC – Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chris Coons (D-DE), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), and Cory Booker (D-NJ) wrote to FBI Director Christopher Wray last evening requesting additional information on the FBI’s 2018 supplemental background investigation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The senators’ request follows a letter from the Bureau to Whitehouse and Coons revealing new details on the Kavanaugh background investigation, including that the FBI gathered over 4,500 tips in relation to the investigation without any apparent further action by FBI investigators. The Bureau also confirmed that tips from the tip line were instead provided to the Trump White House Counsel’s office, where their fate is unknown.

“The admissions in your letter corroborate and explain numerous credible accounts by individuals and firms that they had contacted the FBI with information ‘highly relevant to . . . allegations’ of sexual misconduct by Justice Kavanaugh, only to be ignored,” the senators write in their letter sent today. “If the FBI was not authorized to or did not follow up on any of the tips that it received from the tip line, it is difficult to understand the point of having a tip line at all.”

Whitehouse and Coons initially raised the lackluster supplemental background investigation in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with Director Wray in July 2019. Whitehouse observed during the hearing the clear lack of process through which the public or members of Congress could relay information to the FBI after the troubling allegations against Kavanaugh made headlines nationwide. Coons likewise pressed Wray for a clear procedure. As both senators noted, the only conduit for information potentially relevant to the allegations was a “tip line,” the product of which was apparently never pursued by the Bureau. During the hearing, Wray echoed Republican claims that the FBI conducted the investigation “by the book,” while asserting that supplemental background investigations are less rigorous than criminal and counterintelligence investigations.

On August 1, 2019, Coons and Whitehouse wrote to Wray asking for a complete picture of how the FBI handled the supplemental background investigation of Kavanaugh. They asked why the FBI failed to contact witnesses whose names were provided to the FBI as possessing “highly relevant” information; how involved the Trump White House was in narrowing the scope of the investigation; whether the FBI had used a tip line in previous background investigations to manage incoming allegations and information regarding a nominee; and more.

Nearly two years later and after repeated follow-up requests, the FBI finally responded to Whitehouse and Coons’s questions. The June 30, 2021 letter from the FBI Office of Congressional Affairs revealed new information on the Kavanaugh investigation: that Justice Kavanaugh’s nomination “was the first time that the FBI set-up a tip line for a nominee undergoing Senate confirmation,” and that tip line received “over 4,500 tips, including phone calls and electronic submissions.” The FBI apparently pursued none of these tips. Instead, by the FBI’s own account, it merely “provided all relevant tips” to Trump’s Office of White House Counsel, the very office that had constrained and directed the limited investigation.

Whitehouse, Coons, Durbin, Leahy, Blumenthal, Hirono, and Booker call on the FBI to answer a range of outstanding questions surrounding the Bureau’s use of the tip line and the relevant information it yielded. The senators press the Bureau for any records and communications related to the tip line investigation, including “all relevant tips” described in Wray’s letter that the FBI “provided . . . to the Office of White House Counsel.”

Full text of the senators’ letter yesterday is available below. Also available as PDFs are:

• Senators’ letter sent yesterday;

• June 30 FBI letter to Whitehouse and Coons;

• Whitehouse and Coons August 2019 letter to Wray.

There’s also a long tweet thread by Senator Whitehouse:

I explained during the Kavanaugh hearings, in comments and on the front page, that what Senator Whitehouse is now rightfully angry over today was what was in fact going on. What is amazing here isn’t that Senator Whitehouse is upset, he is and should be. What is amazing here is that he seems to not understand the process that the FBI adheres to when conducting background investigations for judicial and political nominees, which, as a senator, he should know.

As I explained at the time, background investigations conducted by the FBI for judicial and political appointments are NOT criminal investigations. They are done by special agents and investigators and analysts detailed for that duty and the client is not the DOJ, nor is it the Senate committee of jurisdiction. The client for these background investigations is the White House Counsel’s Office and the White House Counsel is in ultimate charge and provides the ultimate direction of the inquiry. Only information that the White House Counsel wants released is released to the Senate committee of jurisdiction for their review. This whole secondary/reopened investigation, just like a game of chance in a casino, was rigged for the White House by the White House through the White House Counsel and his office. The FBI was only ever going to respond to Don McGahn’s instructions and work within the parameters he gave them because that’s the process.

It is important to remember that the only reason Don McGahn was first the Trump 2016 campaign counsel and then the White House Counsel is because his real boss is Mitch McConnell. Whenever Senator McConnell needs a trusted agent – to make a Federal agency dysfunctional and break it or to babysit a temperamental candidate/president – McConnell places McGahn into that position. McGahn controlled this secondary, supplementary investigation into Kavanaugh, just as he controlled the first one, not anyone at the FBI or the DOJ. And McGahn controlled it for McConnell. My guess is McConnell was thrilled when Senator Flake came to him with this compromise proposal for a secondary FBI investigation because it allowed McConnell to play Flake for the chump he is while getting what he wanted – Kavanaugh confirmed and the ability to leverage the contentious confirmation process for political gain – all while allowing it to seem that a rigged game was really an honest process.

No one who was paying attention should be surprised at all at what happened then or at what is being reported now. Not least a Democratic senator. That seven members of the Senate Judiciary Committee do not seem to understand the process for FBI background investigations for judicial and political nominees, including who controls them, is a bit concerning. They’re right to be asking for details and Senate Judiciary Committee investigation now, but it would have been better if they all had known how the process works and been hammering this over and over and over again during the confirmation. Especially Senator Coons who is the one who cut the deal with Senator Flake for the supplemental FBI background investigation.

If these seven senators did not realize this was how the process for FBI background investigations into judicial and political nominees until today, then, quite frankly, shame on them. This process is neither a state secret that is highly classified and compartmented, nor is it rocket science. It was reported on and commented on in real time. And it was their job to know and act on that knowledge. If they knew and didn’t act then, then shame on them. If they didn’t know until now, it’s still shame on them. While I doubt it would have made much of a difference, it was their job to know and to act on that knowledge, which they didn’t. They failed then and are angry now. The time to have been angry was then, because it might have prevented failure.

The reason that Senator McConnell and his caucus have been embarrassing Democratic senators and frustrating their, as well as Democratic president’s, efforts since January 2009 is that Senator McConnell pays attention to every possible process that could be useful to him or could be used against him. Senate Democrats are not going to beat him if they are constantly surprised by how the government they are supposed to be overseeing as part of their jobs works.

DO BETTER SENATE DEMOCRATS!

Edited to add:

I realize this is most likely performative surprise. It would have been nice if there’d been some performative surprise at the time when it might have made even a little bit of difference.

Open thread!

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Your Mellow, I Am Here To Harsh It: The Agreed To 6th January Commission Is Not Worth the Paper the Agreement Was Announced On

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Everybody is champing at the bit for the 6th January investigative commission announced last week to get to work. Even Liz Cheney is stating unequivocally that one of the key people they need to subpoena and interview is House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

Speaking to ABC News’ This Week in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday, Cheney said McCarthy “absolutely should” testify before any commission, and that she “wouldn’t be surprised if he were subpoenaed”.

Congressman Thompson who negotiated the agreement for the commission has his sights on even bigger prizes:

None of this, not one little bit, is ever going to actually happen. I’m not even sure the commission will happen as that will require both the House and the Senate to move at least a resolution through both chambers to establish it. But even if it does get established, provided it is established on the agreement reached last week between Congressman Thompson, the Chair of the House Homeland Security Committee and Congressman Katko, the committee’s ranking chair. The devil, as they say, is in the details.

From the fact sheet released by Congressman Thompson (emphasis mine):

Key features of the Commission:

  • The Commission will be charged with (1) investigating and reporting upon the facts and causes of the January 6th attack on the Capitol as well as the influencing factors that may have provoked the attack on our democracy; (2) examining and evaluating evidence developed by relevant Federal, State, and local governments, in a manner that is respectful of ongoing investigations, regarding the facts and circumstances of the attack; (3) building upon other investigations regarding the attack and targeted violence and domestic terrorism related to such attack; and (4) reporting to the President and Congress regarding its findings, conclusions, and recommendations for corrective measures taken to prevent future acts of targeted violence and domestic terrorism, including against American democratic institutions, improve the security posture of the United States Capitol Complex in a manner that preserves the accessibility of the Capitol Complex for all Americans, and strengthen the security and resilience of nation and American democratic institutions against domestic terrorism.
  • Like the 9/11 Commission, the measure establishes a 10-person bipartisan commission with five commissioners, including the Chair, appointed by the Speaker of the House and the Majority Leader of the Senate and five commissioners, including the Vice Chair, appointed by the Minority Leaders of the House and Senate.
  • Commissioners must have significant expertise in the areas of law enforcement, civil rights, civil liberties, privacy, intelligence, and cybersecurity. Current government officers or employees are prohibited from appointment.
  • Like the 9/11 Commission, the Commission will be granted authority to issue subpoenas to secure information to carry out its investigation but only upon agreement between the Chair and the Vice Chair or a vote by a majority of Commission members.
  • The Commission will be required to issue a final report with findings regarding the facts and causes of the attack, along with recommendations to prevent future attacks on our democratic institutions, by December 31, 2021.

Currently, Congressman McCarthy is trying to tap dance around the fact that he authorized Congressman Katko to negotiate this agreement and, amazingly enough, Congressman Thompson agreed to McCarthy’s stipulations because the agreement appears to have wrong footed McCarthy with Trump, his caucus, and the base of the Republican Party. It is important to remember that McCarthy is not a particularly smart man. Rather, he’s simply outlasted everyone but Steve Scalise in terms of seniority and if Scalise can shiv McCarthy over this, he will! And it isn’t clear if what was agreed to would even pass just on Democratic only majorities in each chamber without significant revision, but let’s say the agreement holds up. If it does, you’ve got a dysfunctional committee that is structured to do nothing but obstruct itself.

The committee will be bipartisan and will have ten members, five selected by the Democratic leadership of Speaker Pelosi and Senator Schumer and five selected by Congressman McCarthy and Senator McConnell. And while it will have subpoena power, subpoenas can only be issued if either the Democratic appointed chair and the Republican appointed ranking member/vice chair agree or if a majority of the commissioners vote to issue one. And this is where everything breaks down.

Ordinarily, the Republicans go to play on something like this would be for Senator McConnell to place his trusted agent and catspaw on the commission: Don McGahn. McGahn, even if he wasn’t the ranking member/vice chair, would be there to organize and ensure complete Republican opposition to everything. This is how McGahn was used by McConnell to break the Federal Election Commission (FEC), but because of McGahn being placed by McConnell on Trump’s 2016 campaign as the lead campaign counsel and then as the White House Counsel for the first several years of the Trump administration, he’s not going to be usable for this assignment. Instead, Senator McConnell and Congressman McCarthy will simply pick other Republican legal operatives with the appropriate experience who can be counted on to gum up the works. I expect to see former NJ governor Chris Christie’s name floated for ranking member/vice chair. Same with former Congressman Trey Gowdy’s. It would not surprise me if McCarthy goes back to the same well of ratfuckers that Congressman Nunes has been using for several years – Kash Patel, Michael Ellison, and LTC (ret) Derek Harvey – as potential Republican appointees, especially as most of McConnell’s proteges have now been packed onto the Federal courts.

Regardless, because the agreement establishes an equal number of Democratic and Republican appointees and gives veto power over subpoenas to the Republican ranking member/vice chair, if this commission does actually get created with these parameters, then nothing of any import or value will be done. It will serve as a rhetorical tool for Republicans and conservative movement leaders, who it is important to recognize are still involved in the ongoing insurrection against the Constitution and constitutional order that boiled over into explicit violence on 6 January and may very well do so again, to state that they are taking this seriously because they voted to establish a toothless and ineffective commission to look into it.

Congressman Thompson is a sharp guy. And Speaker Pelosi is almost always five steps ahead of her Republican colleagues. But if there is some grand strategy here, I’m not seeing it. Best case scenario from this agreement is a dysfunctional committee with only six months to do anything and that produces nothing of value when what we need is a real truth and reconciliation commission led by someone of impeccable and unimpeachable character that takes as long as it needs to get to the truth in order to hold people and organizations to account so there can be reconciliation. Worst case scenario is it falls apart because the resolutions that would establish it can’t get through both chambers of Congress and once that happens everyone decides the lift is too heavy and the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

Have a happy Monday!

Pooh, Piglet, Monday

Open thread!

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The Black PSYOP Comes Home To Roost: The National Security Implications of Today’s DOJ Raids on Giuliani and Toensing

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So About That Third Party Spoilers Thing... The Libertarian Presidential Candidate And A Possibly Rabid Bat Edition

Now that the news has broken that the DOJ executed search warrants at Rudy Giuliani’s home and office, as well as for Victoria Toensing’s electronic devices from her office in DC, here’s what I think is going under the water line. This is connecting the known, through open source reporting national-security dots. It is not a legal analysis of what the warrants and their execution means in terms of potential criminal prosecutions. For that, I recommend Ken White, who tweets as Popehat. His excellent legal analysis is in this thread. And Ryan Goodman’s excellent analysis in this thread, which has a much more national-security approach to the news.

Back in October 2019, I laid out what Rudy Giuliani, Victoria Toensing, and her husband Joe DiGenova were doing in Ukraine, especially in terms of where the national security and political implications overlapped. And this context is important to review and keep in mind in regard to today’s news. Pay specific attention to the second and third parts of the operation:

That larger operation, which is a domestically focused Black PSYOP, has three lines of effort, each with multiple parts, and they all are now interconnected.

1) The Ukrainian deliverable.
A) The real deliverable wasn’t manufactured dirt on the Bidens. Rather, it was getting Zelensky to go on CNN to announce the opening of an investigation into the Bidens, because CNN is a mainstream news outlet and is in opposition to the President in its reporting. As soon as that happened, the President’s team would have campaign ads running 24/7 with this. They’d be pushing the reporters they often use, or who are primed for this type of cheap high like Ken Vogel, at mainstream outlets to get all over Zelensky’s announcement, thereby further laundering it and disseminating it through mainstream and legitimate outlets.
B) The fallback, when Zelensky wouldn’t play ball, was to have Hannity interview Shokin – the disgraced, corrupt prosecutor who was forced out under pressure from the US, EU, the IMF, and others. From the reporting over the past two or three days, Parnas and Fruman and Giuliani were all going to Vienna to arrange for this to happen the next night, which would be the night after Parnas and Fruman were arrested. It was also the night after Barr both returned to the US from his “fact finding trip”, met with the SDNY, and then had dinner with Rupert Murdoch.
C) The Romania and China gambits are also fallbacks. The President’s senior advisor for trade issues, Peter Navarro refused to answer CNN’s Jim Sciutto’s questions yesterday about whether the PRC had been told that in order to get a trade deal they had to manufacture dirt on Hunter Biden. I think it is reasonable to conclude that his refusal to answer should be taken as a yes. NBC/MSNBC had new reporting on Hunter Biden and Romania earlier this evening.
D) Barr’s criminal investigation is another fallback here. In this case it turns the DOJ into the propaganda laundry.

2) The Firtash initiative. Firtash wants off house arrest in Vienna and out from under the extradition order to send him to the US to face the Federal crimes he’s been indicted for. The reason Firtash wants this done is because he’s Putin’s man in Ukraine’s natural gas industry. If Firtash can get back to Kyiv he can then once again try to take over Ukraine’s natural gas sector, suck it dry of profits, and fuck up its operations, which will force the Ukrainians to buy natural gas from Russia while removing Ukrainian natural gas as an alternative to Russian natural gas for the rest of the EU market. This all benefits Putin, who is Firtash’s krysha (roof/ceiling) in the Russian mob. Just as he is for every other one of these oligarchs aligned with him.
A) Firtash’s efforts weren’t going very far, so he fired his US attorneys and hired Toensing and DiGenova. They then hired Parnas to do their translation work despite it being reported that Firtash and most of his staff speak fluent and/or functional English.
B) Firtash was laundering manufactured dirt and conspiracy theories about the Bidens, about the Democrats working with Ukraine to steal the 2016 election, etc through Parnas and Fruman and Toensing and DiGenova to Giuliani. Giuliani who was being paid/worked for Parnas, but also somehow also Parnas’s boss.
C) Toensing and DiGenova are also working for free to assist Giuliani with manufacturing dirt on the Bidens.

3) The lift Russian sanctions initiative. Here’s where it all ties together, by laundering these conspiracy theories, especially that the Democrats and the Ukrainians, in conjunction with DNI, CIA, FBI, NSA, and DOJ, conspired to steal the 2016 election by running a false flag (maskirovka) operation to make it look like Russia was actually conspiring with Trump, his campaign, Republicans, and major conservative movement organizations to steal the 2016 election, it provides a fig leaf for Trump to order the lifting of US sanctions against Russia that went on after the seizure of Crimea and the invasion of Donbass and were expanded as a result of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
A) Manafort, through his attorney, was feeding Giuliani this conspiracy theory from jail and then prison.
B) This provides cover to pardon Manafort and Flynn and several others.
C) It was reported today that DiGenova and Toensing are the attorneys representing the conspiracist masquerading as an investigative journalist John Solomon who was (finally) just fired from The Hill. And here is where #3 wraps back into #1. Solomon was laundering all of these conspiracy theories, from Uranium 1 to the Democrats conspired with the Ukrainians, the DNI, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and the DOJ to frame the Russians for trying to steal the 2016 election in order to steal the 2016 election for the Democrats to the Biden bullshit.

A couple of final points. Giuliani and Toensing and DiGenova are now claiming that Parnas, Fruman, and now, I suppose, Solomon cannot be deposed, questioned, etc by investigators since they were either working for Giuliani and/or Toensing and DiGenova or are represented by them and therefore everything they know is either attorney-client privilege or attorney work product. So you can’t ask Giuliani about what Toensing or DiGenova are doing. Or what Parnas or Fruman are doing. You can’t ask Toensing and DiGenova about what Giuliani, Parnas, and/or Fruman are doing. You can’t ask Parnas and Fruman what Giuliani or Toensing or DiGenova are doing. You can’t ask Toensing and DiGenova what Solomon is doing. You can’t ask Soloman what DiGenova and Toensing are doing. You can’t ask Firtash what Giuliani, Toensing, DiGenova, and/or Parnas and Fruman are doing. You can’t ask Giuliani, Toensing, DiGenova, and/or Firtash is doing. And because Giuliani claims all of this is on behalf of his client, the President, you also can’t, because of executive privilege, ask Giuliani, Parnas and Fruman who are working for him and who he is working for, and/or Toensing and DiGenova who are assisting him pro bono and employing Parnas anything because they are all covered from having to divulge anything or answering any questions under executive privilege.

If this sounds familiar, it is similar to how Roy Cohn handled his legal representation of the organized crime families he represented in New York. They’d hold all their business/decision making meetings in his dining room with him present or with him on the phone in case of an emergency, so it was all covered under attorney-client privilege. Nobody, from any angle of inquiry, can say nothing about nothing and no one because everything is privileged.

It is important to note that John Solomon, who was laundering disinformation and agitprop through The Hill and Fox News is referenced in the warrant for Giuliani and Toensing’s phones/electronic devices.

(Do read Goodman’s entire thread)

Now that we’ve refreshed ourselves on the context, here’s what I think is going on:

  1. Parnas, recognizing that his only way out is to give up people more important, more powerful, and more well connected than him, which is basically everyone, agreed to cooperate early on and has given the Feds what they need to work their way up the network.
  2. All of this is going to wind up connected back to Firtash, who, again, is Putin’s guy in Ukraine’s natural gas sector, and, likely, several other pro-Putin Ukrainian oligarchs.
  3. A Federal magistrate seems to have decided that the Roy Cohn gambit – that every one of these people’s communications regarding Ukraine was covered under attorney-client privilege because they were working for Giuliani who is Trump’s lawyer or for Toensing who is a lawyer and was assisting Giuliani for free as he was assisting her for free while working for Trump for free – is not in play here. Hence, the specific reference to communications regarding John Solomon and others.
  4. Trump world has just an astounding level of connections to pro-Putin Ukrainian oligarchs. The Philadelphia lawyer they brought into the campaign to advise on Pennsylvania’s recount rules is the attorney for Igor Kolomoiski. So is Bruce Kasowitz, who is one of Trump’s other personal attorneys. Just off the top of my head, Giuliani is tied to Kolomoiski, Derkach, Firtash, and several others. Toensing is tied to Firtash. And there’s plenty more that would take too long to list.
  5. I expect that the Feds will play the bigger fish off of each other as the investigation moves forward. If part of that is playing Toensing off against Giuliani, she’s going to eat him alive to save her, her husband’s, and her son’s tuchases as she’s still very sharp, despite being way through the map, whereas Rudy is Rudy.

If you want in on the “will Rudy Giuliani be able to stay off of Sean Hannity’s show tonight” action, please see Ann Laurie on the mezzanine level between the concession stands and the merchandise shop. While you’re waiting to get in on the action, I recommend the nachos and the Balloon Juicers hockey jersey. Pro tip: spring for the authentic one with the tie down strap, it comes in handy in a fight…

Open thread!

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The Real Purpose of the Leak of the Zarif Interview Tape: Dirty Up John Kerry

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Cole asked what the takeaways are from The New York Times reporting on a leaked tape of an interview with Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif. As I put in a comment in that post, there are four. I’m going to copy and paste them below, but then I want to really focus on the fourth one because I think that’s the real tell.

  1. There are three possible leakers of the tape: Israel, Russia, or Iran’s Quds Force. All three don’t want the nuclear deal back on the table for different reasons, though some of them overlap. In the case of Israel, Bibi is desperate to maintain a foreign threat that only he can safely lead Israel against. And he definitely does not want Iran to be incentivized to open up to the west, which will have profound impacts on Iranian society, economy, and ultimately politics. Without Iran, Israel has no foreign threat for Bibi to rail against as an existential problem that requires his experienced leadership to survive. Russia doesn’t want the deal because it also doesn’t want an Iran incentivized to come in from the cold in order to get out from under sanctions. Doing so would open up Iran, which would have profound impacts on Iranian society, economy, and ultimately politics. An isolated Iran needs Russia. The Quds Force is working this angle from the other direction – internal to Iran instead of external. Anything that potentially empowers the more moderate reformist elements, that potentially leads to a relaxation of sanctions, that potentially leads to Iranians actually being able to interact with Americans and Europeans on a more regular basis weakens the Quds Force. Because if real, legitimate political reform ever comes to Iran, it has to come at the expense of the Quds Force.
  2. While all of these three have means, motive, and opportunity to have gotten the audio and leaked it, the leak was done to make it harder to reach a deal to get Iran either back into the JCPOA or into a new, revised version of it.
  3. If Israel is the leaker on this, the Quds Force and the other elements of Iranian security and intelligence are fully puckered right now. Being able to get hands on to this indicates a level of Israeli intelligence penetration into Iranian elite circles that is beyond what we know and suspect based on reporting.
  4. Someone really wants to dirty up John Kerry. Given that Putin has been working this angle, as I’ve covered here repeatedly on the front pages, since May 2014 when the initial agitprop plant of misinformation was placed in RIA Novosti against Biden, Kerry, and Cheney, via attacks on their children, because all were being discussed as possibly running for president in 2016. Is this an indicator that Russia is the leaker? I don’t know. I just find it curious that Russia has previously tried to ensure that Kerry looks bad, so this might be a two birds, one stone type of thing. Especially as Putin does not want to see any action on climate change because of his own strategy to leverage its effects to the benefit of Russia. And yes, I know, that strategy is stupid and its objectives are not achievable.

This is the specific portion of The New York Times reporting dealing with Secretary Kerry:

Former Secretary of State John Kerry informed him that Israel had attacked Iranian interests in Syria at least 200 times, to his astonishment, Mr. Zarif said.

While it follows a section about how the US, presumably US intelligence, knew about the Quds Force’s reprisal strike on US forces stationed at the Balad Air Base in Iraq before the Quds Force informed Zarif, the sentence about Kerry just sticks out like a very out of place sore thumb. It is completely out of context and contextless. Did Kerry do this when he was Secretary of State, pursuant to a strategy of confidence building with Zarif around the JCPOA negotiations that was deconflicted and cleared with the Director of National Intelligence and Director of Central Intelligence or was this Kerry just shooting the breeze with Zarif sometime after the change of administration between January 2017 and January 2021? We don’t know because the reporter, in his reporting, doesn’t provide us any context.

There has been a concerted effort by Putin, via his active measures campaign, to dirty up very specific American politicians who he believes are or would be detrimental to his interests. Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Kerry, and Dick Cheney. As I wrote way back in November of 2019, Putin first planted the agitprop about Hunter Biden in a Russian state backed news outlet- RIA Novosti – as part of a black PSYOP strategy to launder the misinformation through legitimate, or perceived to be legitimate outlets, to dirty up potential presidential candidates. You’ll notice the three names in the highlighted portion below: Biden, Cheney, Kerry in the question from the RIA-Novosti reporter to a peace activist no one has ever heard of outside of the people that read his blog.

RIA_Novosti

And right on time, the usual people in the US bit on what seems to be a singular contextless throw away sentence about Secretary Kerry. All of these below, with the exception of the two Brad Moss tweets and the Stefanik tweet courtesy of commenter Jim, Foolish Literalist, are from just doing a keyword search for “John Kerry” using Twitter’s search function. There are dozens and dozens I’m not including here so as to not gunk up the front page, but this is now on fire in Republican and conservative political, news, and social media circles. The Daily Wire, that’s Shapiro’s agitprop outfit, has picked it up, which means it is now all over Facebook where he’s got dozens of sock puppets pushing his garbage into everybody’s feeds, so the real purpose of this leak in terms of US politics, policy, and strategy is completely successful.

Here’s the link to the search if you want to copy and paste it and see for yourself: https://twitter.com/search?q=john%20kerry&src=typed_query

Current Trump spokesman:

Former Trump spokesman:

The National Review:

Amazingly enough Fox News almost gets it right:

By Fox almost gets it right, I mean that they recognize that the real news in the reporting about the leaked tape is this one out of place, contextless sentence about John Kerry. It is a bombshell because it was intended to be a bombshell. It is a piece of contextless information placed in the middle of an article about an oral history interview given by Iran’s foreign minister that largely confirmed what all of us who actually pay attention to Iran for professional reasons already know. And we already know it largely because of open source reporting, not even anything classified. I can think of over three dozen news reports about Israel striking Iranian targets in Syria without expanding much effort. So this isn’t exactly a state secret in the US, Israel, or Iran.

And this brings us back to the real purpose of the leak. A lot of people are going to focus in on it undermining Zarif and the other members of his reformist party in the civilian facade government ahead of Iranian elections. Others will focus on it undermining attempts by the Biden administration to either get Iran back into the JCPOA or into a new, revised JCPOA. But the Quds Force attempting to prevent that, let alone Bibi or Putin attempting to prevent it, are also not a state secret. The only thing Bibi hasn’t done to tell everyone that’s one of his objectives is host a 24 hour global telethon with that as the theme like Jerry Lewis used to do for MDA every year.

The real purpose of the leak was to get that one, contextless sentence about John Kerry into the reporting. It sticks out like a sore thumb visible from space because it is supposed to stick out like a sore thumb visible from space! The objective here is two fold. The first is to undermine Kerry, who is currently the Special Envoy for Climate Change so that he has to either step down or be fired. That really won’t stop the Biden administration’s efforts on climate change as President Biden will just appoint someone else. The second is to damage President Biden and his administration. So far nothing, and I do mean nothing, has been able to stick. Nothing about Hunter Biden has stuck. Major Biden’s nipping didn’t stick. President Biden has dementia and is being manipulated by VP Harris hasn’t stuck. President Biden is a tool of the Chinese Communist Party, which is the term now doing business for Republicans and conservatives for the People’s Republic of China and everything to do with the People’s Republic of China which is scary because it’s communist, ooga booga! So now, it is going to be all about how President Biden failed to vet John Kerry properly before appointing him the Special Envoy for Climate Change. John Kerry is clearly working for the Iranian government, there’s collusion, we HAVE COLLUSION, IT’s IRANIAN COLLUSION WITH THE DEMOCRATS!!!!! And, finally, can we really say that President Biden didn’t know all the time and that he’s not also, secretly colluding with Iran?

That’s the real news here. This was a hit job on John Kerry, and through John Kerry on President Biden and his administration, masquerading as a leaked oral history interview. That one, contextless, seemingly throw away sentence about John Kerry was the whole point. A perfectly executed black PSYOP. And everyone in Republican politics, the conservative movement, and conservative news, digital, and social media is going to hammer it until they can’t get any further use for it. You all thought Senator Cotton was obnoxious for stating he was holding up all US Attorney appointments, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Just watch, he’ll be holding up all the nat-sec nominations as a result of this too.

Open thread!

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LTC (ret) Grossman Has Grossly Misrepresented Himself, His Service, and His Qualifications

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A while back one of my closest friends, who is a SWAT sniper, asked me about Grossman, specifically because I’ve spent a fair amount of time working with US Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF). I said I didn’t think he was SOF, especially not a Green Beret as I’ve never seen a Green Beret not mention which Special Forces Group they’ve served with in their professional bios. After yesterday’s post I emailed a friend who’d have a better idea and he responded that Grossman was conventional infantry who’d done the Ranger course, served only in conventional line units, and never saw combat. This was fully confirmed when the Marine vet who tweets as The Warax tweeted Grossman’s DD 214, in this case the National Archives Form 13164 (NA 13164), which is what is released when someone makes a FOIA request for someone else’s military service record:

Fixing American Policing In the 21st Century Means Fixing the Training and Education Problem

Fixing American Policing In the 21st Century Means Fixing the Training and Education Problem 1

For the uninitiated, LTC (ret) Grossman is a conventional infantry officer who only ever served in conventional Army assignments. He attended and completed the Ranger course in 1979, meaning he is Ranger tabbed. He never served in the Ranger Regiment, he was never a Green Beret/Special Forces. He wasn’t even Army Special Operations despite listing himself in his bio as a US Army Ranger. He was not branch qualified as a major and not selected for battalion command. He has no combat experience or deployments at all. This guy has never killed anyone, at least not while in uniform.

Failing to properly vet people’s actual credentials, experience, and expertise as opposed to their claimed credentials, experience, and expertise is a HUGE problem in the US. I’ve spent years fighting this problem within different US Army programs. I’ve managed to expose more phony PhDs than I can shake a stick at. Unfortunately, some of them are dug in and protected and can’t be gotten rid of. So I’m not surprised that law enforcement has the same problem.

Grossman is a fake and a fraud in terms of what he is promoting himself to be versus what he has actually done and is qualified to do.

He’s not a psychologist in the sense that anyone who is a psychologist in the civilian world of practitioners or academics would use the term. He’s qualified to be a high school guidance counselor. Don’t take my word for it, here’s how the University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Counselor Education describes the masters in counselor education:

Graduates of our program will be prepared to:

  • Pursue employment as academic advisers, career counselors and student affair officials in colleges and universities
  • Pursue doctoral studies in counseling psychology or other related fields
  • Pursue certification as a Licensed Professional Counselor or School Counselor (with additional requirements / coursework – see Program Details for more information).

He’s not Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF) in the sense that anyone within the various communities that make up Army Special Forces would use, he’s just Ranger tabbed. This is an accomplishment in itself as the course is brutal. It makes him Ranger qualified. But to those who haven’t served or haven’t worked with the Army/military, the way he presents the qualification is meant to imply something that he is not.

He has no experience in combat as he’s NEVER ACTUALLY BEEN IN COMBAT! He has no experience, that we know of, in actually killing anyone. And certainly not while in uniform in the US Army. He certainly has no law enforcement experience.

LTC (ret) Grossman is a combination of the death of expertise and a dearth of expertise pretending to be the expertise in order to run a very lucrative grift at taxpayer’s expense on both the front end (what he gets paid to teach this bullshit) and on the back end (when municipalities have to pay out in the lawsuits because law enforcement practiced what Grossman preaches).

I’ve placed a correction and an update to yesterday’s post to reflect this new, accurate information regarding Grossman’s misrepresentation of himself.

Open thread!

Just in case anyone decides they want to know who this Adam L. Silverman guy is to say such things, here’s my credentials:

I have a PhD in criminology and political science (awarded by the Department of Political Science with a specialty in Criminology) from the University of Florida. I have taught in several criminology programs and was the undergraduate and graduate core curriculum – epistemology, research design and methods, theory, and statistics – coordinator in an applied criminology and security program. In 2007 I was recruited to go to work for the US Army. First in a supervisory contract position, which included my deployment to Iraq in 2008. This was followed by a civilian mobilization under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act of Title IV of the Federal code, where I served as a supervisory GS 15 assigned as the Cultural Advisor to the Commandant and Professor of Culture, Strategy, and Policy at the US Army War College, as well as the staffer acting as the Deputy to the Director of the Army Culture and Foreign Language Directorate. During this assignment I served, under temporary assigned control, as the Cultural Advisor to the following: the Commanding General of US Army Europe, the Commanding General of III Corps, the Director of the Institute for NCO Professional Development, the Branch Chief of Civil Affairs. I also provided subject matter expertise support to SOCOM, CENTCOM, EUCOM, Army Special Operations Command, Army Central Command, the 101st Airborne Division, SOCOM’s Civil Affairs Capability Based Assessment, SOCOM’s Joint Civil Information Management Test Development, JIEDDO, and the Near East Desk at the Department of State. My subsequent civilian mobilization was with the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Security Dialogue in the Middle East and my assignment was as the Cultural Advisor to the Commanding General of US Army Europe. Following that I served as Senior Fellow for Special Operations, which was a contract position, at SOCOM’s Joint Special Operations University. My training to work for the US Army as a cultural subject matter expert was overseen and conducted by retired Green Berets, Civil Affairs, and Psychological Operations Soldiers.

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