Something Bad Is Afoot
Tulsi Gabbard burying whistleblower complaints, Sen. Ron Wyden sending a cryptic and very public letter to the CIA director about 'CIA activities' ... not good!
2019 is a very long time ago now, but do you all remember that day Adam Schiff sent a public letter to (Acting) Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire saying hey, motherfucker, we know you got a protected whistleblower disclosure last month, we know you’re trying to bury it, we know you ran crying to Bill Barr to save you from having to follow the law, and we are pretty sure that based on all the available evidence, this probably has something to do with some kind of really bad acts by the president of the United States?
Feel free to refresh yourself, because we might need it:
As it happened, it was about Trump’s PERFECT CALL with Ukraine, and his extortion of that country to help him steal the 2020 election, in exchange for the weapons aid they desperately needed, already appropriated by Congress, to protect themselves from Russia.
That led to Donald Trump’s impeachment, of course, and we know what Vladimir Putin did to Ukraine just a few years later. Maybe if Trump had been a more effective Russian agent, Putin would have invaded earlier.
Now, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has sent this very brief and public missive to CIA Director and crooked-jawed Trump ass-eater extraordinaire John Ratcliffe, which essentially says “DEAR AMERICA, I JUST SENT THIS BITCH A HIGHLY CLASSIFIED LETTER ABOUT SOMETHING I’VE CAUGHT WIND OF THAT’S HAPPENING AT CIA.”
You know, so the American public can bear witness to the fact that Ron Wyden did indeed send Ratcliffe this letter.
Dear Director Ratcliffe,
I write to alert you to a classified letter I sent you earlier today in which I express deep concerns about CIA activities.
Thank you for your attention to this important matter.
The end.
That is some weird shit. And that letter, combined with the whistleblower reports DNI Russia’s Girlfriend has been trying to bury, is giving us some serious flashbacks to 2019, and suggesting to us that, even in the Trump 2.0 regime, with all the adults long ago sent packing and with Republicans (currently) in control of both houses of Congress, all hell might be about to break loose and we might find out what kind of literal actual traitor stuff these bastards are up to.
Will the Bin Laden server make an appearance? Who knows! Sounds like John Ratcliffe has a letter he needs to get about responding to!
We found out this week that DNI Russia’s Girlfriend is holding some kind of two-part whistleblower complaint in her own vault that is so highly classified that it would cause “grave damage to national security” if it was revealed, according to one official, and which she has been up to now refusing to show to Congress. Part of it alleges serious wrongdoing by Russia’s Girlfriend, but don’t worry, Russia’s Girlfriend says Russia’s Girlfriend didn’t do anything bad, and that the inspector general agrees with Russia’s Girlfriend.
Reports the Wall Street Journal: “It also implicates another federal agency beyond Gabbard’s, and raises potential claims of executive privilege that may involve the White House, officials said.”
This complaint was filed way back in May, which is, #calendarfact, a fucklong time ago in whistleblower dissemination years — it’s supposed to be approximately a three-week process, max, from receipt to sharing with Congress — and Gabbard is accused of acting as a roadblock to getting the information to Congress.
Per Andrew Bakaj, the whistleblower’s lawyer:
“From my experience, it is confounding for [Gabbard’s office] to take weeks—let alone eight months—to transmit a disclosure to Congress,” Bakaj, who is chief legal counsel at the nonprofit WhistleblowerAid.org, said in a statement.
Amid the limbo, the Gabbard complaint has been locked in a safe in the office, a person familiar with the matter said. Asked about the safe, the inspector-general representative said: “Some complaints involve exceptionally sensitive materials necessitating special handling and storage requirements. This case is one of them.”
Some of the material in the complaint is also “marked as ‘attorney-client privileged,’ ” and could be subject to “executive privilege,” which generally refers to the power of the president to withhold confidential information or private discussions from Congress or the judicial branch, the inspector general’s office said.
Well, we are sure all the IGs in DC are on the up-and-up and exercising perfect judgment, especially after Trump fired a whole shitload of them last year.
Reporting on the Gabbard complaint appears to have shaken something loose to the point that the Gang of Eight — the top Republican and Democrat in each side of Congress, plus the intelligence committee leadership — received a memo Tuesday that the complaint is ready for them to look at, but it’s the most classified thing ever, it must be hand-delivered, they cannot take notes, etc.
It also shares a tiny bit more info about what’s in the whistleblower complaints, but not much. The first part — reportedly about Russia’s Girlfriend — seems to allege that she refused to distribute a highly classified intel report for political reasons; the second says, “the responsible IC element’s Office of General Counsel failed to report a potential crime to the Department of Justice, also for political purposes.” Again, it’s not much. But it’s intriguing.
Is Gabbard’s thing the same thing as Wyden’s thing, and is the second agency involved CIA? Unclear.
Dell Cameron from Wired notes on Bluesky that it’s fairly significant that it was Wyden sending that cryptic letter to Ratcliffe, sharing a quote from a Just Security piece about how Wyden is well-known for “light[ing] the Batsignal” when it comes to informing the public of fuckery afoot in the intelligence world.
Doing it in this way, though, in a two-sentence letter that is literally only intended to shine a screaming light for the American people on the fact that a senator wrote a classified letter to the regime’s CIA director? That suggests something very, very bad.
Charlotte Clymer notes how we have two things going here that may or may not be the same thing, and asks:’
But riddle me this: why would Ron Wyden, of all people, send the above letter to the CIA about “serious concerns” and make it public if the Gang of Eight are already scheduled to review the whistleblower complaint, which would presumably alleviate the present tension?
Good question.
Yes, it feels quite a bit like that week in 2019, doesn’t it!
Meanwhile, new reporting says Tulsi Gabbard spent time last year — also May, same time the whistleblower report came in — sniffing around and seizing voting machines in Puerto Rico to see if she could find ways to accuse Venezuela of RIGGED and STOLLEN there. Shockingly, they didn’t find any Venezuela in the voting machines. This might seem weird, since Puerto Rico doesn’t get a vote for president, but it might be a good place to rifle around and try stuff out — we are just spitballing here — if you’re trying to figure out ways to steal elections for Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin without too many people looking over your shoulder.
Based on her presence at the Fulton County election office raid — and the fact that she put FBI agents on the phone with Donald Trump during the fucking raid — it doesn’t feel insane to suspect her of literally every imaginable treason under the sun.
Also too, though, we must remember that Tulsi Gabbard is very stupid and didn’t even know what the DNI did while she was literally the nominee for the position, so take this grain of salt with that grain of salt, etc.
OPEN THREAD.
[Wall Street Journal / Charlotte Clymer]
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Another Cleveland winter weather thing I have become fascinated with (besides snow squalls and lake effect snow) are the icicles. They are on almost every building. And these ain't small. Some are Final Destination split a person in half size.
We are getting another small snow storm tomorrow, maybe I will bundle up and get some icicle pics this weekend.
"...raises potential claims of executive privilege that may involve the White House..."
I don't know much about the laws surrounding executive privilege, but I'd be surprised if there wasn't a carveout for, you know, treason, in a functional democracy anyway and oh now I see where I went wrong.