Last Call For Comey Chameleon, Con't

Washington has been eagerly awaiting the report from the the DoJ's Office of Inspector General as to the Clinton investigation, and amazingly enough, it hammers former FBI Director James Comey for his little October Surprise.

The Justice Department's internal watchdog has concluded that James Comey defied authority at times during his tenure as FBI director, according to sources familiar with a draft report on the matter.

One source told ABC News that the draft report explicitly used the word "insubordinate" to describe Comey's behavior. Another source agreed with that characterization but could not confirm the use of the term. 

In the draft report, Inspector General Michael Horowitz also rebuked former Attorney General Loretta Lynch for her handling of the federal investigation into Hillary Clinton's personal email server, the sources said. 

On Tuesday morning, President Donald Trump complained of "numerous delays" in the release of Horowitz's final report, which is expected to run several hundred pages long and be released in the coming days. The sources who spoke to ABC News were willing or able to address only a portion of the draft report's complete findings. 

"What is taking so long with the Inspector General's Report on Crooked Hillary and Slippery James Comey," Trump said on Twitter. "Hope report is not being changed and made weaker!" 

There is no indication the president has seen – or will see – a draft of the report before its release. Horowitz, however, could revise the draft report now that current and former officials mentioned in it have offered their responses to the inspector general's conclusions, according to the sources. 

Almost from the start, the long-awaited report was expected to chastise Comey for his handling of the Clinton-related probe. But in apparently describing Comey's defiance of authority, the draft report was criticizing a man who prided himself on his leadership style at the FBI and has since dedicated his post-government life to promoting a new generation of effective leaders. 

The draft of Horowitz's wide-ranging report specifically called out Comey for ignoring objections from the Justice Department when he disclosed in a letter to Congress just days before the 2016 presidential election that FBI agents had reopened the Clinton probe, according to sources. Clinton has said that letter doomed her campaign. 

Before Comey sent the letter to Congress, at least one senior Justice Department official told the FBI that publicizing the bombshell move so close to an election would violate longstanding department policy, and it would ignore federal guidelines prohibiting the disclosure of information related to an ongoing investigation, ABC News was told.

A not-so-gentle reminder then that James Comey was largely responsible for Clinton's close loss, but I'm sure Republicans will ignore than part and just concentrate on Loretta Lynch.

We'll see where this goes, and who knows how much of the IG report we'll get to actually see, but if anything, this will be used for cover by Trump that he didn't fire Comey over loyalty reasons, and instead he just waited five months to fire him over "the Clinton thing".

I don't buy it, and Mueller knows the truth.

Pardon The Interruption

Looks like Donald Trump is moving on dozens of pardons, and soon.

The White House has assembled the paperwork to pardon dozens of people, two sources with knowledge of the developments tell CNN, signaling that President Donald Trump is poised to exert his constitutional power and intervene, in some instances, where he believes the Justice Department has overstepped. 

The administration has prepared the pardoning paperwork for at least 30 people, the sources tell CNN. One of those is Alice Johnson, the 63-year-old Tennessee woman who was sentenced to life in prison in 1996 on charges related to cocaine possession and money laundering. 

Kim Kardashian West met with Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner in the Oval Office last week in an attempt to convince him to pardon her. Trump has not yet decided whether he will move forward with either a pardon or commutation for Johnson. 

While Trump has expressed interest in recent days in doing so, his chief of staff, John Kelly, has advocated against it, according to someone familiar with the negotiations. 

The Washington Post first reported that the White House had prepared the paperwork to pardon Johnson. 

Last week, the President pardoned conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza and told reporters he was considering pardoning Martha Stewart and commuting the sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. He raised eyebrows on Monday when he stated his belief that he had the "absolute right" to pardon himself, but said he wouldn't do so because he had "done nothing wrong." 

In light of his recent pardoning spree, several of the President's outside friends and allies have begun advocating for people they believe should also be forgiven.

Now, this could be Trump moving on the request made by Kim Kardashian in her meeting with Trump last week, but if any of these pardons involve players in the Mueller probe, our current Constitutional crisis shifts into overdrive. And indeed, Trump did commute Johnson's sentence earlier today.

Trump could just be trying to get his name in the history books here.  Lord knows there are a bunch of posthumous and current figures he could grant clemency to or pardon in full.  But the real tell here may be the sudden urge to involve the WH Pardon Attorney's office.  So far Trump's pardons have been Trump being Trump and going around the office, but these possible pardons he wants to make very official.

That makes me think it could involve Mueller investigation targets.

We'll see.

Tired Of All The News

A new Pew Research poll finds more than two-thirds of Americans are "worn out" by efforts to keep up with the sheer amount of news in 2018, but it's Republicans who report feeling the most overwhelmed.

If you feel like there is too much news and you can’t keep up, you are not alone. A sizable portion of Americans are feeling overwhelmed by the amount of news there is, though the sentiment is more common on the right side of the political spectrum, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted from Feb. 22 to March 4, 2018.

Almost seven-in-ten Americans (68%) feel worn out by the amount of news there is these days, compared with only three-in-ten who say they like the amount of news they get. The portion expressing feelings of information overload is in line with how Americans felt during the 2016 presidential election, when a majority expressed feelings of exhaustion from election coverage.

While majorities of both Republicans and Democrats express news fatigue, Republicans are feeling it more. Roughly three-quarters (77%) of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents feel worn out over how much news there is, compared with about six-in-ten Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (61%). This elevated fatigue among Republicans tracks with them having less enthusiasm than Democrats for the 2018 elections.

Feeling overwhelmed by the news is more common among those who follow the news less closely than among those who are avid consumers. While a majority of those who follow the news most of the time (62%) are feeling worn out by the news, a substantially higher portion (78%) of those who less frequently get news say they are fatigued by the amount of it that they see. (Most Americans – 65% – say they follow the news most of time, whereas 34% say they follow only when something important is happening.)

Those less favorable toward the news media are also the most “worn out.” Eight-in-ten of those who think national news organizations do “not too” or “not at all well” in informing the public are feeling this exhaustion. This is somewhat higher than among those who say the news media do “fairly well” (69%), and much higher than for those who think news organizations do “very well” – of whom 48% say they are worn out by the news and 51% say they like the amount they see. This relationship between attitudes toward the news media and fatigue holds even after accounting for Americans’ political party affiliation.

Americans don't like hearing news that bursts their news bubbles, and the more they think everything is "fake news" the worse that gets.  Republicans aren't ignoring news about the comically inept Trump regime, they're internalizing the disconnect and producing outrage and victimization from it and instead channeling that anger towards the messenger.

If there's a model frustrated news consumer in this poll, it's college-educated white women in their 30's and 40's.  Some 44% of white college women graduates voted for Trump but they had the least loyalty to his brand...and the most regret for doing so.

So yeah, I bet they are feeling pretty frustrated right now and don't want to hear about the news...especially the ones who voted for Trump.  The rest of us are pretty frustrated too...but we voted for the non-orange person.

StupidiNews!

• Package carrier UPS, which employs more than a quarter-million Teamsters, could be the largest US strikes in decades as 90% of employees have voted to authorize striking if necessary.
• In California Dem Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom will take on GOP businessman John Cox, but candidate and former LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says thousands of Latinos were left off rolls in LA County.
• The EU is set to move ahead on punitive tariffs on US goods starting in July as a global trade war between Donald Trump and US allies threatens to spiral out of control.
• More than three dozen women won primaries for House, Senate, and governor's races in eight states last night, the vast majority are Democrats, including 17 in California alone.
• A federal judge has ordered the EPA to disclose all science relating to climate skepticism to back up claims made by Trump EPA chief Scott Pruitt.