Last Call For Another Feinstein Mess You've Gotten Us Into

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein is recovering from shingles at home, but she's missed dozens of Senate votes as a result, and with both Feinstein and Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman out last month, judicial appointments have ground to a halt. Fetterman is back, but Feinstein won't be anytime soon, and the pressure is on for her resignation.

 

Senator Dianne Feinstein on Wednesday pushed back on calls for her resignation but asked to step away from the Judiciary Committee indefinitely while recovering from shingles, responding to mounting pressure from Democrats who have publicly vented concerns that she is unable to perform her job.

Ms. Feinstein, an 89-year-old California Democrat, has been away from the Senate since February, when she was diagnosed with the infection. Her absence has become a problem for Senate Democrats, limiting their ability to move forward with judicial nominations. In recent days, as it became clear she was not planning to return after a two-week recess, pressure began to increase for Ms. Feinstein to resign.

On Wednesday night, she said she would not do so, but offered a stopgap solution, saying she would request a temporary replacement on the panel.

“I understand that my absence could delay the important work of the Judiciary Committee,” Ms. Feinstein said in a statement on Wednesday night, after two House Democrats publicly called on her to leave the Senate. “So I’ve asked Leader Schumer to ask the Senate to allow another Democratic senator to temporarily serve until I’m able to resume my committee work.”

In a statement, a spokesman for Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said that Mr. Schumer would make that request of the Senate next week.

Replacing Ms. Feinstein on the committee would require Democrats to pass a resolution, which would need some degree of bipartisan support — either the unanimous consent of the Senate or 60 votes. It is not clear whether Republicans, who want to hold up President Biden’s judicial nominations, would support such a measure.

Ms. Feinstein has missed 58 Senate votes since February, and Democrats did not want to head into the spring and summer without the ability to move ahead on judicial nominations. Under the Senate’s current rules, a tie vote on a nomination in the committee means it fails and cannot be brought to the floor.

“I’m anxious, because I can’t really have a markup of new judge nominees until she’s there,” Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, told Politico last month.

There is zero reason for Mitch McConnell to go along with this, and he most likely won't. Delaying federal judicial appointments is what he'll relish doing.

The bigger problem is Feinstein's absence. Replacing herwould be a massive fight for her seat, something Democrats can't really afford right now even with the safest seat in the nation. It would be a lifetime appointment, and everyone knows it.

 

Oh, and nobody batted an eye when Fetterman took needed time off for medical reasons, that's a double standard for sure.

Having said that, another reason why Feinstein's continued absence is a problem: without her, Biden's pick to replace Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, Julie Su, is DOA.

 

President Biden's nomination of Julie Su as Labor secretary is in serious danger, as Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has told the Biden administration he has deep reservations about her, according to people familiar with the situation.

Why it matters: For Biden, the cold, hard math of the divided Senate means that Manchin’s opposition — combined with one other Democratic defection— would scuttle Su’s chances.It would mark the third defeat of a Biden nominee this year, a reflection of how a few Democrats who face tough re-election races in 2024 have resisted being seen as rubber stamps for Biden's picks.

Two previous Biden nominees — Gigi Sohn for an open seat on the Federal Communications Commission, and Phil Washington to lead the Federal Aviation Administration — withdrew after Democrats signaled their opposition.
The 49 Republicans in the 100-seat Senate are expected to uniformly oppose Su. There are concerns among Senate Democrats backing Su that Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat-turned-independent, also will vote no, though she has not said so.

The big picture: With Senate Democrats facing a difficult map in 2024, vulnerable senators such as Manchin, Sinema and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) are looking for ways to create some political space from Biden, whose approval/disapproval rating is an 8 points underwater in national polls, according to a Real Clear Politics polling average.

 

Sinema wouldn't need to vote no to kill the nomination, it would be 50-49 against with Manchin being himself and Feinstein gone.

 

Dems are going to need to figure this out and soon.

He's Playing The Discordians In A Prison Band

If the Washington Post investigation is correct, the young racist, anti-semitic MAGA gun-lover who leaked Pentagon war plans for Ukraine to the world did it for, in fact, the luls.

 

The man behind a massive leak of U.S. government secrets that has exposed spying on allies, revealed the grim prospects for Ukraine’s war with Russia and ignited diplomatic fires for the White House is a young, charismatic gun enthusiast who shared highly classified documents with a group of far-flung acquaintances searching for companionship amid the isolation of the pandemic.

United by their mutual love of guns, military gear and God, the group of roughly two dozen — mostly men and boys — formed an invitation-only clubhouse in 2020 on Discord, an online platform popular with gamers. But they paid little attention last year when the man some call “OG” posted a message laden with strange acronyms and jargon. The words were unfamiliar, and few people read the long note, one of the members explained. But he revered OG, the elder leader of their tiny tribe, who claimed to know secrets that the government withheld from ordinary people.

The young member read OG’s message closely, and the hundreds more that he said followed on a regular basis for months. They were, he recalled, what appeared to be near-verbatim transcripts of classified intelligence documents that OG indicated he had brought home from his job on a “military base,” which the member declined to identify. OG claimed he spent at least some of his day inside a secure facility that prohibited cellphones and other electronic devices, which could be used to document the secret information housed on government computer networks or spooling out from printers. He annotated some of the hand-typed documents, the member said, translating arcane intel-speak for the uninitiated, such as explaining that “NOFORN” meant the information in the document was so sensitive it must not be shared with foreign nationals.

OG told the group he toiled for hours writing up the classified documents to share with his companions in the Discord server he controlled. The gathering spot had been a pandemic refuge, particularly for teen gamers locked in their houses and cut off from their real-world friends. The members swapped memes, offensive jokes and idle chitchat. They watched movies together, joked around and prayed. But OG also lectured them about world affairs and secretive government operations. He wanted to “keep us in the loop,” the member said, and seemed to think that his insider knowledge would offer the others protection from the troubled world around them.

“He’s a smart person. He knew what he was doing when he posted these documents, of course. These weren’t accidental leaks of any kind,” the member said.

The transcribed documents OG posted traversed a range of sensitive subjects that only people who had undergone months-long background checks would be authorized to see. There were top-secret reports about the whereabouts and movements of high-ranking political leaders and tactical updates on military forces, the member said. Geopolitical analysis. Insights into foreign governments’ efforts to interfere with elections. “If you could think it, it was in those documents.”

In those initial posts, OG had given his fellow members a small sip of the torrent of secrets that was to come. When rendering hundreds of classified files by hand proved too tiresome, he began posting hundreds of photos of documents themselves, an astonishing cache of secrets that has been steadily spilling into public view over the past week, disrupting U.S. foreign policy and aggravating America’s allies.

This account of how detailed intelligence documents intended for an exclusive circle of military leaders and government decision-makers found their way into and then out of OG’s closed community is based in part on several lengthy interviews with the Discord group member, who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity. He is under 18 and was a young teenager when he met OG. The Post obtained consent from the member’s mother to speak to him and to record his remarks on video. He asked that his voice not be obscured.

His account was corroborated by a second member who read many of the same classified documents shared by OG, and who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. Both members said they know OG’s real name as well as the state where he lives and works but declined to share that information while the FBI is hunting for the source of the leaks. The investigation is in its early stages, and the Pentagon has set up its own internal review led by a senior official.

“An interagency effort has been stood up, focused on assessing the impact these photographed documents could have on U.S. national security and on our Allies and partners,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said in a statement.

Discord said in a statement that it is cooperating with law enforcement and has declined to comment further.

The Post also reviewed approximately 300 photos of classified documents, most of which have not been made public; some of the text documents OG is said to have written out; an audio recording of a man the two group members identified as OG speaking to his companions; and chat records and photographs that show OG communicating with them on the Discord server.

The young member was impressed by OG’s seemingly prophetic ability to forecast major events before they became headline news, things “only someone with this kind of high clearance” would know. He was by his own account enthralled with OG, who he said was in his early to mid-20s.

“He’s fit. He’s strong. He’s armed. He’s trained. Just about everything you can expect out of some sort of crazy movie,” the member said.

In a video seen by The Post, the man who the member said is OG stands at a shooting range, wearing safety glasses and ear coverings and holding a large rifle. He yells a series of racial and antisemitic slurs into the camera, then fires several rounds at a target.

The member seemed drawn to OG’s bravado and his skill with weapons. He felt a certain kinship with a man he described as “like an uncle” and, on another occasion, as a father figure.

“I was one of the very few people in the server that was able to understand that these [documents] were legitimate,” the member said, setting himself apart from the others who mostly ignored OG’s posts.

“It felt like I was on top of Mount Everest,” he said. “I felt like I was above everyone else to some degree and that … I knew stuff that they didn’t.”

I've said this before, but I meant it: If you or I committed even a small fraction of the classified document mishandlings that Donald Trump did with his little souvenir box in his pool closet in Mar-a-Lago, you'd be in federal prison for the rest of your life. 

This guy, and pretty much everyone involved with him on that Discord?

We're talking centuries of federal prison time and these assholes are going to get buried under concrete and forgotten. None of these guys are going to see the outside of a correctional facility unless it's the final trip out in a bag.

Besides, the damage done here is catastrophic. Putin himself couldn't have wanted better intel, and you can count on it being used against us for years to come.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Signs that Special Counsel Jack Smith is moving on not one, but two fronts this week, closing in on Donald Trump in a big way.  First up, Smith is getting testimony from Trump's circle over news that Trump may have been sharing classified material with his flunkies, material that they would not be cleared for even if it was legal for Trump to still have the documents.

 

Federal investigators are asking witnesses whether former President Donald J. Trump showed off to aides and visitors a map he took with him when he left office that contains sensitive intelligence information, four people with knowledge of the matter said.

The map has been just one focus of the broad Justice Department investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents after he departed the White House.

The nature of the map and the information it contained is not clear. But investigators have questioned a number of witnesses about it, according to the people with knowledge of the matter, as the special counsel overseeing the Justice Department’s Trump-focused inquiries, Jack Smith, examines the former president’s handling of classified material after leaving office and weighs charges that could include obstruction of justice.

One person briefed on the matter said investigators have asked about Mr. Trump showing the map while aboard a plane. Another said that, based on the questions they were asking, investigators appeared to believe that Mr. Trump showed the map to at least one adviser after leaving office.

A third person with knowledge of the investigation said the map might also have been shown to a journalist writing a book. The Washington Post has previously reported that investigators have asked about Mr. Trump showing classified material, including maps, to political donors.

The question of whether Mr. Trump was displaying sensitive material in his possession after he lost the presidency and left office is crucial as investigators try to reconstruct what Mr. Trump was doing with boxes of documents that went with him to his Florida residence and private club, Mar-a-Lago.

Among the topics investigators have been focused on is precisely when Mr. Trump was at the club last year. In particular, they were interested in whether he remained at Mar-a-Lago to look at boxes of material that were still stored there before Justice Department counterintelligence officials seeking their return came to visit in early June, according to two people familiar with the questions.

 

If Trump showed off these documents to donors and flunkies at Mar-a-Lago, and that information got passed on to foreign nationals who we already know were hanging out at his club, Trump is in massive trouble. That's not just mishandling classified material, that's espionage, folks.

You go to a small iron box for that.

Oh, and there's now the "fundraising off January 6th" campaign fraud angle too.

Federal prosecutors probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol have in recent weeks sought a wide range of documents related to fundraising after the 2020 election, looking to determine if Trump or his advisers scammed donors by using false claims about voter fraud to raise money, eight people familiar with the new inquiries said.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s office has sent subpoenas in recent weeks to Trump advisers and former campaign aides, Republican operatives and other consultants involved in the 2020 presidential campaign, the people said. They have also heard testimony from some of these figures in front of a Washington grand jury, some of the people said.

The eight people with knowledge of the investigation spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation.

The fundraising prong of the investigation is focused on money raised during the period between Nov. 3, 2020, and the end of Trump’s time in office on Jan. 20, 2o21, and prosecutors are said to be interested in whether anyone associated with the fundraising operation violated wire fraud laws, which make it illegal to make false representations over email to swindle people out of money.

The new subpoenas received since the beginning of March, which have not been previously reported, show the breadth of Smith’s investigation, as Trump embarks on a campaign for reelection while assailing the special counsel investigation and facing charges of falsifying business records in New York and a separate criminal investigation in Georgia.

The subpoenas seek more specific types of communications so that prosecutors can compare what Trump allies and advisers were telling each other privately about the voter-fraud claims with what they were saying publicly in appeals that generated more than $200 million in donations from conservatives, according to people with knowledge of the investigation.

That suggests that investigators are pursuing a legal theory similar to the one used to charge former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon and others with fraudulent fundraising to build a wall along the southern border, in which Bannon and others were charged with defrauding donors by lying in email pitches. Bannon’s three co-defendants pleaded guilty or were convicted, while Bannon was pardoned by Trump before he faced trial. Bannon now faces similar charges from the Manhattan district attorney and awaits trial. He has pleaded not guilty.

 

Lying about voter fraud in order to fundraise is in fact, campaign fraud. 

When Smith's hammer falls, Trump is going to be obliterated.