Andrew McCabe Admissions
Top NatSec Officials Plotted Coup Against Trump
After the James Comey firing, McCabe discussed removing Trump from office and began a counterintelligence investigation of Trump's alleged ties to Russia.
Madeline Osburn
The Federalist
Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe publicly admitted that after the firing of James Comey, national security officials strategized on invoking the 25th amendment to remove President Trump from office.
“There were meetings at the Justice Department at which it was discussed whether the vice president and a majority of the cabinet could be brought together to remove the president of the United States under the 25th Amendment,” Scott Pelley said he learned in his “60 Minutes” interview with McCabe.
Pelley described the top bureaucrats as “counting noses,” and speculating on where various cabinet members might stand on the question of the president’s removal. “These were the eight days from Comey’s firing to the point that Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel. And the highest levels of American law enforcement were trying to figure out what to do with the president,” Pelley said.
More than once, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein offered to wear a wire into the White House to attempt to record incriminating conversations with the president. McCabe said this was an idea he took seriously and discussed with FBI lawyers.
McCabe, who was fired last March, admitted to ensuring a counterintelligence investigation of President Trump and his alleged ties to Russia. “I was very concerned that I was able to put the Russia case on absolutely solid ground, in an indelible fashion,” McCabe said. “That were I removed quickly, or reassigned or fired, that the case could not be closed or vanish in the night without a trace.”
In a statement to CBS, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that McCabe had “opened a completely baseless investigation into the president.”
Showing posts with label Trump Wars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trump Wars. Show all posts
Thursday, 16 July 2020
Wednesday, 1 July 2020
Careful Use of Deadly Force A Significant Step Ahead of the Hawks
The Two Sides of Trump
Bolton’s foreign-policy revelations show a president crass in pursuit of electoral gain, but admirably circumspect about making war.
By Michael Brendan Dougherty
National Review Online
The leaked extracts of former national-security adviser John Bolton’s book have put into relief two sides of Donald Trump.
The first is the charlatan. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a president’s thinking about his electoral chances while conducting foreign policy. In fact, American presidents are in an enviable position of doing so almost all the time. The preeminent global position of America on the world stage has a way of aligning America’s national interests with the electoral interests of the president. Win the war, win the election. Strike a deal that’s a boon for the country, and it’s a boon for you too.
And yet there are still ways of committing a kind of fraud in this enterprise. And if we believe the accounts Bolton has given of the president’s dealing with China, Donald J. Trump has done so. In Bolton’s account, Trump simply and slaveringly asked for Chairman Xi’s intervention to help him win in 2020. Bolton says Trump “turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win.” The specific request was increased agricultural purchases in key states for Trump.
This request is, of course, a total betrayal of those who trusted Trump to rewrite our “bad deals” with China on trade. Trump promised to lower trade deficits, repatriate military-critical industry, and win back the kind of industry that would re-skill the American population and halt the downward mobility of our former industrial working class. It’s also a wasted opportunity, as even Trump’s phony trade war with China came at a very propitious time for American interests, and a difficult one for Chinese financial institutions. If Trump had patience and follow-through, he could have won lasting concessions.
Bolton’s foreign-policy revelations show a president crass in pursuit of electoral gain, but admirably circumspect about making war.
By Michael Brendan Dougherty
National Review Online
The leaked extracts of former national-security adviser John Bolton’s book have put into relief two sides of Donald Trump.
The first is the charlatan. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a president’s thinking about his electoral chances while conducting foreign policy. In fact, American presidents are in an enviable position of doing so almost all the time. The preeminent global position of America on the world stage has a way of aligning America’s national interests with the electoral interests of the president. Win the war, win the election. Strike a deal that’s a boon for the country, and it’s a boon for you too.
And yet there are still ways of committing a kind of fraud in this enterprise. And if we believe the accounts Bolton has given of the president’s dealing with China, Donald J. Trump has done so. In Bolton’s account, Trump simply and slaveringly asked for Chairman Xi’s intervention to help him win in 2020. Bolton says Trump “turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win.” The specific request was increased agricultural purchases in key states for Trump.
This request is, of course, a total betrayal of those who trusted Trump to rewrite our “bad deals” with China on trade. Trump promised to lower trade deficits, repatriate military-critical industry, and win back the kind of industry that would re-skill the American population and halt the downward mobility of our former industrial working class. It’s also a wasted opportunity, as even Trump’s phony trade war with China came at a very propitious time for American interests, and a difficult one for Chinese financial institutions. If Trump had patience and follow-through, he could have won lasting concessions.
Wednesday, 15 January 2020
Donald Trump, The Jacksonian President
Iranian Analytics
By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
For all the current furor over the death of Qasem Soleimani, it is Iran, not the U.S. and the Trump administration, that is in a dilemma. Given the death and destruction wrought by Soleimani, and his agendas to come, he will not be missed.
Tehran has misjudged the U.S. administration’s doctrine of strategic realism rather than vice versa. The theocracy apparently calculated that prior U.S. patience and restraint in the face of its aggression was proof of an unwillingness or inability to respond. More likely, the administration was earlier prepping for a possible more dramatic, deadly, and politically justifiable response when and if Iran soon overreached.
To retain domestic and foreign credibility, Iran would now like to escalate in hopes of creating some sort of U.S. quagmire comparable to Afghanistan, or, more germanely, to a long Serbian-like bombing campaign mess, or the ennui that eventually overtook the endless no-fly zones over Iraq, or the creepy misadventure in Libya, or even something like an enervating 1979-80 hostage situation. The history of the strategies of our Middle East opponents has always been to lure us into situations that have no strategic endgame, do not play to U.S. strengths in firepower, are costly without a time limit, and create Vietnam War–like tensions at home.
But those wished-for landscapes are not what Iran has got itself into.
By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
For all the current furor over the death of Qasem Soleimani, it is Iran, not the U.S. and the Trump administration, that is in a dilemma. Given the death and destruction wrought by Soleimani, and his agendas to come, he will not be missed.
Tehran has misjudged the U.S. administration’s doctrine of strategic realism rather than vice versa. The theocracy apparently calculated that prior U.S. patience and restraint in the face of its aggression was proof of an unwillingness or inability to respond. More likely, the administration was earlier prepping for a possible more dramatic, deadly, and politically justifiable response when and if Iran soon overreached.
To retain domestic and foreign credibility, Iran would now like to escalate in hopes of creating some sort of U.S. quagmire comparable to Afghanistan, or, more germanely, to a long Serbian-like bombing campaign mess, or the ennui that eventually overtook the endless no-fly zones over Iraq, or the creepy misadventure in Libya, or even something like an enervating 1979-80 hostage situation. The history of the strategies of our Middle East opponents has always been to lure us into situations that have no strategic endgame, do not play to U.S. strengths in firepower, are costly without a time limit, and create Vietnam War–like tensions at home.
But those wished-for landscapes are not what Iran has got itself into.
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