Tag Archives: FBI

Walz Cooperation With Law Enforcement Deserves Praise, Not Punishment

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In the past, one thing that Democrats and Republicans could always agree on is that “cooperating with law enforcement” is a good thing.  As near as I can tell at this stage, that’s what the Walz Administration and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison did when they learned of Covid relief funding being misused. 

As an aside, this is much more than I can say about Republicans like gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen who apparently has absolutely no problem with Governor Ron Desantis (R-FL) using millions of dollars Covid relief funds to shamelessly abuse vulnerable asylum-seekers for political purposes.  The Washington Post reports:

“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) appears to have turned to an unexpected funding source to help pay for his plans to fly migrants to liberal-leaning communities: the interest earned on his state’s federal coronavirus aid.

A little-noticed part of Florida’s recent budget dedicated about $12 million to the relocation campaign, an escalating effort that saw the state send two planes filled with dozens of migrants — children included — to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., on Wednesday.

When Republicans learned about DeSantis’s fraudulent use of Covid funds, they not only didn’t notify the FBI, they cheered on Desantis.

But I digress.  Let’s recap the basics of what seems to have happened in the Minnesota case.  When the Walz-appointed education officials suspected misuse of funds, they reported it to the FBI. They cooperated with law enforcement.

When the FBI reportedly asked the state education officials to not tip off the investigation by cutting off funds, the Walz education appointees and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s staff again cooperated with law enforcement.  Pioneer Press:

“’The FBI repeatedly made it clear to the Attorney General’s Office and MDE that it should not disclose the existence of the investigation in Feeding Our Future’s state court lawsuit so that it could proceed without tipping off Feeding Our Future and the target of the investigation,’ Ellison’s office said Monday.”

(Note: At this point, the FBI can’t publicly verify that they asked the state officials to not cut off funding. As we’ve seen in dozens of cases over the years, the FBI won’t comment on an ongoing investigation. Still, there is no reason to believe that all of these state officials are lying, knowing full well that the FBI could eventually expose them as liars.)

Likewise, when the judge reportedly said that cutting off funds during the investigation could be a problem for the investigation, the education officials didn’t create such a problem for law enforcement.  The Pioneer Press’s Dave Orrick explains:

Judge John Guthmann never ordered the state to make payments, according to the court record and Guthmann himself. However, he did, in at least one court hearing held over Zoom, tell an attorney for the state that they could have a “problem” if they didn’t keep making payments.

Why would the FBI not want the Walz Administration to immediately cut off funding?  That’s a very fair question. But there is a perfectly reasonable answer. Former federal prosecutor and current University of St. Thomas law professor Mark Osler explains:

“Think about a drug network,” Osler, who prosecuted cocaine rings in Detroit, said in an interview with the Pioneer Press. “Often, if we want to take down an entire drug network, you have to wait. It’s better to take it down with the whole story known and the key players identified. … I think pretty much anyone who’s worked in law enforcement at a higher level will say that fast isn’t always good and sometimes you do need to hold.”

And yes, Osler said, speaking generally and with no direct knowledge of the Feeding Our Future investigation, that can included allowing money to keep going out the door to suspected criminals. “A lot of the time, that’s done with the confidence of trying to get the money back later, and they’ve begun that process,” he said.

Indeed, federal authorities have said that of at least $250 million they’ve alleged to have been stolen, they’ve recovered some $50 million.

Despite all of this, Walz’s increasingly desperate gubernatorial opponent Scott Jensen, who is consistently trailing the polls, wants to convince Minnesotans that this is the equivalent of the Teapot Dome scandal or, like, you know, “BENGHAZI!” or “HER EMAILS!” 

But to me it looks like, yawn, Walz’s education appointees “cooperating with law enforcement” to do what they were told to do in order to prosecute some pretty extensive fraud that they initially uncovered. 

As such, the Walz Administration deserve praise, not punishment.

Hey, Mr. FBI Director. You Damn Well Better Have Something Big.

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NEW BLOG PHOTO_edited- 2For the sake of FBI Director Comey’s reputation and career, as well as that of the agency he leads, he better have two things nailed down ASAP.

1: A press conference explaining why, contrary to advice from his superiors he involved the FBI in an election, and 2: He damned well have something indisputably, unequivocally criminal that can be laid on Hillary Clinton. Lacking either, the guy is in for some serious blowback, a taste of which he is already getting.

Here’s the nut of it as far as I’m concerned. We may live in a time when “non-partisan bureaucrat” has no meaning. It may be that everyone in D.C. is playing a game on behalf of one team or the other. But the FBI of all people has to at least pretend it has no dog in the hunt. And the way it pretends it has no dog is by following long-established Bureau policies … policies and standards Comey decided to free-lance away with his letter to congressional committee heads last Friday.

Now, if Comey intends to assert his and the FBI’s non-partisan, neutral standing in election matters he has to explain how he, as a supposedly intelligent, above-the-fray veteran bureaucrat, thoroughly familiar with the folkways and partisan battles of DC could have blundered into one of the hoariest and most partisan memes of the last 25 years. Namely, “The Clintons are hiding something big.” (And let’s not overlook the fact that he pressed the siren of scandal without so much as a warrant — yet — to read this latest e-mail trove, which could be copies of stuff the FBI has already scanned.)

After watching nothingburger after nothingburger consume the Capitol and the country for the last quarter century, while producing, at worst, a case built on lying about sex as the most serious charge any committee or special prosecutor could come up with, only a fool would hang his reputation and that of the FBI out there on the basis of … nothing, yet again. (Oh, and here’s another.) But that appears to be what Comey has done.

If Comey has something this time, OK. I’m all ears. Let’s hear it, and let’s hear it now, dude.

And no, you can’t possibly claim you’re unable to comment because it’s an on-going investigation. YOU brought it up.

And no, other than desperate Trumpists, no serious person, no prosecutor and no judicious jurist is interested in a revisit of the “extremely careless” e-mail protocol. That boat has sailed. Thousands of e-mails and god knows how much taxpayer money later and the worst of E-mailgate Version #1 were passing references to the drone program? The drone program any idiot could read about in USA Today? That’s the national security breach the Rooskies may have exploited for their evil machinations? Good effing christ.

I don’t like, but I have no choice but to accept chuckleheaded Tea Party whack jobs sitting on actual congressional committees. But do we now have tolerate incompetence in the FBI?

Comey has dropped a bombshell of suspicion 11 days before a presidential election. A stink bomb of suspicion exactly like fevered partisans have been throwing at the Clintons since Whitewater, (with age-old nemesis Judicial Watch in on this one again). None of them, not Whitewater, not TravelGate, not TrooperGate and not Benghazi (where all this began) have turned up anything substantive, much less anything of a remotely criminal nature.

What they have generated, precisely as anti-Clinton crackpots and enemies have long strategized, is a constant, regular restoking of the smoky-but-never-burning fire of suspicion, or appearance of serious scandal … the “sense” that something is out there somewhere, somehow … if only the dastardly Clintons would let us keep investigating it, whatever “it” is.

Unless Comey wants his reputation — and that of the FBI — rolled into the same swamp as that of Judicial Watch, Breitbart and that whole frenzied, manifestly undisciplined crowd, he better have something bona fide. Something serious. Something big. Something indictable. And he better have it teed up for TV cameras in the next 48 hours. Otherwise he has demonstrated either stunning naivete, incompetence or the kind of reckless, disqualifying partisanship that should cost him his job.

 

 

Hillary Survives Another Nothingburger “Scandal”

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NEW BLOG PHOTO_edited- 3It’s a tough day to be Republican. But then most of them are this year, aren’t they? This thing with the FBI letting “crooked Hillary” off on that colossal e-mail scam … well, until someone starts shouting for a special prosecutor to investigate the FBI, that notorious den of lefties, men and women of conscience (and with nothing better to do with their time and our money) are going to have find another dead horse to flog.

Not that “e-mailgate” didn’t succeed almost as well as other ginned-up Clinton scandals. I mean it began with Benghazi and after throwing years and taxpayer millions at that mirage it begat e-mail servers. It was just like how Whitewater begat Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky and impeachment, which as you remember was such a winning strategy for Republicans Bill Clinton left office more popular than St. Ronald the Daft.

The fact is that like Whitewater and Travelgate and Benghazi before it, the Republican attack machine never had a coherent theory of the crime with e-mailgate. Which is why it bored people and never caught on like, well, like hanky panky in the Oval Office. (Now if among Hillary’s e-mails had been some hot mash notes to Anthony Weiner/Carlos Danger we might have had some fun.)

I mean, she used her own servers … to do what, exactly? Send military secrets to Al Qaeda? Sell off Texas to the North Koreans? What? Please tell me. Because I was never grasping the Constitution-tearing gravity of the situation.

“Well,” came the usual response, “we’ll never know. Because she won’t disclose everything. That’s the way the Clintons are. Clearly corrupt. Every time we accuse them of something they refuse to turn over all the evidence we need to make our case! Bastards! It’s like they don’t trust us! We have to Make America Great Again!”

This perpetual cycle of molehill non-scandals that … we the people have paid to prosecute … only to watch “the case” evaporate under the harsh light of actual evidence is of course central to the widespread perception that Hillary and Bill “can’t be trusted”. Never mind that if you ask “why can’t they be trusted?” the most frequent response is something along the lines of, “Well, because I hear they’re always in trouble over something.”

Somehow, maybe by adding a little video to this argument, from Kevin Drum Team Hillary has to turn the guns back on the firing squad.

For the record: Whitewater was a nothingburger. Travelgate was a nothingburger. Troopergate was a nothingburger. Filegate was a nothingburger. The Vince Foster murder conspiracy theories were a nothingburger. Monica Lewinsky was Bill’s problem, not Hillary’s. Benghazi was a tragedy, but entirely nonscandalous. The Goldman Sachs speeches were probably a bad idea, but otherwise a nothingburger. Emailgate revealed some poor judgment, but we’ve now seen all the emails and it’s pretty obviously a nothingburger. Humagate is a nothingburger. Foundationgate is a nothingburger.

Bottom line: Don’t let Donald Trump or the press or anyone else convince you that Hillary Clinton is “dogged by scandal” or “works under a constant cloud of controversy” or whatever the nonsense of the day is. That constant cloud is the very deliberate invention of lowlifes in Arkansas; well-heeled conservative cranks; the Republican Party; and far too often a gullible and compliant press. Like anybody who’s been in politics for 40 years, Hillary has some things she should have handled better, but that’s about it. The plain fact is that there’s no serious scandal on her record. There’s no evidence that she’s ever sold out to Wall Street. There’s no corruption, intrigue, or deceit. And if anything, she’s too honest on a policy level. She could stand to promise people a bit of free stuff now and then.”

I make no apologies. I have no great problem with Hillary. She’s pulling the gears on a huge, sophisticated, well-heeled and well-oiled political machine. Live with it. That’s the game in 2016 USA. It’s how you get elected. You want to change it? Me too. But it ain’t happening this year.

Moreover though, I tell anyone who cares to listen that I believe she’ll be a better president than Bill, who if you remember anything other than the stained blue dress, did a pretty good job of keeping the economy on the rails and US troops out of unwinnable foreign wars.

She arrives in the Oval Office with more experience on every imaginable level than anyone since maybe LBJ (problematic comparison), plus the full support of officers and staff from two successful Democratic presidencies and a whole lot less of Bill’s, shall we say, “impulse control” issues. She has also demonstrated masterful control over the Republican wing nut fringe, an enormous time, energy and money suck in D.C. these days, that must be persistently neutralized.

So there are plenty of rational reasons to trust her to competently manage matters here and abroad.

Not that the usual suspects will be screaming “scandal” and “special prosecutor” before she takes the oath of office.