I am really starting to worry that the wheels are going to fall off the cart with this experiment we've started roughly 230 years ago.  We seem to willingly be giving up our freedoms for a while, but I'm concerned that this has gone into overdrive the last 20nyears or so.

After 9/11, we gave the government all kinds of powers to track us and wage war perpetually.   A certain element of society(mostly liberals both classical and neo) protested these new powers for some time.  During the 2008 election the neoliberals said that Obama's support for these programs was necessary to make him electable.  After the election, these policies continued largely unabated, and the neoliberals by and large stopped complaining.  

Then came Russiagate.   And the neoliberals were suddenly aligned with the security state.  People did not need to see evidence, nobody was presumed innocent.   Attempts to go after people like Michael Flynn for rediculous reasons like the violation of the Logan Act were cheered.  

Many seemed suspicious that this whole sordid affair was built on top of lies by very powerful people in our intelligence community.  Many were attacked endlessly for being suspicious of these claims.   We are starting to get real evidence that this is true.  Alas, the country has moved on.

If you were or are a believer in this conspiracy theory,  you owe it to yourselves to watch this video where Glenn Greenwald goes through these claims and these new facts in detail.  This is what corrupt government looks like.

Matt Taibbi, another heretic, also captures this quite well....and is a bit more brief.  Democrats have Abandoned Civil Liberties.  Here's a good quote:

In a secrets-laundering maneuver straight out of the Dick Cheney playbook, some bright person first illegally leaked classified details to David Ignatius at the Washington Post, then agents rushed to interview Flynn about the “news.”

“The record of his conversation with Ambassador Kislyak had become widely known in the press,” is how Deputy FBI chief Andrew McCabe put it, euphemistically. “We wanted to sit down with General Flynn and understand, kind of, what his thoughts on that conversation were.”

A Laurel-and-Hardy team of agents conducted the interview, then took three weeks to write and re-write multiple versions of the interview notes used as evidence (because why record it?). They were supervised by a counterintelligence chief who then memorialized on paper his uncertainty over whether the FBI was trying to “get him to lie” or “get him fired,” worrying that they’d be accused of “playing games.” After another leak to the Washington Post in early February, 2017, Flynn actually was fired, and later pleaded guilty to lying about sanctions in the Kislyak call, the transcript of which was of course never released to either the defense or the public.

Warrantless surveillance, multiple illegal leaks of classified information, a false statements charge constructed on the razor’s edge of Miranda, and the use of never-produced, secret counterintelligence evidence in a domestic criminal proceeding – this is the “rule of law” we’re being asked to cheer.

And why is this important now with Covid-19.  In the words of Rahm Emmanuel:  Never let a good crisis go to waste. What kinds of powers will the government grant itself now?  Will they ever see fit to relinquish them?  Will anyone hold them accountable?   It seems that the number of people willing to do this is getting smaller all the time.

Great, we lose Jimmy Dore, and instead we get Glenn Greenwald.

I couldn't get past the video title: 

The Sham Prosecution of Michael Flynn

This is what he's so freaking concerned about?

Please go away GG. Your time has passed.

terp said:

I am really starting to worry that the wheels are going to fall off the cart with this experiment we've started roughly 230 years ago.  We seem to willingly be giving up our freedoms for a while, but I'm concerned that this has gone into overdrive the last 20nyears or so.

Not to be nitpicky or anything, but something that is already going on fo 230 years is technically not really an experiment anymore. Just like Google is not a startup anymore, and they are only 22 years old.

USA is an established country by now, with laws, a constitution, and a government that has certain powers. Just like other countries that were established before, or after 1776. I would say that on average the US government doesn't have more or less powers than other civilized societies, just like US people do not have more or less liberties than other civilized countries.

The thing that's worrisome is that there are political writers and thinkers who don't think the number one priority at the moment is defeating Trump. Instead, one wants to babble on about being unfair to Flynn and "Russiagate".

Why should I take him seriously?

This may be the most "Karen" thread ever on MOL.

I'm in agreement with a lot of that.  I've been concerned and expressed it here going back to the passage of the original PATRIOT Act.  Obama's support for it in 2008 was the reason I cut off contributions to him, and I emailed the campaign to tell them that.  I've also expressed concern about secret FISA warrants and the potential for abuse.  I'm also concerned thaT police and surveillance powers will continue to be expanded after the pandemic, even when public health no longer requires it.  So I'm on board with all that.

But Trump and Flynn as victims of a deep state "hoax"?  That's where these guys lose me.  Because even if there was no finding of criminal conspiracy, the Mueller report did detail many instances of potential conflicts of interest between Trump associates and people in Russia.  There were grounds for an investigation.  Any abuses of the presumption of innocence were really in the press, when commentator and writers assumed criminal guilt before the investigation was even barely underway.

The FISA court and the process of getting warrants has been shameful indeed.  And if the Trump campaign being investigated is what it takes to make some reforms, I guess that's a good thing.  But the Trump inner circle being held up as victims, nah.  They were all involved in stuff that deserved investigation, and in the process these habitual liars just couldn't stop themselves from lying to the interviewers.  The "deep state" opponents should certainly be able to find more appropriate examples of investigative overreach than the likes of Flynn and Cohen.

In the same vein as ml1's post -- if those who are defending Trump and his associates in the name of checking the security state are successful, the outcome will not be a checked security state. It'll be the opposite -- a security apparatus stripped of even the little checks and oversight that exists, oriented around personal loyalty to the president. No, even that puts too positive a spin on it -- it'd be oriented around a personal loyalty to Trump, not the presidency. Just now, on the WaPo home page: "Trump claims whistleblowers like Rick Bright are ‘causing great injustice and harm'".

The whistleblowers and inspectors general that have even let us know of the current abuses by the security state are actively being purged and neutered by Trump. Cheering this on is no defense of liberty; at best it's a short-sighted, ill-chosen cause that undermines the broader legitimate concerns around the security state. At worst it's another example of how the defense of "liberty" from those on the right too often means defending the freedom of white, propertied men to be free of checks or constraints.

terp said:

You worry me

 You worry me more.

Gen. Flynn led chants of "Lock her up". Advocating imprisonment of a Presidential Candidate of the opposite Party is a far greater threat to democracy than temporary measures in response to a pandemic.

Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, and admitted lying to the Vice President about his contacts with Russian Officials. Russia is an authoritarian country. There is amble evidence that its authoritarian leader, Putin, would like to cause injury to American democracy and is engaged in activity to do so. So Flynn's conduct potentially poses a greater threat to democracy than does his prosecution.

As part of Flynn's plea agreement the Government did not pursue the charges arising from his secret employment as an agent for the Government of Turkey while simultaneously being a consultant to a Presidential Candidate. Again, he plead guilty to certain crimes. A Libertarian or Civil Libertarian might argue that lying to the FBI should not be a crime.  I don't believe possession of drugs should be a crime but that does not mean that if a person charged with that crime pleads guilty and a new Prosecutor after the guilty plea and despite the guilty plea and plea agreement moves to dismiss the charges, the Judge should automatically accede, particularly if it appears  that the Prosecutor may be motivated by the fact that the defendant is a close associate of the Mayor.

I've pointed this out before, but why not once again.  The potential for conflicts of interest that unduly influence foreign policy is a real issue.  And if you substitute Turkey for Russia, or even the UK, Germany or Israel for Russia in this case, it's still serious business.  Our intelligence services would of course be concerned that the presidential candidate and/or members of his inner circle are conducting backchannel foreign policies in a country where they are trying to do business.  Even if the country is an ally, it's bad news.  Do we want our Middle East policy, as bad and counterproductive as it's been, to be further distorted because a president is trying to do deals in Israel?  Of course not.

you want to worry about something, worry about this:

Voter suppression is at the very heart of Republican electoral strategy, and, as the New York Times reports Monday, they plan to go all-out in November:

The Republican program, which has gained steam in recent weeks, envisions recruiting up to 50,000 volunteers in 15 key states to monitor polling places and challenge ballots and voters deemed suspicious. That is part of a $20 million plan that also allots millions to challenge lawsuits by Democrats and voting-rights advocates seeking to loosen state restrictions on balloting. The party and its allies also intend to use advertising, the internet and President Trump’s command of the airwaves to cast Democrats as agents of election theft.

The efforts are bolstered by a 2018 federal court ruling that for the first time in nearly four decades allows the national Republican Party to mount campaigns against purported voter fraud without court approval. The court ban on Republican Party voter-fraud operations was imposed in 1982, and then modified in 1986 and again in 1990, each time after courts found instances of Republicans intimidating or working to exclude minority voters in the name of preventing fraud. The party was found to have violated it yet again in 2004.

“Voters deemed suspicious” by the GOP is a category that includes black people, Latinos, students, black people, and also black people.

drummerboy said:

 it's possible to be concerned about more than one thing at a time. 

nohero said:

This may be the most "Karen" thread ever on MOL.

 So, is this Karen? Who is she?

ml1 said:

drummerboy said:

 it's possible to be concerned about more than one thing at a time. 

sorry, my post was not directed at you. it was meant for terp and the nonsense of focusing on the persecution of Mike Flynn.

terp, leaving aside the possible (or likely, depending on your point of view) connections of various administration officials and hangers-on with Russia, what do you think about past/present/potential Russian meddling in US elections, whether by online "influencing" or by actual cyber poking around in state voting systems?  Does this need attention, and if so, what role should federal intelligence agencies be playing?

There is a medium-long, pretty alarming piece about this in the June Atlantic, which i'm sorry may be behind a pay wall:  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/putin-american-democracy/610570/  Apparently, we're a day late and a dollar (or more) short here, with the big election less than 6 months away.  Is anybody paying (effective) attention to this?

Another thing to worry about.  "They want to take your Second Amendment away. You know that, right? You’ll have nobody guarding your potatoes.”

mjc said:

terp, leaving aside the possible (or likely, depending on your point of view) connections of various administration officials and hangers-on with Russia, what do you think about past/present/potential Russian meddling in US elections, whether by online "influencing" or by actual cyber poking around in state voting systems?  Does this need attention, and if so, what role should federal intelligence agencies be playing?

There is a medium-long, pretty alarming piece about this in the June Atlantic, which i'm sorry may be behind a pay wall:  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/putin-american-democracy/610570/  Apparently, we're a day late and a dollar (or more) short here, with the big election less than 6 months away.  Is anybody paying (effective) attention to this?

 I am not going to respond for terp, that would be presumptuous.

But I have read other people saying that the whole thing is a hoax.  That the Russian government has nothing to with the people trolling U.S. social media sites with political disinformation.  And that our deep state military industrial complex is falsely claiming that connection between Putin and the troll farms to restart a Cold War.

My position has always been that there isn't any logical reason that Russian intelligence services couldn't be trolling the West to sow discord AND that military and intelligence agencies in the U.S. are also hyping that beyond its actual influence for their own purposes.  There's not much of a doubt that there are people in the U.S. government whose interests are consistent with hyping a powerful foreign enemy.

And from what we know that people involved have admitted (like Don. Jr and Michael Cohen), it's almost certain that Donald Trump and his family's greed got them involved in shady activities in Russia that raised red flags within our government.  It's one thing to be meeting with connected people in other countries if you're just a "businessman" trying to sell your brand.  It's a completely other thing if you're meeting with those people and you're part of a presidential candidate's inner circle.

Thanks, ml1, i should have addressed my post more broadly.  I always appreciate your comments.

Thing is, what about vulnerabilities in state voting systems and voter registration databases?  The article has sort of a pearl-clutching tone, but if they're right it could be a very bumpy night in November.

mjc said:

Thanks, ml1, i should have addressed my post more broadly.  I always appreciate your comments.

Thing is, what about vulnerabilities in state voting systems and voter registration databases?  The article has sort of a pearl-clutching tone, but if they're right it could be a very bumpy night in November.

 if there are holes in security for registration databases I'd be more concerned about domestic interference.  There are already efforts to disenfranchise or intimidate voters, so why wouldn't they try to go in and purge people living in certain cities or counties?

there's already this, which purports to be a "voter fraud" prevention effort, but anyone with any sense can conclude that voter intimidation as the real goal.

Freed by Court Ruling, Republicans Step Up Effort to Patrol Voting Officials seek to recruit 50,000 poll watchers and spend millions to fight voter fraud. 

Democrats say the real goal is to stop them from voting.

ml1 said:

mjc said:

Thanks, ml1, i should have addressed my post more broadly.  I always appreciate your comments.

Thing is, what about vulnerabilities in state voting systems and voter registration databases?  The article has sort of a pearl-clutching tone, but if they're right it could be a very bumpy night in November.

 if there are holes in security for registration databases I'd be more concerned about domestic interference.  There are already efforts to disenfranchise or intimidate voters, so why wouldn't they try to go in and purge people living in certain cities or counties?

there's already this, which purports to be a "voter fraud" prevention effort, but anyone with any sense can conclude that voter intimidation as the real goal.

Freed by Court Ruling, Republicans Step Up Effort to Patrol Voting Officials seek to recruit 50,000 poll watchers and spend millions to fight voter fraud. 

Democrats say the real goal is to stop them from voting.

 I posted about this Republican effort at 5/19 7:02 AM.

==================================================

Here's a takedown of the Greenwald link in the OP. The author, of course, is considered anathema to the pro-Greenwald faction.

https://www.emptywheel.net/2020/05/19/glenn-greenwalds-invented-claims-in-defense-of-bill-barr-and-mike-flynn/

Thanks everyone who made a thoughtful reply.  I appreciate it.  I can't reply to all, but will reply to some.  If I didn't reply, that does not meant that I thought your post wasn't thoughtful. 

drummerboy said:

The thing that's worrisome is that there are political writers and thinkers who don't think the number one priority at the moment is defeating Trump. Instead, one wants to babble on about being unfair to Flynn and "Russiagate".

Why should I take him seriously?

 I don't think this is about being unfair to Flynn.  Flynn might be a dangerous nutcase & this investigation could have been a sham.  These 2 things are not mutually exclusive. 

If you go to about the 16 minute mark, Greenwald takes this on.  While these events are usually portrayed in a partisan matter, there is evidence.  Much like the left asks people to follow the science, we should follow the evidence.   I understand that this is particularly difficult in an election year however. 

ml1 said:

I'm in agreement with a lot of that.  I've been concerned and expressed it here going back to the passage of the original PATRIOT Act.  Obama's support for it in 2008 was the reason I cut off contributions to him, and I emailed the campaign to tell them that.  I've also expressed concern about secret FISA warrants and the potential for abuse.  I'm also concerned thaT police and surveillance powers will continue to be expanded after the pandemic, even when public health no longer requires it.  So I'm on board with all that.

But Trump and Flynn as victims of a deep state "hoax"?  That's where these guys lose me.  Because even if there was no finding of criminal conspiracy, the Mueller report did detail many instances of potential conflicts of interest between Trump associates and people in Russia.  There were grounds for an investigation.  Any abuses of the presumption of innocence were really in the press, when commentator and writers assumed criminal guilt before the investigation was even barely underway.

The FISA court and the process of getting warrants has been shameful indeed.  And if the Trump campaign being investigated is what it takes to make some reforms, I guess that's a good thing.  But the Trump inner circle being held up as victims, nah.  They were all involved in stuff that deserved investigation, and in the process these habitual liars just couldn't stop themselves from lying to the interviewers.  The "deep state" opponents should certainly be able to find more appropriate examples of investigative overreach than the likes of Flynn and Cohen.

Good for you on holding Obama accountable in your own way.  I didn't know that and have mistakenly assumed you offered tacit approval of those policies. 

Regarding the hoax, it does seem that the FBI had the transcripts of the Flynn calls when they interviewed him.  The Papadapoulis evidence was just about non-existent and the Page FISA warrant process was riddled with lies & they continued after they knew he was a CIA asset and even updated emails.  The Intelligence Community is essentially embedded in the press and they were leaking to the press & using that chatter as reasoning both to continue the investigation(I believe the reasoning to interview Flynn was based on that David Ignatius article) and they also used a leak as corroborating evidence in the FISA warrant.  Many of these people were crowing in the press about how they had proof, but behind closed doors, in hearings they would say they didn't have any proof. 

It's even come out that Crowdstrike's chief admitted that they had no proof that there was a Russian hack of the servers. That claim was central to a lot of this. 

And what of people like Adam Schiff?  Is he innocent?  He had been saying there was proof.  He was all over the press. 

I know people hate Trump.  I get it.  But I remember that people use to complain that the Republicans were obstructing him.  I mean, how better to obstruct a presidency than to mire it in these investigations and the constant threat of impeachment even prior to him being sworn in. 

There's a lot more, and this is a complicated matter, but there were too many missteps for all this just to be an innocent misunderstanding.  Just my opinion. 

PVW said:

In the same vein as ml1's post -- if those who are defending Trump and his associates in the name of checking the security state are successful, the outcome will not be a checked security state. It'll be the opposite -- a security apparatus stripped of even the little checks and oversight that exists, oriented around personal loyalty to the president. No, even that puts too positive a spin on it -- it'd be oriented around a personal loyalty to Trump, not the presidency. Just now, on the WaPo home page: "Trump claims whistleblowers like Rick Bright are ‘causing great injustice and harm'".

The whistleblowers and inspectors general that have even let us know of the current abuses by the security state are actively being purged and neutered by Trump. Cheering this on is no defense of liberty; at best it's a short-sighted, ill-chosen cause that undermines the broader legitimate concerns around the security state. At worst it's another example of how the defense of "liberty" from those on the right too often means defending the freedom of white, propertied men to be free of checks or constraints.

 We should have gone after these people years ago.   Flynn is being prosecuted for lying to the FBI.  Clapper lies to Congress under oath and nothing.  These people have the ability to monitor everything we do.  

I do not mean to defend Trump or any politician.  IMO, we need to roll back the powers of the security state for reasons that are implicit in your post. 

mjc said:

terp, leaving aside the possible (or likely, depending on your point of view) connections of various administration officials and hangers-on with Russia, what do you think about past/present/potential Russian meddling in US elections, whether by online "influencing" or by actual cyber poking around in state voting systems?  Does this need attention, and if so, what role should federal intelligence agencies be playing?

There is a medium-long, pretty alarming piece about this in the June Atlantic, which i'm sorry may be behind a pay wall:  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/putin-american-democracy/610570/  Apparently, we're a day late and a dollar (or more) short here, with the big election less than 6 months away.  Is anybody paying (effective) attention to this?

I will check it out.  But I've never been convinced the Russian Government materially swayed the election.  I'm not saying I couldn't be convinced, but I've never seen a very convincing argument. 

drummerboy said:

ml1 said:

mjc said:

Thanks, ml1, i should have addressed my post more broadly.  I always appreciate your comments.

Thing is, what about vulnerabilities in state voting systems and voter registration databases?  The article has sort of a pearl-clutching tone, but if they're right it could be a very bumpy night in November.

 if there are holes in security for registration databases I'd be more concerned about domestic interference.  There are already efforts to disenfranchise or intimidate voters, so why wouldn't they try to go in and purge people living in certain cities or counties?

there's already this, which purports to be a "voter fraud" prevention effort, but anyone with any sense can conclude that voter intimidation as the real goal.

Freed by Court Ruling, Republicans Step Up Effort to Patrol Voting Officials seek to recruit 50,000 poll watchers and spend millions to fight voter fraud. 

Democrats say the real goal is to stop them from voting.

 I posted about this Republican effort at 5/19 7:02 AM.

==================================================

Here's a takedown of the Greenwald link in the OP. The author, of course, is considered anathema to the pro-Greenwald faction.

https://www.emptywheel.net/2020/05/19/glenn-greenwalds-invented-claims-in-defense-of-bill-barr-and-mike-flynn/

 Thanks for posting.  I don't know if I would call that a takedown exactly.  A lot of that is pretty nitpicky.   That being said, Greenwald isn't perfect &  I am sure Greenwald made some errors in the 2 hours he talked about this topic. 

I will say that I am confused as to why this emptywheel guy only posted a clip of the fbi notes in that article & doesn't link to the full notes.  Can't be sure, but that may be something to look into. 

terp said:

ml1 said:

I'm in agreement with a lot of that.  I've been concerned and expressed it here going back to the passage of the original PATRIOT Act.  Obama's support for it in 2008 was the reason I cut off contributions to him, and I emailed the campaign to tell them that.  I've also expressed concern about secret FISA warrants and the potential for abuse.  I'm also concerned thaT police and surveillance powers will continue to be expanded after the pandemic, even when public health no longer requires it.  So I'm on board with all that.

But Trump and Flynn as victims of a deep state "hoax"?  That's where these guys lose me.  Because even if there was no finding of criminal conspiracy, the Mueller report did detail many instances of potential conflicts of interest between Trump associates and people in Russia.  There were grounds for an investigation.  Any abuses of the presumption of innocence were really in the press, when commentator and writers assumed criminal guilt before the investigation was even barely underway.

The FISA court and the process of getting warrants has been shameful indeed.  And if the Trump campaign being investigated is what it takes to make some reforms, I guess that's a good thing.  But the Trump inner circle being held up as victims, nah.  They were all involved in stuff that deserved investigation, and in the process these habitual liars just couldn't stop themselves from lying to the interviewers.  The "deep state" opponents should certainly be able to find more appropriate examples of investigative overreach than the likes of Flynn and Cohen.

Good for you on holding Obama accountable in your own way.  I didn't know that and have mistakenly assumed you offered tacit approval of those policies. 

This is an example of why we should not assume things about people we know only from online postings.

Yep.  Definitely my bad.  I'm sorry.

terp said:

It's even come out that Crowdstrike's chief admitted that they had no proof that there was a Russian hack of the servers. That claim was central to a lot of this.

If absolute proof is the standard, there’s no need to read further. If one is willing to consider a lesser standard of evidence in an investigation like this, and can appreciate the care of testimony that acknowledges the difference, there’s this:

CrowdStrike Statement of Response:

1. The suggestion that CrowdStrike ‘had no proof’ of the data being exfiltrated is incorrect. Shawn Henry clearly said in his testimony that CrowdStrike had indicators of exfiltration ( page 32 of the testimony) and circumstantial evidence (page 75) that indicated the data had been exfiltrated. Also, please note that the Senate Intelligence Committee in April 2020 issued a report (https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Report_Volume4.pdf/) validating the previous conclusions of the Intelligence community that Russia was behind the DNC data breach.

https://www.itwire.com/security/crowdstrike-chief-admits-no-proof-that-russia-exfiltrated-dnc-emails.html