Quick Takes (v68): Bring on the Bounty Hunters

Breaking News Alert: Pence has classified documents, too!'

From the article:

Lawyers for former Vice President Mike Pence said a “small number” of classified documents were found at his home in Indiana last week.

Pence’s lawyers notified the National Archives and Records Administration of the discovery on Wednesday, according to a letter obtained by CNBC. The news was reported earlier by CNN.

The classified documents were discovered on Jan. 16 after Pence had outside counsel “with experience in handling classified documents” search his own home and records “out of an abundance of caution” following the news that classified documents were found at President Joe Biden’s home and office.

I'll let you put your own spin on why Pence waited until documents were found at President Biden's property and his old office, instead of doing that when they were found at his old boss's place.  

My spin? He realized that if it can happen to Biden - a regular, church-going guy - it can happen to anyone.

And what happens now?

• Does the press go back to slamming the Rs for their carelessness, and give Biden five or ten minutes of breathing room? 

• Does the media now invest air time trying to determine the political viability of Pence, who many think might be running for president against Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, and that other guy?

• Will the House Oversight and Accountability Committee decide we need to know who's been in Pence's house? Who wouldn't love to see that visitor log, right? And why he waited so long to disclose the finding? And why the documents weren't already in a locked safe? And why he hired a lawyer to search, instead of inviting the FBI to tea? And what, exactly, constitutes a "small number" of documents? Is that Joe Biden literally a small number, or is that a Trumpian small number? And did Mother know he had them? 

• Will the Ds put their rising young stars (or their ancient ones) in front of the cameras to read their Republican colleagues' scathing tweets and press releases about how horrible it is when Democrats mishandle documents?

Shortly after seeing the headline, I sketched out a perfect solution.

The houses, garages, car trunks, libraries, golf bags, duffel bags, diaper bags, bar carts, and sock drawers of every member of Congress, as well as every living president and vice president, must be searched for classified documents or other absconded-with items; the search must happen as soon as possible, to protect our national sanity, er, I mean, our national security.

And Ivanka's grave, too, must be searched - don't forget Ivanka's grave. I mean, who buries his ex-wife on his golf course while under investigation for missing documents?

Who does that? Donald Trump does, that's who.

I realize this would be an expensive search, given the whole debt ceiling and fiscal cliff and whatnot. I also understand we have a shortage of law enforcement officers across the country, so we certainly can't repurpose any of them for this. But I have a plan for that.

Pull all of the Republican pork-barrel spending from the omnibus spending bill passed last month. There's at least $900M in there that they don't want, and think is wrong, and I expect they'd be delighted if it didn't get spent in their districts.

Now that we've got the funding lined up, how do we spend it?  

Call up the Texas bounty hunters.

Pay them on a graduated scale, starting at $2K per page for the lowest level of classification, and up to $10K for the highest level: top secret - classified - eyes only - compartmentalized - secured room - share under penalty of death - don't even think about burying this with the mother of your favorite kids - or sharing it with your financially impaired son - yada yada yada.

 I'm thinking that $900M would be a tasty enticement for these folks.

Why the Texas bounty hunters, you ask?

Anyone who can determine the date of a random woman's last period as she walks past them into doctor's office surely would be able to determine if a document has a classified marking on it. This should be a piece of cake for them. 

Got an idea for how to bring this all to an end? Drop a comment!

Sunday School 1/15/23: Extra Credit

Your Sunday School lesson, from the CNN SOTU classroom, was all about toeing the party line. 

For your Extra Credit this week, I chose to spend time in the MTP classroom, where What's-his-name talked with former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and with Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). We'll start with the senator. 

The Biden document issue was front and center. WHN asked if the White House, by not coming clean right away, puts Dems in a tough spot of "not knowing what to defend and what not to defend." Stabenow didn't have an issue here, and she made a distinction between what's happening now and what happened with former president Trump.

They take it very, very seriously. And they're talking to all of the right people. They're not going to defy subpoenas or require FBI raids to be able to get the documents. The president isn't saying that somehow magically when he thinks about classified documents that he can declassify them. I mean, it's totally different right now. Both serious in terms of having classified documents. But the president is doing the right thing.

Stabenow said it was "certainly embarrassing" that they found a "small number of documents, certainly not on purpose," but reiterated they're working with DOJ and the National Archives to correct it. And, she said, her concern is the "chaos" the Rs love to create.

Let's not talk about the fact that we have a manufacturing renaissance going on in this country. More jobs created, lower unemployment rate, higher wages. And what they're proposing to do that would interfere with that would really put us on the edge economically. They don't want to talk with us about how to move the country forward. And I can tell you people in Michigan, they want folks that are going together, get things done, that care about their families and aren't interested in all of this just chaos and investigations. Which is where the Republicans feel comfortable, unfortunately.

WHN wondered if there were any issues Stabenow wanted to work on, now that she's free from the political pressures of reelection. She said she'll continue working across the aisle, as she has "on issue after issue." She pointed to the upcoming five-year farm bill, which has bipartisan support, and said it's about more than just farms.

It's the largest investment we make in land and water conservation for the country. And so that's incredibly important. And frankly, we need workers. And one of the things we need to do is comprehensive immigration reform so that our farmers have access to a legal system for their workers.

The next question - whether Dems should support Kyrsten Sinema's reelection bid - seemed to come out of left field. Stabenow said she and Sinema have worked together, including on gun safety and mental health, but said "we'll let that play out a bit," and that "it's very, very early" to be talking about that.

Stabenow says she finds it interesting that so many people think that Washington DC and Congress are 'broken.' Even given "all the division and chaos and everything that's happening and trying to pull the country apart, (to) stop us from governing," 

we actually, in the last two years with a 50/50 Senate, you don't get closer than 50/50 in the United States Senate, Democratic House and President Biden got more done than at any time, literally in our lifetimes. And that's not an exaggeration.

She believes the reason the Dems gained a seat in the midterms, and why they'll keep the majority in 2024 "is because we are actually focusing on the things that people care about." 

Sunday School 1/15/23

There was a lot going on in the classrooms yesterday, with What's-his-name getting lots of credit for "doing his job" on Meet the Press. I'll have more on that, I promise. 

For your Sunday School, I wanted to focus on Jake Tapper's visits with House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair Rep. James Comer (R-KY) and Ranking Member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) on CNN's State of the Union.

The new scandal over classified documents was top of mind, and I'll do my best to summarize the key issues Comer raised, or, I should say, the key issue - because at the end of the day, as he puts it, there's only one issue. Here are a few of the ways he brought it up.

We want to know the visitor logs to the residence. We want to know who had access to the Biden Center for Diplomacy...this is the same type of investigation that the Democrats...launched and demanded happened to President Trump...  And we just want equal treatment here with respect to how both former President Trump and current President Biden are being treated with the document issue.

Comer and others, from both sides of the aisle, are concerned by the lack of transparency -and hypocrisy from the administration. Before the election, Biden talked about Trump mishandling documents, apparently knowing he had done the same thing.

So, the hypocrisy here is great. We're very concerned about a lack of transparency. We're very concerned, as I have said many times, about a two-tiered system of justice in America. And we just want equal treatment. 

Comer apparently considers any statements from the administration are nothing but a bunch of malarkey. 

... It seems political here. It seems hypocritical. It seems like a double standard. And that's our concern... We have asked questions about what went on with Mar-a-Lago. Why was Mar-a-Lago raided, but the president's home not?  Why are the president's lawyers still allowed to go rummage through, looking for documents, after a special counsel has been appointed? It doesn't make sense. It's not fair. We just want equal treatment.

Tapper reminded Comer of some key differences between Trump's document-gate and what we know, so far, about Biden's document-gate: the difference in volume, the subpoena, the lawyers saying everything had been turned in when it hadn't been. And then he rolled tape of Comer from last November, talking about the Trump situation.

I don't know much about that. That's not something that -- we have requested information just to see what was going on, because I don't know what documents were at Mar-a-Lago. So, that's something we're just waiting to see what comes out on that. QUESTION: But is it fair to say that investigation won't be a priority? COMER: That will not be a priority. 

His response to the question, "Do you only care about classified documents being mishandled when Democrats do the mishandling?"

Absolutely not. Look, we still don't know what type of documents President Trump had. That's one of the questions we have asked the National Archives. Just because Joe Biden's lawyer said they turned over five documents doesn't mean they just turned over five documents. They could have turned over 500 documents. I'm sorry, but I don't have a lot of confidence in President Biden's personal lawyers...

He also apparently hasn't seen a single news report, or any of the excuses widely publicized by the right, or even had a conversation with a colleague since the Mar-a-Lago raid. And that's good, because he doesn't give a rat about mishandled documents.

My concern is how there's such a discrepancy in how former President Trump was treated... vs. Joe Biden... That's not equal treatment. And we're very concerned. And there's a lack of trust here at the Department of Justice by House Republicans. That's the outrage.

There's all kinds of outrage, here, to be sure. 

Wondering on Wednesday 1/11/23

 

Ready... Set... Wonder!

I'm wondering today, on a couple of fronts, about Rep. George Santos (Fables 'R' Us). 

On the one hand, the Nassau County Republicans are not pulling any punches in their criticism of him. Calling him "a joke, a disgrace, abnormal and a pathological liar," the GOP officials 

said the newly elected congressman needed to immediately resign, saying he ran a campaign of “deceit and lies.”

And while Santos threw a defiant "na-na-na-boo-boo" to the party bosses back home, he seems to be quite comfortable with the party bosses in DC. According to Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), Santos "addressed some of the concerns that we've had." Does anyone wonder if that went any further than "do you solemnly swear to go along with us, so help you whoever you believe in?" 

Santos-endorser Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Humiliationville), whose top aide was impersonated by a Santos campaign worker, doesn't appear to have concerns about him sitting in the House chamber, but committees are another issue. 

...McCarthy said Wednesday that embattled freshman GOP Rep. George Santos, who is facing growing calls to resign after admitting to fabricating much of his personal biography, should not be seated on any top committees.

Why, you might be wondering? Well, some think Santos is a national security risk, mostly because of his shady finances. There's chance he might not get any committee assignments; if that's the case, there will be no wondering needed as to why they're keeping him around: 218 votes are way more better than 217. 

Now, I can't help wondering if the reason he's adamant about not resigning is that he feels a responsibility to his former co-workers at Goldman Sachs who may be laid off? The company's letting as many as 3200 people go.

The cuts, totaling about 6.5 percent of Goldman’s workforce, stem from a restructuring plan the investment bank announced in October and the reintroduction of a ritual year-end culling of underperformers that was suspended amid the pandemic, the person said.

I wonder how many of them Santos could help develop kick-ass resumes, find great jobs, start their own companies, or even - dare I say it - run for office? 

I'm investigating wondering if it would be worth wondering if the new House Committee on Investigating the Investigating Bastages that are Investigating Members of the Committee on Investigating the Investigating Bastages that are Investigating Members of the Committee on Investigating the Investigating Bastages that are Investigating Members of the Committee on Investigating - oh, never mind... 

If you're wondering whether the Biden document thing (and the late-breaking new Biden document thing) is the same as the Trump document thing, I'm comfortable saying that the issue - classified documents not being turned over to the National Archives as required - appears to be the same, but much of the rest of it doesn't.  And unless and until we have evidence of Biden 

• ripping up documents and trying to flush them down the toilet, 
• or burning them in the fireplace, 
• or eating them with ketchup, 
• or declassifying them by thinking about them, 
• and ignoring a months-long effort to get documents turned over before he left the VP's office, 
• and saying repeatedly that he had turned all of the documents he had over already, dammit, leave me the hell alone, 
• and after documents were found he argued about giving them back, 
• and that he had his lawyers attest that all the classified documents had been turned over,
• and that the National Archives identified that documents were still missing, 
• and asked to come and get them and he let them into his house but still didn't turn everything over, 
• and that he ignored a subpoena requiring him to turn them over, 
• and then his office was raided, 
• and we still don't know if everything was turned over,  
• and then he buried a relative on the front lawn at his summer home
• and then he claimed attorney-client privilege, executive privilege, and locker room privilege over the documents, 
• and demanded a special master be appointed to review the documents, 
• and had a court limit the review by the special master, 
• and had a court throw out the special master, 
• and then, hoping to forestall any further investigation, he declared himself a candidate for president conveniently just before a special prosecutor was appointed, then nope, it's not the same.

What's on your wondering mind tonight?

Wondering on Wednesday 12/28/22

 

Ready... Set... Wonder!

I'm feeling wonderful-ish today... you know, not really wonderful, just kinda wonder-ish, or full-ish, or something like that. 

Like George Santos, the first openly gay non-incumbent Republican to be elected to Congress, or something like that. He's also the first most openly lyingly lying non-incumbent Republican t0 be elected. He made so many lie-ish statements during his campaign I don't know if even he knows what's true, vs. what's true-ish, vs. what's just 'ish.' He went to college-ish; he worked in finance-ish, for Goldman Sachs-ish. He was poor-ish, and then he was an entrepreneur and started a company-ish, but had no income-ish, but managed to loan his campaign $700,000-ish. He had a company in Florida and four of his employees-ish died in the Pulse nightclub shooting, sorta-ish. 

And the best one, of course, is that he was raised Catholic but is Jew-ish, whatever the hell-ish that means. He promised us he had a story to tell, and he told it, and it only made things worse-ish. In a wonder-ish fashion, I await the official response from the GOP in NY, and in DC. I can only think that it'll be about as '-ishy' as anything Santos has said so far. 

Last week, after the Democratic-controlled NYS legislature voted, in a special session, to give themselves an obscene $32,000 raise effective January 1, 2023, and limit their outside income but not until January 1, 2025, I reached out to Gov. Kathy Hochul urging her to veto the bill, even though there are enough Dem votes in both chambers to over-ride the veto. 

At the same time, I reached out to Sen. Rachel May and Assemblymember Pamela Hunter, my representatives, asking for their thoughts or comments on the vote. I haven't heard from any of them, and honestly, I don't expect to. There's nothing really wonder-ish about their lack of response - the gov's been dealing with a once-in-a-lifetime weather event, and it is a holiday-ish week, after all, but since they all know where I stand on the issue, I doubt there'll be a race to try and appease me or change mind. I'll keep you posted on any responses I get. 

Another person I don't expect to hear from? Whoever charged some snooty-ish mountain bike parts using my credit card. Graciously, one of the five or six vendors who got hit with fraudulent charges (nearly $3500 worth all told) texted me to see if I had made the bike parts order with a request to ship it to a different address, which he shared. That's a big no, I told him. 

All of the charges were reversed; fraud investigations ensued. And so did a Christmas card to the address the vendor gave me. I do wonder, a little-ish, if it made whoever read the card feel bad-ish even for a moment. I hope it did.  

I'm seeing lots of stuff on social media citing the January 6th Committee report and transcripts about documents being torn, flushed, eaten, copied and removed, and even set on fire during the waning days of the last administration. 

I'm not surprised, really, by any of that - I mean, given what we've learned about the Trump White House, there's not a lot that will surprise me anymore. One thing I'm wondering, just a little-ish, is whether there was ketchup involved in all of those, or if another condiment was used?

What's on your wondering-ish mind tonight?

TGIF 8/12/22

I'm taking a different approach to the good week/bad week list today; bear with me.  

Everyone knows that Mar-a-Lago, the permanent residence of the most recent former president of the United States, was searched - not raided, not occupied, just searched - by the FBI on Monday. Had the president not told us, we would not have known, just as we don't know perhaps hundreds of times each week when the FBI executes legal search warrants, because they aren't obligated to tell us they're working.  

We've heard a lot of BS this week, from the former president; from the media trying to be first to know a little bit more than anyone else; from anonymous sources hell-bent on getting famous while not letting us know who they are; from the right-wing pundits who cannot contain their outrage; from those on the left who reacted gleefully; from the alleged leadership of the GOP, at once apoplectic and salivating at the prospects of the wrath that will rain down upon the Attorney General, the FBI, the DOJ, the lunch ladies at every government facility, and who knows who the heck else if - but only if - the Rs retake the House and Senate; and the immediate rising to the defense of the former president by the rank and file of the GOP - all before anyone (other than Trump himself) knew anything other than the FBI visited Mar-a-Lago. 

All of that can stop now, for at least a little bit, while people contemplate the documents that have been unsealed at the request of AG Merrick Garland and the DOJ, and what they tell us.

Here they are: where to search, what to look for, and the specific parts of the US Code that are in play.

18 U.S. Code Chapter 37 - ESPIONAGE AND CENSORSHIP

§ 793 - Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information

18 U.S. Code Chapter 101 - RECORDS AND REPORTS

§ 2071 - Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally

18 U.S. Code Chapter 73 - OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE

§ 1519 - Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy

And, here is what was removed in the search.

Who had a good week? Who had a bad week? You make the call.

TGIF, everyone.

Quick Takes (v66):Really? Only One?

Do you believe members of the Secret Service didn't send any texts on January 5-6, 2021?

Do you believe there was a "planned system migration" that began in January 2021 which required no advance data backup?

Do you believe all Secret Service agents and employees correctly identified and flagged anything that should be saved for posterity?

And do you believe the spy agency is unable to recover any data from the phones? I mean, they're spies, right? It's right in their name that they 'service secrets,' for Pete's sake. 

Maryland's Rep. Jamie Raskin, a member of the House January 6th Committee, appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and was asked if he's buying what the Secret Service is telling the Committee, and the American public about the text messages. Raskin said he "really doesn't buy that for one minute." 

More importantly, I think, was that he reminded us that everyone in the Capitol that night was reaching out to loved ones - children, spouses, parents - because they thought they might never see them again. And so, he said, it was not surprising to the Committee that the Secret Service would be doing the same thing. 

And, by extension, I think it's logical that they might also have been reaching out to others at the USSS, other departments where they had contacts, other protective details, and so on - not to say goodbye, but to find out what the heck was going on in other parts of the building or outside the building, or to beg for help, to ask when help was going to get there, to ask why help wasn't coming - you know, things like that. 

According to Anthony Guglielmi, Chief of Communications for the USSS who said in a statement to The Hill, there's really no reason for Raskin or anyone else to be concerned. 

There’s no reason for us to say the texts were lost. I mean, how do you know that those people texted? They were told to upload their official records, and they did. So, this is partly what we’re going to communicate to the committee, all of the data that we have. People say texts were lost. How do you know texts were sent? 

One might ask how he's so sure official records were uploaded, and how he knows no texts were sent - because he does seem certain about that. 

There's an ongoing spat between the USSS and the DHS Office of Inspector General, which announced an ongoing criminal investigation after asking for a full month's worth of communications - from December 8 2020 through January 7, 2021 - from a couple dozen employees. That request was where the single text we've heard about was found.

The Secret Service submitted the responsive records it identified, namely, a text message conversation from former US Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund to former Secret Service Uniformed Division Chief Thomas Sullivan requesting assistance on January 6, 2021, and advised the agency did not have any further records responsive to the DHS OIG's request for text messages.

For a full month, there was only one text? Seriously? And that text was from a former employee of the Capitol Police to a former Secret Service employee? How incredibly convenient that all seems.

And, yes, somehow the Secret Service confirmed that no texts were lost in the data migration. Because, again, according to Guglielmi,

DHS OIG requested electronic communications for the first time on Feb. 26, 2021, after the migration was well under way. The Secret Service notified DHS OIG of the loss of certain phones’ data, but confirmed to OIG that none of the texts it was seeking had been lost in the migration. 

So, to recap:

We only found one,

 which means there only was one, 

because we confirmed nothing was lost, 

and besides, who said anything was sent. 

Seriously - that's what we're supposed to believe? 

I'm with Raskin on this one - and with every other American who's ever gone through a data migration at work, or purchased a new desktop, laptop, or tablet, or who has ever changed phones, or phone carriers: I'm not buying it.