Post-match: The Post Presidency :: Trump Faces The Music Thread

I think that stuff is more understandable because there are big problems. It's just hard to make money writing about that stuff anymore because the culture war moved elsewhere.

Personally I think the likes of Taibbi are best seen as fanfic. There is a narrow lane for contrarian lefties.

But it gets weird when you sell out to a billionaire oligarch - maybe his audience won't care.

 

I liked the book as well, i just felt he over reached. But then he isn't a derivatives lawyer, so perhaps understandable.

But now I wonder how much he intentionally misled.

I mean did he take money from Musk - a guy currently on trial for securities fraud - to write bad quality fanfic?

This is the problem when you set your credibility on fire.

 

@diablodelsol

This is indeed an interesting thread (sorry for your blood pressure)

In his book, Strzok said that the FBI had little to no capability to deal with the cyber/influence op against the election - in 16 they were focussed on the people.

We now know following the Stone prosecution, that it was a large cyber operations - particularly the DNC hack and WL angle which Stone collaborated in.

Intriguing thread that asks important questions. Former FBI agent McGonigal isn't charged with official corruption related to Russia while running the FBI's counterintelligence division in NY, but there is a charge involving a possible bribe from a foreign nat'l during that time. https://t.co/pRhFX7oPdq

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) January 25, 2023

 

Good article - this may be very bad. It points out the "albanian' thing might well be a front for RIS

I also wonder if many of these people who got in trouble during the years 2016-2020 simply believed there were no rules anymore?

https://www.spytalk.co/p/secret-agent-man-the-mysterious-charlie

Like other senior intelligence agency veterans, former career CIA case officer Douglas London said it was impossible to say what McGonigal was really up to from the bare bones Justice Department announcements. Based on “absolutely nothing but my speculation and instinct,” London said that, “in working as a lobbyist for Deripaska and the Albanians, respectively, McGonigal might have been commercially recruited under a false flag business pretext or otherwise run in cooperation with the Russians, who would have worked over time to get the FBI agent to divulge his counterintelligence knowledge.” London added that, “it would have been an amazingly amateurish mistake for a guy with his experience, perhaps believing he could spy ‘in plain sight’ based on the business pretext.” Whatever, London said he was “hoping [McGonigal] had not spilled everything,” particularly the names of Russians or other foreign nationals working as spies for the FBI or CIA.

Other odd facets of McGonigal’s post-FBI work stood out to intelligence veterans. As a former chief of counterintelligence, McGonigal “could name his job in the corporate sector,” as the former official put it, fielding offers in the $200,000 range to head up a company’s security operation. But McGonigal, perhaps feeling slighted by failing to land one of the top three slots in the FBI, such as special agent in charge of New York, Los Angeles or the Washington Field Office, might’ve dismissed that as chicken feed.

“It's almost like, ‘I'll beat all of you,’” the former official said. Instead, McGonigal took gigs from Deripaska and the Albanians—and God knows who else—paying him $75,000 a month. Plus international travel. The FBI arrested McGonigal after he stepped off a plane returning from a trip to Sri Lanka. Where else did he go? Who else might he have been working for? How might he have been compromised?​

 

The Durham news is insane …

weaponised!

 

It's amazing that Barr had Durham bury a Trump-Italy financial investigation - we never even knew about that.

 

Barr represents the theory of government that makes sense of everything - Anne Applebaum has some good writing about it.

e.g why does a neo-lib conservative like Charlie Sykes still believe in the rule of law, but 'libertarian' Tucker Carlson does not?

The answer is that conservatism is hard. You have to develop policies, win elections, and negotiate difficult compromises (see for example the Biden IRA - a masterpiece of climate policy and legislation that got buy in from a very broad coalition).

'Natcon' is a more promising solution - just use the power of the state to implement your unpopular policies

This is essentially semi-fascism or an american form of fascism