Week 73: Without the accusations against Russia, scandalous people eat leftovers



[ad_1]

The scraping sound you heard when reading the Trump scandal this week was the rattling and rubbing of a serving spoon reaching the last edible pieces of the jar. In the absence of any indictment of the pen of the special advocate Robert S. Mueller III or the investigative evasion by the thoroughbreds news to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the the Wall Street newspaperit was largely a week of pans and soups made from newspaper remains, but reinforced with pieces of protein.

Not that I'm complaining! As all cooks know, when you heat up old ingredients, the chemical reactions begin to break down the building blocks into a variety of amino acids and aroma-rich sugars. If you read a reconstructed report with the right state of mind, it can be as rewarding as its first broadcast.

History continues below

At the top of my leftover buffet this week were new stories about Republican activist Peter W. Smith, with the the Wall Street newspaper do the culinary honors. Before the election, Smith had plunged into the dark web looking for the 33,000 emails removed from Hillary Clinton's private server – which he said contained compromising information – and hoped to make them useful to the Trump campaign . the the Wall Street newspaper, who wrote the first big story about Smith on June 29, 2017, said he had obtained lots of hacker emails without authenticating them. Just days after speaking to the newspaper, this 81-year-old man lost his life in a hotel room in Rochester, Minnesota. His death was deemed suicide by asphyxiation with helium.

The Smith Corner was warmed up tastefully this week thanks to the Newspaper, who went on to say that he had raised at least $ 100,000 from at least four wealthy donors to pay for the missing email hunt he thought he possessed by hackers – possibly Russians. "Many people familiar with Mr. Smith's quest have been interviewed by Mueller's investigators, including at least one witness summoned before a grand jury," the paper writes. Smith met Mike Flynn in 2015, while Flynn was simply a Trump campaign advisor, the Newspaper Notes. You will remember that Flynn was briefly advising Donald Trump's national security until the revelations he had lied about his pre-inaugural talks on sanctions with the Russian ambassador led to his dismissal. He pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and is currently awaiting punishment.

Is Smith a main dish of Russian scandal or an amuse-bouche? In his Popular Information newsletter, Judd Legum carefully examined the evidence presented this week without giving a final decision. Smith's quest for emails left a trail that showed he was well connected to both the Trump campaigners and the brave Charles Johnson, and a bank transfer to a fund for "Russian students" backs up the theory according to which Smith had been connected. with the pirates of Russia. Smith's estate delivered his hard drives to investigators from the Senate Intelligence Committee and the House of Commons, reports the Daily Beast.

Smith's untimely death adds an element of melody to the Russian scandal that has long been lacking. Usually, when scandals break out, wild point connectors descend into history to uncover intrigue and mystery that is difficult to digest for those with high levels of evidence. The fact that Smith, who was experienced in opposition research, would only have to crack a few hours after talking enthusiastically about his partner, Charles Ortel, about a new project, would argue against suicide, but what the police report says.

The Smith saga does not show that Russian hackers, nor anyone else, possessed deleted emails from Clinton, but indicates a quest for damaging information going in the direction of the fabulous meeting at Trump Tower between Russian agents and senior officials of the Trump campaign. -Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner. During the June 2016 session, the Russians promised to reveal "dirt" to Hillary Clinton. Was Smith on something? Was he jostled by picketers? Or was he targeted to be exploited by Russian spies? According to the FBI, Clinton's server has never been compromised, making it unlikely the rediscovery of Clinton's deleted emails. However, Smith's professional association with Flynn, now part of Trump's restricted circle, and his connection to WikiLeaks – he solicited money for the organization and told Clinton's email send – makes him an object of historical interest.

Elsewhere on the buffet of Russian scandal, steamed on the pots of Sterno, we find the last duel – and still inconclusive – duel between Mueller's lawyer and Trump's lawyer on the interrogation of the president by the investigators. The announcement that Trump's legal team is writing answers to Mueller's written questions does not mean that Mueller will still not assign the president for an interview on the impediment. New York The magazine served as an excellent mid – week aperitif with an article on President Barack Obama 's plan to seal the election results of 2016 if Trump really wanted his threat to repudiate the results of the election. election he lost. I can not wait for someone to completely warm these ingredients up and turn them into input.

And in a strange convergence (which I will call dessert), the parties opposed to the Russian scandal have loudly claimed their First Amendment rights. First, according to a piece of crackerjack from AtlanticTrump's lawyer, Natasha Bertrand, has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, accusing her illegal conspiracy campaign of stolen emails, citing First Amendment protections to disclose even stolen information. Meanwhile, Glenn Simpson of GPS Fusion, whose firm has commissioned the Steele file that journalists and government investigators have been preparing for nearly two years, told the House Judiciary Committee that he was invoking the rights of the first and fifth amendments to refuse summons to appear. "The founders specifically designed the first and fifth amendments as security elements in case of dysfunction of the three branches of government and violation of citizens' rights," said Simpson's lawyer to the committee.

I do not know about you, but I'm always hungry. What I really want is the equivalent of the timpano that kicked off the epic banquet of the movie "Big Night".

******

Had your sufficiency? Send restaurant reviews by mail to [email protected]. My email alerts the cookers an incredible tuna casserole. my Twitter feed claims to have invented pizza from leftover dough, tomato sauce and cheese. My RSS feed is on hunger strike until the conclusion of the Russian scandal.

Jack Shafer is politicoSenior media editor.

[ad_2]
Source link