Secret CIA source claims Russia rigged 2016 election

I hope he writes a ‘the NYT can get fucked’ anonymous op ed for the NYT as an ‘anonymous source ;)

Pretty sure Trump had already attacked him, as have all of the garbage boys in the freedom caucus.

The real eye-roller is this:

Mr. Rosenstein was emotional, according to people familiar with his meeting with Mr. McGahn. Mr. Rosenstein wanted to leave on amicable terms, not in a manner that would trigger an angry Twitter tirade from Mr. Trump.

Trump has, of course, already gone on angry Twitter tirades about Rosenstein in the past. Just how clueless are we meant to think Rosenstein is?

(There’s no doubt about how clueless senior White House officials are, because they prove it every. single. day.)

Just waiting for Haberman to tell me what kind of panties Rosenstein was wearing, and how frilly they were.

The Times should just rehire Judith Miller at this point.

David Simon weighs in on the NYTimes scoop

Hmm. Is that last line a dig at Haberman for this whole debacle?

The only person who thinks anyone is afraid of a Trump twitter rant is Trump. Oh, and Ted Cruz

It’s more of a dig at the Times simply for employing her. I’m pretty sure former crime beat reporter Simon considers her a glorified gossip columnist because, well, she is (she started out on Page Six at the NY Post.)

Another guy who knows whereof he speaks weighs in on the NYT. Norm Ornstein has been a DC institution and expert on Congress since the 80s, originally as a professional moderate*. He called out the GOP’s lurch to the right (with data) back in 2012 while everyone in the media was still rolling around in bothsiderism. He is not impressed with today’s performance by the Times (or WaPo):

https://twitter.com/NormOrnstein/status/1044370132510953472

https://twitter.com/rickhasen/status/1044376547627491328

https://twitter.com/NormOrnstein/status/1044383258069356544

*The best proof that the GOP lurched violently to the right since the 80s is in fact that current Republicans now consider former professional moderate Ornstein a wild-eyed leftist.

Let’s take Hasen up on his question. How’d the media do with this dress rehearsal?

  1. Axios is gonna Axios. But their initial story – and for some reason “old media” who should know better not recognizing how often Axios has been used by White House aides to selectively “leak” stories – led to the chaos this morning. Lots of old media absolutely panicked that they’d been scooped.

  2. Washington Post really got their pants pulled down, and badly. Rather than go to the relevant department to get corroboration of White House sourcing, they went to the same source as Axios, and got the same story. And then ran it almost verbatim. It’s one thing to get scooped by Axios. It’s another thing for a major outlet like the Post to basically run the Axios story and not notice they were essentially copy-pasting them.

  3. NBC and Pete Williams covered themselves in glory. He’s the guy who knows the DOJ inside/out. It was Williams who first suggested that of the two possibilities re: Rosenstein, a third – status quo – was becoming more likely. He also was the first to report that Rosenstein told DOJ aides as he was leaving for the White House that he (Rosenstein) would not resign, but would make the President fire him. Williams and NBC reported that the White House and DOJ had completely different versions of the morning’s events.

  4. CNN, unable to develop their own sources (at least sources they were willing to trust), was at least skeptical enough of the sources that were reported uncritically by Axios and the WaPo. Good on them.

  5. The NYT, given a few hours to work phones, develop sourcing, and analyze what they were being told just shat in a diaper and then put in on their idiot heads…and perhaps delivered the worst performance of any major media outlet. I get that they want to trust Michael Schmidt and all, but his story this afternoon was so nonsensical and idiotic that it felt like something the President himself had dictated verbatim.

I wanted to not be in the herd of people howling about Schmidt’s report on Friday about Rosenstein as being reckless. But given Rosenstein’s background statements to Williams and others that there are those in the DOJ who are trying to sabotage him and get him out, and given how gullibly simple-minded the Schmidt reporting this afternoon was, I’m now do indeed have strong doubts about his big Friday scoop on Rosenstein.

Joint U.S.-Russian raids to kill top terrorists. Teamwork between an American government agency and a sanctioned Russian fund. Moscow pouring money into the Midwest.

These are just a few of the ideas the head of a Russian sovereign wealth fund touched on during his meeting with former Blackwater head Erik Prince in the Seychelles, just weeks before President Donald Trump’s inauguration, according to a memo exclusively reviewed by The Daily Beast.

I think there’s an error in there. Should be “to kill top Russian defectors”

It’s the Russian definition for terrorists.

At some point you have to assume they are trying to get caught. I know they don’t care that people know they’re doing this sort of thing, but I have to think they could cover their tracks better if they wanted to.

They feel they’re untouchable which makes them careless.

Look at what they did to the world’s only superpower. They’re not wrong.