Category Archives: The Scandals

Youch!

It begins:

TO
Hon. Ryan D. McCarthy, Secretary of the Army
Gen James C. McConville, Chief of Staff, United States Army

INFO
Hon. Mark Esper, Secretary of Defense
Hon. Sean O’Donnell, Inspector General (Acting), Department of Defense
Gen Joseph M. Martin, Vice Chief of Staff, United States Army
Lt Gen Thomas Seamands, G–1 (DCS Personnel), United States Army

RE: Systematic Leadership Failure

Dear Sirs

I am terribly disappointed, but not terribly surprised, at the leadership failure at senior levels of the Department of Defense and United States Army in allowing the intimidation, bullying, and loss of service to the nation of an officer selected for promotion who did his duty. In his own words, he will be fine; but the question shouldn’t even come up. I am less confident that the nation and the next generation of military leaders will be fine.

It is your job to ensure that those who are qualified for promotion to more-senior positions are promoted, free from outside interference. You have not succeeded in that tasking. Each of you must consider exactly what that means to the officers of today and of tomorrow. Each of you must further consider the permanent damage to the oath of commissioning — that one’s duty is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic — that this fiasco has done and will do in the future. Each of you must consider whether orders you have been given (however couched) regarding this matter are lawful, and how to respond personally to those orders. Each of you must consider what the treatment of Lt Col (P) Vindman — ratified through your silence — will mean to those who later must choose whether to speak truth to power outside of a combat-imminent situation.

Each of you must also consider a significant structural reform to the Defense and Army personnel systems, and advise the other services of your considerations and conclusions. There is no place for the insult of so-called “rehabilitative assignments” for commissioned officers.

Plenty more where that came from…

To be honest, I only read Thomas Friedman’s column if I’m really trying to procrastinate. I lost patience with him back in the “Friedman Unit” days.

But today’s column is a doozy. Maybe the best column he’s ever done. It’s called Mike Pompeo Is the Worst Secretary of State Ever and it’s got two devastating points.

The first one actually goes back to Pomepeo’s days as Director of the C.I.A:  “while Pompeo was C.I.A. director, the first foreign-planned terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11 was being organized here and abroad, and while he was secretary of state it was carried out.”

Hell, if that were me — if the first foreign-planned terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11 developed on my watch and if I had just gotten rid of the State Department inspector general without explanation — I’d also be trying to distract attention.
I mean, if it were me, I might even claim that China concocted the coronavirus in a lab in Wuhan. Wait — that’s what Pompeo did!

The second point is that, Pompeo “has been the worst secretary of state in American history, without a single diplomatic achievement. …. Pompeo’s two most notable accomplishments as secretary of state are, metaphorically speaking, shooting two of his senior State Department officials in the back.”  One was US Ambassador to the Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch . “The other was the department’s inspector general, Steve Linick, whom Pompeo got Trump to fire, reportedly because he was investigating — wait for it now — Pompeo’s own efforts to evade a congressional ban on arms sales to Saudi Arabia and for improperly asking a State Department employee to run errands for him and his wife.”

But read the whole thing.  I think it almost left scortch marks on the breakfast table.

Apparently, the official policy of the Justice Department at this moment is that if you are a Trump administration member, the following conduct is not worth prosecuting:

Mr. Flynn … was not forthcoming with Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Mr. Kislyak.

Mr. Flynn eventually admitted that those discussions were part of a coordinated effort by the president’s aides to make foreign policy before they were in power, which undermined the policy of President Barack Obama.

Mr. Flynn also lied in federal filings about his lobbying work for the Turkish government, court papers show.

And, furthermore, the FBI should not treat Trump administration members suspected of colluding with foreign governments as if they were — wait for it — suspects.  As the Justice Department revealed in its court filing, by asking about meetings with foreign government representatives,

the [FBI] questioning “was untethered to, and unjustified by, the F.B.I.’s counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn” and that the case did not meet the legal standard that Mr. Flynn’s lies be “materially” relevant to the matter under investigation.

And let’s not even talk about Flynn’s apparent perjury in court and maybe out of it too.

Is it any surprise, therefore, that

In a possible sign of disagreement with the Justice Department decision, Brandon L. Van Grack, the department lawyer who led the prosecution of Mr. Flynn, abruptly withdrew from the case on Thursday.

Add it all to the list.

You know, on days like today, I don’t care what happened in a hallway in 1993, or whether Biden is as sharp as butter.  Maybe I’m a bad person. Or maybe there really is too much at stake.

Update: More details about just how weird and horrible today’s decision to (attempt to) abort the Flynn case — after he’d had guilty pleas accepted twice — can be found in this excellent analysis by Marcy Wheeler.

Daily Kos is publishing excerpts from the Anonymous book on life inside the Trump administration.  This little bit is arresting, although there will it seems be no arrests:

Donald Trump cannot not do crimes. It is not possible for him. Early on in the administration it became apparent that he was pocketing the official White House silverware after every meal served to him. It is not something the staff was willing to challenge him on, so it has continued after every meal, every week, since the inauguration. Nobody had the slightest idea where he had been squirreling them off to until the cleaning crew discovered a sack underneath the bed in the Lincoln Bedroom containing literally hundreds and hundreds of stolen knives, forks, and spoons. Does he intend to take them with him when he leaves office? Does he take them just to prove he can? Nobody knows, and none of us want to.

Not I suppose a high crime or misdemeanor, at least until he takes them out of the White House, but sooo weird.