I have been paying little enough attention that I have no idea why Cheney particularly would be responsible, other than that he's generally bad. Someone catch me up?
After Liz Cheney voted to impeach Trump, Gaetz made a big deal of coming out to Wyoming and addressing a pro-Trump anti-Cheney rally.
Ah, that makes sense. If it's true, I'm always glad to see horrible people destroying each other.
Props to this person: https://twitter.com/flipblue2022/status/1353966280458567681?s=21
It does make sense that there would be some behind the scenes story. While I haven't been paying close attention to the Gaetz thing, as far as I know there's not an obvious reason why it broke now, right?
It does make sense that there would be some behind the scenes story. While I haven't been paying close attention to the Gaetz thing, as far as I know there's not an obvious reason why it broke now, right?
5/6 I saw this explanation. I don't know if it's correct.
Gaetz came under criminal investigation due to his close ties to a Florida official, indicted former Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg. According to the Tampa Bay Times, Greenberg "sits in the Orange County Jail facing 33 federal charges, including stalking, identity theft, wire fraud, bribery, theft of government property, conspiracy to bribe a public official, creating fake IDs and sex trafficking of a minor." Gaetz came under suspicion after the FBI began its Greenberg investigation.
Yeah, Nick's speculation in 7 is the one I've seen; that guy Greenberg was an amazing cavalcade of corruption (he literally set his office on fire running a Bitcoin mining rig for private gain) and was known to be a friend of Gaetz's. When they raided him on tax charges, they found (IIRC) seized IDs, which turned up what seems to have been a scheme to trade fake IDs to minors for sex. It suggests a lot that while a lot of Gaetz's sleaze was well known (the "sleep with interns for points" spreadsheet, e.g.) this specific sex trafficking investigation is coming out of Greenberg frantically naming names.
After Liz Cheney voted to impeach Trump, Gaetz made a big deal of coming out to Wyoming and addressing a pro-Trump anti-Cheney rally.
Pretty sure this is the second impeachment, meaning the investigation of Gaetz started long before then - Barr was briefed summer 2020.
You guys are no fun. Cheney doesn't have to have caused the investigation to be launched to make it suddenly national news.
Charley and Q know that the Deep State is conspiring to undermine all Trump allies.
Barr was all-in on Trumpism, but failed to quash the investigation. I wonder if at root, he has some interest in the rule of law, or if he just saw which way the wind was blowing and didn't want to go out on a limb for Gaetz.
To continue on my no-fun parabola, it seems like a lot of people must have known about the investigation as it proceeded, so not clear that its being leaked to the press is a mystery that the involvement of Cheney would help explain. Like, yes, it could have been him, as well as probably dozens of other people. And Gaetz presumably has made many gratuitous enemies.
I am funny.
I enjoy funniness. I both have funniness and can be funny. Funny is a word that accurately describes me and a large quantity of things of which I am fond. I appreciate funniness when I encounter it, and I have even been known to partake in activities that produce funniness for myself and others. Funniness is something I often have when amongst a group of people. In such situations, I am capable of amusing others and, in turn, of being amused by them.
7/8: Greenberg is facing spending the rest of multiple lives in prison. Flipping on a member of Congress is probably his only chance of getting out eventually, some day.
People who need people who represent people are the luckiest people of all.
12: Barr was all-in on Trumpism, but failed to quash the investigation. I wonder if at root, he has some interest in the rule of law, or if he just saw which way the wind was blowing and didn't want to go out on a limb for Gaetz.
Barr is an interesting case. Disappeared for key parts of the campaign. I think he wants authoritarianism the plausibly-rule-of-law way*. Also as head of DOJ he needed some level of organizational support, so probably could not sit on something as out and out bad as this appears to be and retain the (even if grudging) support of his organization. (As in many things if Trump had won I think all bets would be off.)
Also in the end I am guessing that Barr believed the polls and was just shuffling off the boat (but I suspect Gaetz came up before that). He will be 100% behind state legislatures get to decide which votes count and which don't movement.
I think he's about a Kavanaugh or Gorsuch on the imaginary principled conservative on the Supreme Court to Clarence Thomas scale. (At this point I think CT would be fine with authoritarianism straight up; I think he and his wife are aligned on that.)
Doesn't it seem most likely that Barr was slow-walking the investigation, gathering kompromat, ready to reach whatever conclusion became necessary by either the public learning more sordid details or Trump's opinion of Gaetz shifted?
Had Trump been re-elected, one doesn't have to stretch too far to imagine a world in which none of this comes to light, or if it does, this Greenberg takes the fall for all of it, perhaps literally out of a high window.
The investigation originated with Greenberg, and the ultimate conviction will come from what started with Greenberg. The story breaking in the New York Times, with a Justice Department leak into a pre-indictment criminal investigation (extremely unisual!), probably came from a well-connected Republican, probably either Cheney or Barr, maybe both working together. Probably won't affect the outcome in the end, but affected the timing.
Why Barr? He accomplished most of what he wanted to do as AG, except for leaving with his reputation as a statesman intact. At his age the loss of reputation stings. Publicity that Barr facilitated an investigation into an evil Republican in the middle of the 2020 improves his reputation, especially among the older, pre-Trump Republicans Barr cares about.. Also he was knowledgeable of the investigation as it was happening, because he had directed that he be informed of any investigations involving candidates (unclear how Cheney would have been knowledgeable). Also leaking to the New York Times is the signature of someone trying to improve his reputation.
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The investigation originated with Greenberg, and the ultimate conviction will come from what started with Greenberg. The story breaking in the New York Times, with a Justice Department leak into a pre-indictment criminal investigation (extremely unisual!), probably came from a well-connected Republican, probably either Cheney or Barr, maybe both working together. Probably won't affect the outcome in the end, but affected the timing.
Why Barr? He accomplished most of what he wanted to do as AG, except for leaving with his reputation as a statesman intact. At his age the loss of reputation stings. Publicity that Barr facilitated an investigation into an evil Republican in the middle of the 2020 improves his reputation, especially among the older, pre-Trump Republicans Barr cares about.. Also he was knowledgeable of the investigation as it was happening, because he had directed that he be informed of any investigations involving candidates (unclear how Cheney would have been knowledgeable). Also leaking to the New York Times is the signature of someone trying to improve his reputation.
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18 On Barr, I'd guess that he was genuinely surprised that Durham wasn't able to come up with anything. He strikes me as genuinely credulous about right wing propaganda, but from a combination of willful ignorance and bad faith tribalism.
Speaking of Justice Thomas, I'm waiting to hear from smart people about what today's Google/Oracle decision (from which Thomas dissented) will mean in practical terms in the programming community. Had Google's position already become an industry norm, and so endorsing it doesn't change anything? Or was Google the 800 pound outlier?
21.2 I think it'd take a bigger motivation that that for Barr to intentionally leak this, especially on this timing. On the other hand, you can imagine Cheney first googling the guy, and then asking some currently connected people what this guy's deal is. Lots of people know lots of things -- especially journalists, who often seem to be waiting until some sort of permission structure emerges before they will reveal some of what they know.
To what extent, New Yorkers, did the governor's handling of covid in old age facilities give permission to publish stories about his boorish (and worse) behavior? The behavior must surely have been an open secret for years, but only when there's blood in the water was he weak
I don't know if there's any way to tell. If I were going to guess, you're right that the Covid mismanagement is why the accusations have been sticking, but I wouldn't think that's why Boylan came forward -- she started talking before the nursing home story was fully formed. Later allegations are I think all from women who were reacting to the fact that Boylan's story had legs and she hasn't been found floating in Jamaica Bay yet.
22: My sense is that Google's position had been an industry norm, more or less, and that Oracle asserting otherwise was kind of breathtaking. It's been enough years now that I suspect there are entities out there that had been holding off on various projects just in case Oracle prevailed.
According to Boylan herself the rumors that Cuomo was being considered for Attorney General was a significant factor in why she spoke up when she did.
The Google/Oracle decision should just mean business as usual. That's exciting the case turned out that way. I was sure Oracle would win, because nothing good ever happens.
26, 28 -- I'm pretty much always ready to buy that a Thomas decision is bad, and that a Thomas dissent signifies disaster averted.
Google's position was consistent with decades of precedent. Clean room reimplementations of apis are uncommon but a standard practice. A victory for Oracle would have led to an avalanche of follow-on suits and subsequent rents being paid from smaller players to the titans and/or acquisitions.
The state of IP in software continues to be absolutely dreadful, to be sure, but it didn't suddenly get appreciably worse, so yay, I guess.
22.b If any player in the tech world is universally despised, it's Oracle. All the other heavyweights--Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Salesforce--have their whirly-eyed fanboys as well as their detractors, but I've never heard anyone say a good word about Oracle, a rapacious, rent-seeking legal team with some software developers attached.
22: ,i>18 On Barr, I'd guess that he was genuinely surprised that Durham wasn't able to come up with anything. He strikes me as genuinely credulous about right wing propaganda, but from a combination of willful ignorance and bad faith tribalism.
Yes. I suspect Fox/RW media in general has rotted his brain a bit.
On Barr/Durham I do think Durham's top lieutenant resigning late last summer just as reports were circulating about Trump wanting some kind of public progress report was a pretty big deal for Barr. Probably just the pressure for a report, but emptywheel points out that Barr and Durham's position on the "inappropriateness' of the Carter Page predication specifically (and the whole investigation in general) was built on a (in Barr's case probably willful) misunderstanding of counterespionage investigations vs. criminal ones. Just before she resigned Peter Strozk's book came out and in it (and in various interviews) he was quite clear on that point. (semi-sleazy* but "honorable" bureaucrat IG Horowitz got it wrong initially as well but later issued a correction.)
*Still waiting on the promised investigation into the pro-Trump NYC FBI stuff in fall of 2016.
My former company was a relatively big Oracle customer. At some point a quite high up executive (not Ellison, but Ellison-adjacent) visited. After being given an overview of the company's business and a financials his comment was something along the lines of "That's a lot of work for not much money."
Very endearing.
32* It'll come out after Durham reports on torture and the destruction of tapes of torture.
I think he wants authoritarianism the plausibly-rule-of-law way*.
I conceived of a highly social-media-friendly shorthand for this: "long fascism" as opposed to "short fascism". (Or fast?)
that guy Greenberg was an amazing cavalcade of corruption (he literally set his office on fire running a Bitcoin mining rig for private gain) Is just too perfect a Florida Man story. I mean Carl Hiaasen himself would have hesitated for all of two minutes before writing it into a comedy thriller.
SPOILER ALERT. The fucked up ex journalist gets the girl in the end.
On reading the threat, I will now answer the question in the OP. 8.
I thought this on MG's enablers was pretty good: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/05/matt-gaetz-photos-should-not-happen-more-than-once/
A little shocking reading Petri not being funny. She's usually Russell Baker on acid.
I think they are at least mentioning it now, but there was a period of a few days at the start of the Gaetz thing (but after the bizarre Tucker Carlson interview) where neither Fox News or Fox Business mentioned Gaetz. But even now the ratio of Hunter Biden mentions to Gaetz mentions are in the double digits. This is the reality that all the "reasonable" conservatives you know are living in.
43: It looks like Hunter is doing a media blitz. I saw reports of him going on at least Maron and the BBC. The guy doesn't do anyone any favors, ever. But yes, part of the persistent brain rot of conservative boomers. Goddammit. Choosing to ruin the critical thinking capacities of a large and powerful demographic is some tragedy of the commons bullshit.
On the OP, obviously it's not Cheney. Gaetz hasn't taken a face full of birdshot.
41 and 42 get it exactly right.
The political conspiracy I'm curious about is whether Cawthorn's sudden marriage is about ensuring that his erstwhile fiance can be prevented from having to testify against him in his own future potential criminal proceedings.
I admit to having zero background on her, so maybe she doesn't know anything anyway. But I have to imagine that anyone whose classmates at Patrick Henry College thinks he is a creepy sexual assaulter has probably done some pretty awful stuff.
Yeah, Petri's genius is definitely connected to sensitivity, and this column makes me hope she has people in her life who shield her from the effects of that sensitivity when they need to. She is funny as hell, but she's also accurate.