Mueller Report

Still browsing the Mueller report. A few tentative conclusions:

(1) Mueller and his group were very professional, and thorough;
(2) The report _would_ have drawn conclusions, but the Office of Legal Council prohibits him from inditing a sitting president. It said that if the weight of the evidence exonerated the president on any charge, they would have said so. They didn't. The best other option was to say they couldn't clear him, they've accumulated significant evidence, and it's up to other people (read: Congress, or other investigators) to take the next step;
(3) The Russian operation to undermine and interfere with the election of 2016 was originally to (a) sow confusion, divide Americans, and wreck American democracy, and (b) keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House. This began long before Trump declared himself a candidate;
(4) The Russians quickly recognized that there was no better disruptor, and no greater threat to American democracy, than Donald J. Trump. They quickly shifted the majority of their support to him;
(5) Trump and people in his circle (including, but not limited to, the official campaign), had long-standing communications and connections to people in the Russian state (both the government and the Oligarchs). Russia saw Trump as someone they could work with for mutual benefit;
(6) There is not sufficient evidence to charge criminal conspiracy in this matter. There didn't _need_ to be a criminal agreement. Russia was doing what it did for its own reasons, the Trump campaign was aware of it, and Trump's people (especially Manafort) were providing information to help them do it.
(7) Manafort was already involved as an agent of Russia for years prior to the Trump campaign. His job, in part, was to install leaders in Western countries who would serve Russian interests. Getting Trump elected was part of his job even before he joined the campaign;
(8) The president actively tried to block the Mueller investigation. He was blocked at several points by his own people. He succeeded occasionally. Either way, he committed several acts of obstruction of justice. Since the OLC prohibits indictments of a sitting president, he passed the evidence to people to do whatever they chose to do next.

A few speculations:
(1) The House can start impeachment proceedings. At the very least, they can open and expand multiple investigations;
(2) If the House has a vote, they will likely impeach the president. It's a political question;
(3) Making it an official impeachment proceeding would probably make it easier to get desired evidence, but once they get the evidence the House may choose not to impeach if they don't want the trial in an election year;
(4) There are no known "tapes" or "smoking guns" to force Republicans to abandon the president. Without that, and with the role of Trumpanistias in the Republican Party, it's unlikely that Trump will be be convicted in the Senate. If there is a major shift in the Senate after the 2020 Senate, but Trump is re-elected, the vote might go the other way.
(5) Whether or not Trump is impeached, he is vulnerable in other ways. He is already an unindicted co-conspirator in one Federal proceeding, and is vulnerable to indictment at the State level today and the Federal level after he leaves office.
(6) Eventually, Trump will be in court. Once there, he will lose. While he may or may not be removed from office, it increasingly looks like

 

Actually, I don't expect him to die in prison. Manafort will (and deservedly so). Trump will suffer some punishment--loss of properties, perhaps some loss of freedom--but (if he isn't pardoned in the interest of ending the agony) he'll eventually be out. Much as I'd like to see him without money, and without any hope of getting a loan, it's likely he will still have fans stupid and numerous enough to keep enough of the cash flowing to allow him to live in upper-class prosperity. And he'll find someone to ghost-write his version of events. But compared to where he's been, and where he's claimed to be, he'll be just another "loser." He'll find it hard to cope with that, so he'll probably do his best to ignore it. Given his talent for seeing only what he wants to see, plus his age, he may spend his declining years pretending to be "the president," surrounded by a staff that encourages that illusion.

Not that different than today.

Reading between the lines in Strzok's testimony

It's an old joke among lawyers: If you have the law on your side, argue the law; if you have the facts, argue the facts; if you have neither, pound the table. 

There was a lot of table-pounding (and the occasional foaming at the mouth) at the open hearings yesterday, which attempted to make Peter Strzok into some kind of dark figure and (somehow) defend the president.  It was a failure.  If this is the best they could do, Donald Trump might want to reconsider returning from his foreign trip.  Perhaps Putin would let him stay in Russia. But I doubt that he would.  It's not like Trump was actually an agent.  More like a useful idiot.  And apparently he hasn't been reading his briefing books, and the pros have been avoiding talking to him about sensitive sources and methods, so he may not have all that much useful intelligence to trade for his dacha on the Black Sea.  

If anything, the hearings (what I saw of them) made Peter Strzok into a hero. Credible.  Calm in the face of insults and stupidity.  Clear about what he could, and could not, talk about in an open hearing.  He came across as a professional counterintelligence agent.  He sort of reminded me of my Dad (and that's rare praise).  

But there was one statement he made in the hearing that caught my attention. Actually, it pulled me out of my chair. And since I don't see anyone else making this connection, I guess I will.  Strzok (with permission, I'm sure) pulled the curtain aside just a little bit on the early stages of the Trump-Russia investigation.  This is what grabbed my attention:

The information we had which was alleging a Russian offer of assistance to a member of the Trump campaign was of extraordinary significance. It was credible. It was from an extraordinarily sensitive and credible source.

What, exactly, does that mean?  "Intel-speak" tends to avoid exaggeration.  If anything, it tends to be overcautious.  Peter Strzok was a senior counterintelligence official, with years of experience in investigating, disrupting, and prosecuting Russian intelligence operations in the United States.  His record is exemplary.  He was, in fact, one of the first of a handful of people who knew what the FBI knew about Trump-Russia.  He could have, with a few words, undermined the Trump campaign.  He didn't do it.  The best available evidence is that he didn't even think of doing it.  He is that kind of professional.  Which means that every word he uses in an official capacity is considered.  Every word means something--no more, no less.

So what, exactly, was he saying?  It's been decades since I had any special access, but the meanings of some words were drummed into my head.  Most of the politicians probably missed it--exaggeration and spin are their stock in trade.  But, to me, it was like he stood on the desk with a bullhorn.  

The use of verbal probability estimates in National Intelligence Estimates has changed over time (for an overview of word counts see the MA thesis of Rachel Kesselman (Mercyhurst, 2008)).  But this is about the usual: it comes from a (now declassified) 2007 NIE.

Estimates of likelihood.  Because analytical judgments are not certain, we use probabilistic language...  Terms such as probably, likely, very likely, or almost certainly indicate a greater than even chance.

A chart of the continuum provided in the NIE makes it clear that probably or likely is around a sixty or seventy-five percent estimate of likelihood. Very likely is around eighty to ninety percent.  Almost certainly is over ninety percent.  There is no such thing as a certain assessment (100 percent)--there is always room for error.  But if you have to bet, likely is good enough to bet your money, very likely is good enough to bet your job, and almost certainly is good enough to bet your life.  

One can also chart the confidence in assessments, which is based on the quality, scope, and sourcing of the evidence on which the estimate is based.  A high confidence is an indication of high-quality information.  It's not certain, but it's damn near close.  Moderate confidence means the information comes from a credible source.  It's plausible.  Low confidence means there are questions about the source's credibility or plausibility.  It's possible, but you wouldn't want to base your decision on it.  Curveball, the Iraqi source passed along by German intelligence to the US, was in the judgement of the Germans a low confidence source.  The Americans chose to trust him because he fit the prejudices of senior administration officials, which led (in part) to the Iraq War of 2003.

So let's take another look at the testimony.  Strzok tells us the source was extraordinarily sensitive and credible.  This is the level of having a loyal agent inside the other side's agency--an agent with access to information most other insiders would not have.  This is a source so important, so sensitive, that to even release his report into normal channels (let alone to the public) would lead to an immediate manhunt, his discovery, torture, and execution.

No wonder Strzok kept his mouth shut!

And no wonder, once the Trump-Russia story began to surface through other channels, we began to see a series of murders of people in Russia who might have had some involvement in the operation.  This is not just about the "Steele Dossier".  Steele is a good spy, using the sources available to him outside of Russia, and it looks like he did a pretty good job.  But Strzok had his source before seeing anything from Steele.  And Strzok's source was someone with inside knowledge.  If not inner circle, then pretty damn close.

And Strzok is telling us he knew--perhaps not well enough to prove in an American court, but well enough that he would have been willing to bet his life and the lives of the people he cares about--he knew the Russians were openly offering assistance to at least one member of the Trump campaign.  And if it was happening at all, it was an operation planned and approved at the top.  The top of the Russian government--certainly.  The top of the Trump campaign?  That was something that deserved a much closer look.

***

OBE--Overtaken by Events--the news has broken that the Mueller team has indicted a number of senior Russian military intelligence officials for breaking into DNC servers, precisely when Donald Trump was calling on them, publicly, to do something like that.  Interesting.  I have to admire the timing.  I have to wonder--did the FBI officials who authorized Strzok to open the curtain, just a little, know this was coming today?