Marcy Wheeler is an independent journalist writing about national security and civil liberties. She writes as emptywheel at her eponymous blog, publishes at outlets including Vice, Motherboard, the Nation, the Atlantic, Al Jazeera, and appears frequently on television and radio. She is the author of Anatomy of Deceit, a primer on the CIA leak investigation, and liveblogged the Scooter Libby trial.
Marcy has a PhD from the University of Michigan, where she researched the “feuilleton,” a short conversational newspaper form that has proven important in times of heightened censorship. Before and after her time in academics, Marcy provided documentation consulting for corporations in the auto, tech, and energy industries. She lives with her spouse in Grand Rapids, MI.
In a story misrepresenting several things about Trump’s use of DOJ to attack his adversaries, Maggie Haberman neglects to mention the role leaks to her played in events described in Barry Loudermilk’s criminal referral of Liz Cheney.
One big problem with Barry Loudermilk’s referral of Liz Cheney to aspiring FBI Director Kash Patel for criminal investigation is that Loudermilk also referred Kash’s DOD colleagues Christopher Miller and Ryan McCarthy for investigation of imagined misconduct in which, Kash has repeatedly claimed, Kash himself was centrally involved.
To accept Trump’s framing that he’s on a “retribution” tour, you would have to accept that speaking the truth is some kind of crime.
The most notable feature of Alexander Smirnov’s plea deal is the timing: David Weiss will rush him to sentencing on January 8.
ABC’s capitulation to Trump’s lawsuit is a sign of things to come — but also what has long been true. By contrast, the capitulation of the tech oligarchs to Trump may represent something altogether more horrible.
The lies Kash Patel has told are likely to be aired at his confirmation hearing, but at unlikely to dissuade Republicans to vote against his confirmation to be FBI Director. The most important lies pertain to Trump’s efforts to put information obtained by US intelligence to his own personal use.
Kimberly Strassel thinks Trump wants to hire people who intend to do grave damage to the US to pay off electoral debts. More likely, the grave damage is the point.
The NYT let Chuck Grassley and other Senators make false claims that could have been debunked by a great deal of NYT reporting. Better yet, NYT could have simply called out Grassley’s own failures to uphold his own standards.
In spite of the fact that the FBI got key warnings about Stewart Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio that never got shared with FBI’s Washington Field Office, in spite of the fact that the FBI had 26 informants on site but only asked three for information, the FBI contested DOJ Inspector General’s critique that it should have done more to work its informants in advance of the attack.
As we talk about what a politicized FBI run by Kash Patel will look like, it helps to review how the House GOP already helped to politicize the FBI’s work.