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Bill Clinton Did Not Win an Election By Getting a Blowjob: The Danger of Lindsey Graham’s Willful Ignorance about Russian Interference

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In his statement in Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing yesterday, Lindsey Graham embodied the problem with Republicans’ deliberate ignorance about Russian interference in the 2016 election.

As part of his statement, he raised the time Joe Biden pointed out what a hypocrite Brett Kavanaugh was for believing presidents should not be investigated during their term but nevertheless thought it necessary to ask Bill Clinton the following questions:

If Monica Lewinsky says that you inserted a cigar into her vagina while you were in the Oval Office area, would she be lying?

[snip]

If Monica Lewinsky says that she gave you oral sex in the Oval Office area, would she be lying?

If Monica Lewinsky says that you ejaculated in her mouth on two occasions in the Oval Office, would she be lying?

Lindsey did so to suggest Biden’s comments about the Clinton investigation refute the claim that Trump picked Kavanaugh to protect himself from investigation, as if the investigation of Clinton for a blowjob was as legitimate as Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump cheated to win the election.

To justify such an absurd claim, Lindsey suggests that the Mueller investigation is only about whether Trump acted improperly when he fired Comey.

When it comes to the pillar of political virtue, Comey. Harry Reid: “That he’s been a supporter of Comey, and led the fight to get him confirmed, as he believed Comey was a principled public servant. With the deepest regret, I now see that I was wrong.” Mr. Nadler, from NY. “The President can fire him for cause and ought to. He violated the guidelines and put his thumb on the scale of an election.” Mr. Cohen, from Tennessee, a Democrat. “Call on Comey to resign his position, effective immediately, I’m sureupon reflection of this action he will submit his letter of resignation for the nation’s good.” To my Democratic friends,  you were all for getting rid of this guy. Now all of a sudden the country is turning upside down cause Trump did it.

The same guy who recently endorsed the idea of Trump firing Jeff Sessions once Kavanaugh gets confirmed then claimed he would do everything to protect the Mueller investigation. He says that even while suggesting he agrees with Kavanaugh that the president shouldn’t be investigated.

There’s a process to find out what happened in the 2016 election. It’s called Mr. Mueller. And I will do everything I can to make sure he finishes his job without political interference. And I’m here to tell anybody in the country that listens, that this is so hypocritical of my friends on the other side. When it was their President, Kavanaugh was right. When you’re talking about Roe v. Wade, it’s okay to promise the nation it will never be overturned. It’s okay to pick a Democratic staff member of this committee, but it’s not okay to pick somebody who’s been a lifelong Republican.

Which brings us to the stunning bit. Having just misrepresented the scope of the Mueller investigation — completely ignoring that the primary investigation is about whether Trump conspired with a hostile foreign power to win the election — Lindsey then suggests that Democrats should have no influence over judges because they lost the election the legitimacy of which Mueller continues to investigate (and about which Mueller has already provided evidence that the scope of Russia’s help for Trump went further than initially known).

People see through this. You had a chance, and you lost. If you want to pick judges from your way of thinking, then you better win an election.

After discussing his support for Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, Lindsey then suggests that stripping the last limits on presidential power is just a game (even while admitting he likes Trump best of all for getting two SCOTUS picks).

I hope people in the country understand this game. It’s a game that I’m sad to be part of. It’s gotten really bad. The antidote to our problems in this country when it comes to judges and politics is not to deny you a place on the Supreme Court. This is exactly where you need to be, this is exactly the time you need to be there, and I’m telling President Trump, “You do some things that drive me crazy, you do some great things. You have never done anything better, in my view, than to pick Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.  Cause you had an opportunity to put well-qualified conservatives on the court — men steeped in the rule of law — who will apply analysis not politics to their decision-making, and you knocked it out of the park, and I say to my friends on the other side: you can’t lose the election and pick judges.

Lindsey ends, again, by taunting Democrats that they can’t have any input on Supreme Court justices if they lose an election.

An election the investigation of which Lindsey claims to, but is not, protecting. An election the investigation of which may be stymied by the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh.

Of course, this is only possible because of the way four different efforts in Congress — including Lindsey’s own — have served to obscure the matters under investigation. You’ve got Lindsey’s investigation and Bob Goodlatte’s — both more worried about a single FISA order that even a conservative Republican has told me was based on overwhelming evidence — than whether the guy making lifetime appointments cheated to get that authority. You’ve got Devin Nunes’ investigation, better described as an information gathering effort to help Trump get away with any cheating he engaged in than an investigation of whether he did cheat. Finally, there is Richard Burr’s investigation which, while on its face is more credible, nevertheless is not pursuing leads that support a case that Trump conspired with Russia to win the election.

Lindsey Graham is concerned about lies Christopher Steele may have told under oath in the UK, but not lies Don Jr clearly told his own committee. His big rush to stack SCOTUS suggests the reason for that has everything to do with a need to sustain a fiction that those SCOTUS choices are the result of a legitimate election win rather than willfully conspiring with a foreign adversary to get those choices.

Q: Whose Secrets Are More Sensitive than the DC Madam’s? A: NSA’s.

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On September 17, FISC Judge Michael Mosman appointed the first known amicus under the terms laid out in USA F-ReDux; notice of which got posted yesterday (Mosman could have done so before USA F-ReDux, of course, but he did cite the statute in making the appointment). The question this amicus will help him determine is whether FISC should permit the government to retain bulk collected data past November 28, when the six month extension of the program ends. The government wants to retain the data it is collecting today for three months to make sure the new dragnet program collects the same data as the last one. But the data in question also includes data being held under an old protection order renewed last year as part of EFF’s suits against government dragnets; I suspect that data would show the extent to which one of the plaintiffs in EFF’s First Unitarian Church suit was dragnetted, and as such is critical to showing injury in that suit.

Mosman had deferred the decision on whether or not to let the government keep that data when he signed the August 28 dragnet order.

So who is the lawyer who will represent the interests of civil liberties and privacy in this question? [Update: In this post, I note Mosman may not have appointed Burton to represent privacy at all.]

White collar defense attorney Preston Burton. In addition to Russian moles Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, Burton represented Monica Lewinsky and the DC Madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey.

Burton is, undoubtedly, an excellent lawyer. And his experience representing the biggest spies of the last several decades surely qualifies him to work with the phone dragnet data, including data that probably shows NSA mapped out an entire civil liberties’ organization’s structure using the phone dragnet 5 years ago. Though given this description, it’s not clear Burton would learn of that information from the government’s application, which is what he’ll get.

Pursuant to 50 U.S.C. § l 803(i)(6)(A)(i), the Court has detennined that the government’s application (including exhibits and attachments) and the full, unredacted Primary Order in this docket are relevant to the duties of the amicus. By September 22, 2015, or after receiving confirmation from SEPS that the amicus has received the appropriate clearances and access approvals for such materials, whichever is later, the Clerk of the Court shall make these materials available to the amicus.

Moreover, remember the government can claim privilege over this data and not share it with Burton. Mosman even invited the government to tell the Court sharing information with Burton was not consistent with national security (though he set a deadline for doing so for September 21, so I assume they did not complain).

But it’s entirely unclear to me why Burton would be picked to represent the privacy interests of Americans, including those whose First Amendment rights had been violated under this program, in deciding whether to keep or destroy this data. Mosman made no mention of those interests when he explained his choice.

Mr. Burton is well qualified to assist the Court in considering the issue specified herein. The Security and Emergency Planning Staff (SEPS) of the Department of Justice has advised that he is eligible for access to classified information.

Which is why I take this to be one more in the series of Burton’s famous clients, in which discretion about DC’s secrets is the most important factor.

Peter Van Buren Says “Blowjob” to Hillary Clinton

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Actually, he didn’t say blowjob. He said this, in a post pointing out the State Department’s rather inconsistent evaluation of what does and does not constitute poor judgment.

What if a video existed that showed a prominent State Department VIP on the roof of the Republican Palace in Baghdad receiving, um, pleasure of an oral nature from another State Department officer not his wife, or even his journalist mistress of the time? What if that video has been passed around among Marine Security Guards at the Embassy to the point where it is considered “viral” with many copies made? What if the Deputy Chief of Mission, hand in hand with the Diplomatic Security chief (RSO) at the time, decided that the whole thing needed to be swept under the rug and made to go away, at least until some blogger got a hold of it.

Would that count as poor judgement? What if it was published during his oft-delayed Congressional hearings? Funny that State aggressively punishes some extramarital fooling around while ignoring other, er, well-documented cases.

Or would the State Department once again excuse the act itself and instead punish the person who made the act public, claiming THAT was the example of poor judgement, the crime of not hiding State’s dirty laundry at a sensitive time?

Now, I have no idea who the VIP in question is (though I am rather interested in which journalist was sleeping with said VIP when he wasn’t otherwise engaged getting blowjobs on the roof of the Republican Palace, as it presumably affects her coverage).

I do, however, find the insinuation that Hillary chose to discipline someone who exposed such a spectacular blowjob rather than the blowjob recipient.

Unlike Van Buren, I really have zero problem that Hillary had a beer and went dancing in Colombia. But you’d think Hillary wouldn’t be using her authority to protect inappropriate blowjobs.

Clinton’s Blowjob: 5 Times More Important than the Wall Street Crash

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Honest, I’m posting this video not for obvious affinities I have for Dylan Ratigan’s argument. But mostly because of the obvious suggestion, based on the resources we dedicate to investigating them, that Clinton’s blowjob was five times more dangerous for our country than the crash of our entire financial system.