He said I was Stupid, I’m Not Stupid
(another Hamilton quote – it’s amazing how that musical resonates with our time. “History doesn’t repeat – it rhymes” – and Lin-Manuel Miranda found the rhythm)
The President of the United States used the “Saudi” line yesterday to try to explain the fate of Jamal Khashoogi. Khashoogi, a Saudi citizen and critic of his government, lived in Virginia and worked for the Washington Post. He walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey on October 2nd. He never came out.
The Turkish government states that a fifteen man Saudi hit squad flew into the country and met at the Consulate. They tortured and killed Khashoogi, dismembered his body and removed it from the country. Turkish intelligence claims to have actual audio evidence of the torture and killing. The Saudis claim that Khashoogi left the Consulate, and have denied any knowledge of his fate.
President Trump yesterday stated that he had a conversation with King Salman of Saudi Arabia, who denied any knowledge of Saudi action, and floated the possibility that a “rogue unit” of the Saudi government might have been involved. The President lent some credence to the King’s denial, repeating with emphasis the conversation, and leading us to believe that this is the only evidence he has seen.
We’re not stupid, Mr. President. We know that you start every morning with the Presidential Daily Brief on your personal I-Pad (though we also know you have it shortened to match your attention span.) We know that US intelligence agencies have better knowledge on this issue than the media, and we hope that you listen to them. Today, rumor has it, that the Saudi’s will change their story, coming up with a “botched interrogation” defense. But it’s clear they did exactly what they wanted to do; you don’t bring a “bone saw” and a forensic specialist to an interrogation.
We also know, Mr. President, that the operational leader of Saudi Arabia is not eighty-two year old King Salman, but your son-in-law’s best buddy Prince Mohammad bin Salman. We know there are serious questions about the mental health of the King, and it is more than possible that he doesn’t know what’s going on. To quote him as the “authority” of the Saudi state shows that either your stupid, or you think we’re stupid.
Please don’t call us stupid, Mr. President, we’re not stupid.
And then there’s the even more insidious story, that seems to show the White House as “not stupid.” It’s about the media revelation of the Blasey-Ford letter, leading to the crisis in the Kavanaugh nomination.
The Republicans, and by extension the White House, have claimed that somehow the Blasey-Ford letter, accusing Kavanaugh of sexual assault as a teenager, was leaked by Democrats at the last minute to derail the nomination. Republican Senators, including Tom Cotton of Arkansas, have called for an investigation into the matter, targeting Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein’s office.
So how did the Ford letter get leaked to online newspaper The Intercept?
At first, it seemed reasonable to assume that it was from a Democratic source in Feinstein’s office, or the minority committee staff, or from Democratic Congresswoman Eshoo’s office (who originally received the letter from Blasey-Ford.) It fit into a “Democratic game-plan” to derail the nomination, and while many fellow Democrats shook their head at the timing, they accepted the action as the “hard-ball” required to prevent a conservative Supreme Court takeover.
Eshoo and Feinstein have publicly and vehemently denied their staffs’ involvement, going so far as to outlining the restrictions imposed on knowledge of the letter. The committee staff seems to have found out about the letter from The Intercept article, ruling them out of the process. So either Feinstein or Eshoo is flat lying, a possible but wholly indefensible position that will ultimately be revealed, or there was some other process.
Feinstein did release the letter to one other source prior to the “leak,” the FBI. We all hope that the FBI would never step into another political snake-pit, and it is unlikely that they leaked the letter. But, as it was made clear by subsequent events, the FBI regarded this as a background check with rules differing from their normal investigations.
The FBI regards background checks as “working for a client,” the client being the agency that requested the check. The FBI neither vouches for information nor draws conclusions; they pass the information onto the “client” for their consideration. So the Blasey-Ford letter, sent from Feinstein, would have been passed to the “client:” the White House Counsel.
And why would White House Counsel Don McGahn leak out the Ford letter?
If McGahn was worried that the Blasey-Ford story was going to come out, controlling the release of the information would be an important first step to managing the crisis. Keeping the “investigation” in the controlled environment of the Judiciary Committee, rather than letting the information “appear” on the floor of the Senate during final debate, would give Republicans an opportunity to do exactly what they did: corral their votes, control the story, and slide Kavanaugh onto the Court. And, it would give them a final talking point about the “mob-ruled” Democrats in the process: claiming they would do anything, including breaking the Senate rules (enter “Spartacus”) to stop Kavanaugh.
It worked. Kavanaugh is on the Court. Maybe McGahn’s not stupid either.
