The Commentariat -- November 2, 2016

Afternoon Update:

Trump Alt-Right Allies Plan Election-Day Mayhem. Ben Schreckinger of Politico: "Neo-Nazi leader Andrew Anglin plans to muster thousands of poll watchers across all 50 states. His partners at the alt-right website 'the Right Stuff' are touting plans to set up hidden cameras at polling places in Philadelphia and hand out liquor and marijuana in the city's 'ghetto' on Election Day to induce residents to stay home. The National Socialist Movement, various factions of the Ku Klux Klan and the white nationalist American Freedom Party all are deploying members to watch polls, either 'informally' or, they say, through the Trump campaign. The Oath Keepers, a group of former law enforcement and military members that often shows up in public heavily armed, is advising members to go undercover and conduct 'intelligence-gathering' at polling places, and Donald Trump ally Roger Stone is organizing his own exit polling, aiming to monitor thousands of precincts across the country." -- CW

** Gardiner Harris & Adam Goldman of the New York Times: "President Obama sharply criticized the decision by his F.B.I. director to alert Congress on Friday about the discovery of new emails related to the Hillary Clinton server case, implying that it violated investigative guidelines and trafficked in innuendo. 'We don't operate on incomplete information,' Mr. Obama said in an interview with NowThis News, broadcast Wednesday. 'We don't operate on leaks. We operate based on concrete decisions that are made. When this was investigated thoroughly the last time, the conclusion of the F.B.I., the conclusion of the Justice Department, the conclusion of repeated congressional investigations was that she had made some mistakes but that there wasn't anything there that was prosecutable,' Mr. Obama said." -- CW ...

... Jessie Hellmann of the Hill: "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) floated the possibility Wednesday that FBI Director James Comey could be one 'the casualties' of the 2016 election.... 'Maybe he's not in the right job,' Pelosi said to CNN. 'I think that we have to just get through this election and just see what the casualties are along the way.'" -- CW ...

... Josh Gerstein of Politico: "The FBI never asked Hillary Clinton's top aides to turn over all the computers and smartphones they used while Clinton was secretary of state, an omission that is now triggering questions from Republican lawmakers." CW Translation: We fucked up, so now we're obliged to fuck up the election. ...

... David Mack of BuzzFeed: "The teenage girl who allegedly received indecent messages from Anthony Weiner said she is 'upset' with FBI Director James Comey after she found out via the media that her case had been tied to the use of Hillary Clinton's private email server.... 'The FBI asked for me to speak to the media as little as possible. I have tried to stay quiet, but Comey has upset me,' the teenager told BuzzFeed News. 'The last thing that I wanted was to have this become political propaganda.'" -- CW

The Trumpster Hosts the Mobster. Michael Isikoff of Yahoo! News: "A newly uncovered video appears to contradict Donald Trump's claim that he never knew a high-stakes gambler who was banned from New Jersey casinos for alleged ties to organized crime. The reputed mob figure, Robert LiButti, can be seen standing alongside Trump in the front row of a 1988 'WrestleMania' match in Atlantic City, N.J.... Edith Creamer, [LiButti's daughter...,] also attended the event. 'We were his guests,' she told Yahoo News in a text message this week.... The video appears to lend new support to assertions Trump once had close relations with LiButti, who was banned from the state's casinos in 1991 because of his ties to Mafia boss John Gotti, then the chief of the Gambino crime syndicate. Separately, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission that same year levied $650,000 in fines against the Trump Plaza hotel over its dealings with LiButti, who gambled huge sums at the hotel's casino. LiButti died in 2014." CW: Maybe dead men tell no tales, but videotapes and daughters do.

Josh Gerstein: "Lawyers suing Donald Trump for fraud over his Trump University real-estate seminar program say his campaign trail statements -- including some alleged whoppers -- should be fair game at a civil trial set to start later this month. Last week, Trump's attorneys asked that all his comments connected to his presidential campaign be off limits in the class-action lawsuit, along with all discussion of what his legal team euphemistically called 'personal conduct accusations.'... 'Donald Trump's dizzying array of objectively false, contradictory, and self-defeating statements have left him so flummoxed he is demanding that the Court create a new category of immunity to protect him from himself,' the plaintiffs' attorneys wrote. 'As a key witness in a case about his deception of others, Trump's representations, acts (or lack thereof), and credibility will be among the most important issues for the jury to determine. Trump wants to rig the deck by hiding from the jury his own words.'" -- CW

Brian Stelter & Tom Kludt of CNN: "Hulk Hogan and the remnants of Gawker Media have struck a confidential settlement agreement, rewarding the wrestler with millions of dollars. 'After four years of litigation funded by a billionaire with a grudge going back even further, a settlement has been reached. The saga is over,' Gawker founder Nick Denton wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.... As part of the settlement, Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, will receive $31 million in cash, according to a court filing." -- CW

Allegra Kirkland of TPM: "A historically black church in Greenville, Mississippi was set on fire and vandalized with graffiti reading 'vote Trump' on Tuesday night. 'It is being investigated as a hate crime,' Greenville Mayor Errick Simmons told TPM on Wednesday...." -- CW

*****

** Dina Bass of Bloomberg: "Microsoft Corp. said a computer-hacking group that has previously targeted government agencies attacked its Windows software and Adobe Systems Inc.'s Flash program. The company will release a security patch for its operating system on Nov. 8, Windows chief Terry Myerson said Tuesday in a blog post on Microsoft's website. Users of Microsoft's Edge browser on the latest update to Windows 10 are protected from the flaw, the company said. The security exploit, by a group Microsoft calls Strontium, was discovered by Google's Threat Analysis Group and announced on Monday." CW: Several sites (here's one) recommended disabling Flash. I just uninstalled mine. I hope Adobe gets its fix up soon, as I need Flash to cover the election results since I don't have cable TV where I am. If you depend on Flash, at least make sure you have the latest update. If you're using Windows 10, Microsoft Edge is supposed to protect you.

Presidential Race

Nate Silver: "Trump remains an underdog, but no longer really a longshot: His Electoral College chances are 29 percent in our polls-only model -- his highest probability since Oct. 2 -- and 30 percent in polls-plus.... This isn't a secure map for Clinton at all." -- CW ...

... Evelyn Rupert of the Hill: "More than a quarter of Republicans who have already voted in Florida cast their ballots for ... Hillary Clinton, according to a new poll. A TargetSmart/William & Mary poll released Tuesday showed 28 percent of early Florida voters picked Clinton over ... Donald Trump.... The poll also showed Clinton ahead of Trump 48 to 40 percent overall, with a larger lead -- 55 to 37 percent -- among those who said they already voted." -- CW ...

... Matthew Burns of WRAL Raleigh: "With a week to go until Election Day, Republican Donald Trump has seized control of a tight presidential race in North Carolina, according to an exclusive WRAL News poll released Tuesday. SurveyUSA polled 659 people statewide Friday through Monday who have already cast their ballots or are likely to vote in the election and found Trump with a 51 to 44 percent lead over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton." -- CW

Matt Flegenheimer & Yamiche Alcindor of the New York Times: "Hillary Clinton moved on Tuesday to return the nation's focus to the character and behavior of Donald J. Trump, hoping to define the presidential race again as a referendum on her opponent after spending days in open conflict with the F.B.I.... Her remarks [in Dade City, Fla.,] signaled the campaign's direction in the homestretch: a barrage intended to disqualify Mr. Trump with brutal efficiency.... Mr. Trump, campaigning on Tuesday in Pennsylvania before Mrs. Clinton took the stage, made clear his intent to keep the pressure high. He fused a policy speech, ostensibly on health care, with his more typical broadsides against Mrs. Clinton, briefly holding forth on his announced subject, the Affordable Care Act, but quickly meandering to other topics." -- CW ...

... John Wagner, et al., of the Washington Post: "... Hillary Clinton made her most direct appeal yet Tuesday for women to reject the candidacy of Donald Trump, recounting at length a history of degrading statements about women made by her Republican rival, as well as allegations of unwanted sexual advances.... Trump, meanwhile, concentrated his rhetoric of the day on the Affordable Care Act, saying he would call a 'special session' of Congress to repeal and replace the law that he says is causing rising health insurance premiums, an issue he is trying to weigh down the Clinton campaign with." -- CW ...

     ... CW: A "special session"? Really? Paul Waldman: Well, yes, "apparently because he has no idea how Congress works and thinks it's like the Texas legislature that only meets for a short time every two years." -- CW

Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "Speaking to a boisterous crowd at Capital University [in Columbus, Ohio,] Tuesday, President Obama told attendees they need to be as galvanized about the prospect of electing Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton as they are about cashing in on a free Taco Bell offer.... Before addressing the main crowd, Obama dropped by the overflow room, where hundreds of supporters screamed and snapped photos on their phones as he told them this election 'is too important to sit out.'... During his speech, Obama joked repeatedly with the crowd, making fun of Trump for suggesting he identifies with working Americans.... Trump never donned a baseball hat, Obama joked, 'until he started selling them.'" -- CW

Ashley Alman of the Huffington Post: "Vice President Joe Biden ... told attendees at a rally [in Charlotte, N.C.,] that the whole world is watching the presidential race, and 'what happens here matters to them.' He chastised Trump for his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.... [He also said,] 'Can you imagine any president in the history of the United States of America, all the way from George Washington to Barack Obama, assuming the technology existed, can you imagine any president getting up at 3:30 in the morning and tweets vitriol, attacking a woman for her weight? Talks about women being pigs?" -- CW

Halimah Abdullah of NBC News: "Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey met Monday to discuss reviewing as swiftly as possible the newly discovered emails that could be related to their probe of Hillary Clinton's private server, officials told NBC News. Lynch and Comey spoke following their regular national security meeting at the Justice Department. During the meeting, which FBI and Justice Department officials described as cordial, Lynch expressed her continued confidence in Comey, one Justice Department official told NBC News.... Officials tell NBC News the process of combing through the emails [in Huma Abedin's folder] is ongoing and is taking longer than originally anticipated.It is likely that a relatively small number will be related to that case, a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation into emails related to the probe of Clinton's private server told NBC News on Monday." -- CW ...

... Now is the time for the New York Times to come to the aid of the Republican party....

     ... If yesterday's story clearing Trump of "inappropriate" ties to Russia weren't enough -- it was -- today's story fingers Clinton for Clinton Foundation wrongdoings. Read on ...

... Matt Apuzzo, et al., of the New York Times: "The F.B.I. and Justice Department faced a hard decision in two investigations this past summer that had the potential to rock the presidential election. The first case involved Donald J. Trump's campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and secretive business dealings in Ukraine. The second focused on Hillary Clinton's relationships with donors to her family foundation. At the urging of the Justice Department, the F.B.I. agreed not to issue subpoenas or take other steps that would make the cases public so close to the election, according to federal law enforcement officials. Against this backdrop, the decision of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to send a letter to Congress last week about a renewed inquiry concerning Mrs. Clinton's emails is not just a departure from longstanding policy; it has plunged the F.B.I. and the Justice Department directly into the election, precisely what Justice officials were trying to avoid." ...

     ... CW: Wait till you read the "evidence" the FBI gathered on the Clinton Foundation: "The investigation, based in New York..., was based mostly on information that had surfaced in news stories and the book 'Clinton Cash.'" Right. Because news stories produced zero evidence of wrongdoing -- all they had was headline innuendo, and Clinton Cash is an "error-filled" right-wing screed. But that's okay, NYT, slime Hillary with it in your lede graf. ...

... WTF? Tom LoBianco of CNN: "The FBI on Tuesday -- one week from Election Day -- released heavily redacted files from its 2001 investigation of President Bill Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich.... The release was posted on Twitter by @FBIRecordsVault, an account that posts material from FOIA requests on subjects of public interest.... Prior to Sunday, however, the account hadn't tweeted since October 2015.... Bill Clinton pardoned Rich on his last day in office, one of his most controversial decisions as president. 'Absent a (Freedom of Information Act) litigation deadline, this is odd. Will FBI be posting docs on Trump's housing discrimination in '70s?' tweeted Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Clinton's campaign." Comey had pursued Rich when Rich was a fugitive from the U.S. Thanks to BobbyLee for the heads-up. -- CW: Looking forward to seeing a link to the Starr Report prominently placed on the FBI's home page. And more pix of the blue dress, please. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... It Gets Worse. Dara Lind of Vox: "... federal investigators ultimately concluded that the Clintons hadn't done anything wrong. That federal investigation, incidentally, was supervised by then-US Attorney James Comey.... The problem is that the documents the FBI just released don't actually establish that there wasn't any wrongdoing -- because they don't cover the end of the investigation. This is 'part 1' of the document dump (presumably other parts will be released later). Instead, what we get are 64 entirely redacted pages, followed by 100 heavily redacted pages -- with the exception of passages outlining Clinton's pardon of Rich, and saying 'it appears that the required pardon standards and procedures were not followed.'" CW: The unusual release is just a coincidence, I'm sure. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Rosalind Helderman, et al., of the Washington Post: "For the second time in five days, the FBI had moved exactly to the place the nation's chief law enforcement agency usually strives to avoid: smack in the middle of partisan fighting over a national election, just days before the vote. The publication of the files related to the Marc Rich pardon inquiry, which agency officials said was posted automatically in response to pending public records requests, came as the Clinton campaign and Democratic lawmakers continued to fume over FBI Director James B. Comey's decision with less than two weeks before the election to announce that he was effectively resuming a review of Hillary Clinton's email practices.... FBI officials said the timing [of the Rich pardon release] was coincidental.... As of Tuesday morning, an official said, investigators had found no sign that the computer contained 'new and bigger' evidence about Clinton." -- CW ...

... Charles Pierce: "Clearly, there are FBI sources dissatisfied with decisions made not to keep investigating Hillary Rodham Clinton's e-mails and/or the Clinton Foundation. They're talking. There also seem to be FBI sources who are frustrated with what they see as the too-close-by-half relationship of the Donald Trump campaign to Russian oligarchs up to and including Vladimir Putin. They're talking. And there are people completely outraged by the bungling attempts by FBI director James Comey to involve himself so directly in the presidential election, and they're all talking. The FBI, in short, is out of control.... They can do more damage by accident than any terrorist can do on purpose. Like it or not, and I don't, the FBI is a player in the 2016 presidential election.... This is damage that will last." -- CW ...

... Greg Sargent: “Donald Trump has run what is easily the most dishonest presidential campaign of our lifetimes.... Yet in spite of this, today's Post tracking poll finds that Trump holds an edge of eight points over Clinton on the question of which candidate is viewed as the more honest and trustworthy one.... Just look at this new ad that the Trump campaign rolled out this morning.... It repeats a barrage of charges about the Clinton Foundation and supposed pay-to-play, and then tacks on the claim about the FBI, as if she's being just investigated for general corruption, with the details not mattering in the least.... The point is that the vagueness of Comey's letter is precisely what made it possible for Trump and Republicans to hype the precise significance of the new discovery into something much greater than the sum of the known facts.... Meanwhile, the media played a role here, too." Includes ad. -- CW ...

... Dan Merica of CNN: "Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton's longtime -- and arguably closest -- aide, has stepped off the campaign trail in the wake of the FBI's announcement last week that it was investigating thousands of emails found on a laptop shared by her and her estranged husband, Anthony Weiner.... A Clinton aide said Tuesday that Abedin was working from the campaign headquarters in Brooklyn." -- CW

Margaret Hartmann of New York: "Libertarian vice-presidential nominee Bill Weld says he thinks running mate Gary Johnson would make a good president, and he still has campaign events scheduled through Election Day. But with just one week to go in the election, he's devoting an awful lot of time to explaining why voters should support Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Tuesday night on The Rachel Maddow Show, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts gave his most pro-Clinton interview yet, saying, 'I'm here vouching for Mrs. Clinton, and I think it's high time somebody did.'" -- CW

Frank Bruni: Hillary Clinton's "journey doesn't only reflect the advances of women. It has also been shaped by the appetites and anxieties of men.... And it has exposed gross male behavior while prompting fresh examples of it. Prominent men on the edge of obsolescence have never acted so wounded, so angry, so desperate. Yes, Newt Gingrich, I'm looking at you.... Donald Trump's candidacy is an unalloyed expression of male id: Yield to me, worship me, never question the expanse of my reach, do not impugn the majesty of my endowment. It's less a political mission than a hormonal one, and it harks back to an era when women were arm candy.... Clinton gets under Trump's skin in a way that male rivals didn't. In that sense, her gender is not a weakness but a weapon. It's about time." -- CW

Chris Massie of CNN: "Ed Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania and former Democratic National Committee chairman, said Tuesday that Hillary Clinton's campaign was making a mistake by attacking FBI director James Comey over how he handled recent developments into the investigation of Clinton's private server." CW: Could somebody please take this old boy to a communications-free location? He's become a danger to democracy.

Louis Nelson of Politico: "Donald Trump has a message for voters in certain states who already cast a ballot for Hillary Clinton and are beginning to feel buyer's remorse: it's not too late. 'You can change your vote in six states,' Trump wrote on Twitter Wednesday morning. 'So, now that you see that Hillary was a big mistake, change your vote to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!'... Trump made that case in person Tuesday night in Wisconsin, a state where early or absentee voters can cast a ballot up to three times, canceling their previous one. Other states, including Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut and Mississippi have similar laws." -- CW

Washington Post Editors: "'I MEAN, who does that?' That was the question posed by Hillary Clinton at the last presidential debate about Donald Trump's use of charitable funds to purchase a six-foot portrait of himself.... It is someone who uses $264,631 of foundation funds to renovate a fountain outside one of his luxury hotels. It is someone who pulls a bait-and-switch on a public school chess team. It is someone who shamelessly hogs the spotlight at a charity function for sick children without having given a dime. Mr. Trump's approach to charity is that of a charlatan -- further evidence of a lack of character that makes the Republican nominee uniquely unfit for the Oval Office." -- CW ...

... The Tax Cheat, Ctd. New York Times Editors: "The latest disclosures about Mr. Trump's taxes ... further undercut the argument that he is uniquely qualified to fix what he has called a rigged system. Why would a man who has spent most of his professional life avoiding the shared responsibility of taxes all of a sudden care about helping others, especially those less fortunate? The truth is, of course, that he has no intention of doing so; according to a recent analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, Mr. Trump's tax proposals would confer by far the greatest advantages on the wealthiest Americans." -- CW ...

... Who's Corrupt? Digby, in Salon: "As Media Matters laid out on Monday, Trump is currently facing 75 different civil lawsuits for matters including fraud, breach of contract, nonpayment, sexual harassment and defamation. He has three pending Trump University fraud suits and is suspected of perpetrating a 'pay-for-play' scheme with Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and possibly others to shut down a state investigation into the same fraudulent enterprise.... Trump has dealings with shady characters in various countries around the world that would greatly complicate American national security and its relationship to its allies. At the moment he has refused to give any information about his foreign holdings and media outlets have been strangely passive about asking him about it.... How is it possible that Clinton's email brouhaha has marked her as thoroughly corrupt and dishonest, while Trump's monumentally nefarious past, present and future are overlooked?" -- CW

Dana Milbank: Thanks to Roger Stone, Alex Jones & Co., the "Bill Clinton's black son" nonsense is back. "If past is prologue, Trump will, in this final week of the campaign, find a way to mention the story of Bill Clinton's love child. Stone to Jones to [Steve] Bannon to Trump: This is how Trump legitimizes the fringe. There's nothing furtive about this vast, right-wing conspiracy: Trump relies on the private advice of Stone, Jones and Bannon, and he has made their conspiracy theories mainstream." -- CW

Adam Raymond of New York: "... the Trump Organization already owns three key URLs that could point to a future in the media business: TrumpTelevision.com, TrumpNetwork.com, and TheTrumpNetwork.com. The latter two addresses once hosted content for a multilevel marketing company that sold vitamins and licensed Trump's name to help dupe people into joining. TrumpTelevision.com, on the other hand, appears to have never hosted anything, according to Yahoo. The Trump Organization has owned these sites since at least December 2012, but they've taken on a new relevance in light of Trump's rumored television ambitions." -- CW

The Appeasers. Adam Edelman of the New York Daily News: "House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) have already cast their votes for Donald Trump, they said Tuesday." -- CW

Meet Your Trump Surrogates. Jordan Rudner & Lauren McGaughy of the Dallas Morning News: "Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller blamed hackers and then an overzealous staffer for a tweet from his campaign account that called Hillary Clinton a 'c[unt].' The tweet referred to presidential poll results in Pennsylvania: 'TRUMP 44' and 'C[unt] 43.'... Last year, [Miller] shared a post calling for the United States to bomb 'the Muslim world,' although he later attributed the post to a staffer. On another occasion, he compared Syrian refugees to rattlesnakes. Miller, who in recent days has emerged as one of Trump's most vocal Texas surrogates, has been tweeting rapidly for the last 24 hours, sharing poll results that show Clinton trailing Trump and sharing rumors about FBI Director James Comey.... Last week, Miller mocked the Clinton team in another tweet for being overly cautious about the Democratic candidate's Twitter account. 'My thoughts are my own,' he wrote." CW: Now that I believe. ...

... Patrick Svitek of the Texas Tribune: "In recent days, [Sid] Miller has become Trump's go-to guy when it comes to arguing that the presidential race in Texas and elsewhere is not exactly what polls say it is, an on-message ally in Trump's pursuit to convince Americans it ain't over 'til it's over.... And he seems to have seriously caught the attention of the nominee, who has not only shouted him out at multiple rallies but also personally sent him an email thanking him for his help." CW: Anyone who calls his opponent a cunt is a Trump kind of guy.

Meet Your Trump Supporters, Ctd. Peter Holley of the Washington Post: "Among the small number of American newspapers that have embraced Donald Trump's campaign, there is one, in particular, that stands out. It is called the Crusader -- and it is one of the prominent newspapers of the Ku Klux Klan. Under the banner 'Make America Great Again,' the paper's current issue devoted its entire front page to a lengthy defense of Trump's message -- an embrace some have labeled a de facto endorsement." -- CW

Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha. Brian Stelter of CNN: "Radio host Sean Hannity on Tuesday embraced a piece of fake news about President Obama deleting endorsements of Hillary Clinton from his Twitter account. Hannity used the made-up news to claim that President Obama's legacy might be 'jail.' The deleted-tweets claim could have been disproven by a quick Twitter search. Later in the day, Hannity tweeted a correction and apologized." ...

     ... CW: Maybe we should mention here that besides being a radical confederate assbag, Hannity is a stupid, radical confederate assbag. Even the lamest of lamebrains would question a story about Obama's de-endorsing Clinton on a day he was out campaigning for her. ...

... CW: What a nice roundup: A Trump-approved guy who calls Clinton a cunt, the KKK & the Dumbest Man in Media. There's your Trump base: misogynists, foaming-at-the-mouth racists/xenophobes/anti-Semites & ignoramuses.

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Michael Calderone of the Huffington Post: " CNN president Jeff Zucker described former network commentator Donna Brazile's interactions with the Clinton campaign as 'unethical' and 'disgusting' during a Tuesday editorial meeting, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.... On Monday, CNN announced Brazile resigned on Oct. 14 ― three days after the first email surfaced ― and reiterated that the network hadn't provided her with questions.... On Monday, Brazile referred questions back to her Oct. 11 statement in which she said that 'as it pertains to the CNN Debates, I never had access to questions and would never have shared them with the candidates if I did.' The revelations that Brazile tipped off the Clinton campaign has drawn attention to the common practice of networks hiring partisan operatives whose loyalties may be more to their parties or desired candidates than the audience." Corey Lewandowski. -- CW

Congressional Races

Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker: "... one simple factor that [has created gridlock] has received [little] attention: partisan control of the House and Senate is up for grabs more often than in previous eras. When the party that does not control the White House has a realistic chance of winning a congressional majority in one or both chambers, the incentives for House members and senators to cooperate with the President of the opposing party plummet. When that happens, all of the familiar elements of the permanent campaign -- fund-raising, releasing attack ads, using Congress to highlight ideological differences -- become more important, while serious efforts at legislating diminish." -- CW

Election News & Views

Laura McCrystal & Angela Couloumbis of Philly.com: "Pennsylvania state police have raided a Delaware County political field office seeking evidence of possible voter-registration fraud, according to court records. In a warrant filed late last week in County Court, investigators said they were seeking documents, financial information, and lists of employees at the Norwood office of FieldWorks LLC, a national organization that often does street work for Democrats, records show.... FieldWorks describes itself as 'a nationally recognized grassroots organizing firm founded to help progressive organizations, advocacy groups, and members of the Democratic family take their public engagement and electoral strategies to the next level.'" -- CW

** "Here's What Happens When You Forget to Vote." Brian Beutler: "... now, we're seeing leaks to news outlets from FBI officials that reflect generously on Donald Trump and negatively on Clinton. The New York Times' FBI sources, for instance, are at pains to insulate Trump from politically damaging evidence that he and Russian intelligence and propaganda outlets are operating symbiotically. And this Wall Street Journal article details an intense appetite, in FBI field offices across the country, for pursuing every possible investigative avenue related to Clinton.... There is a through line connecting all of these inconsistent election-season dynamics. It extends all the way back to 2010, when complacent Democrats didn't show up to vote, handing control of the House to the Republican Party, and makes a stopover in 2014, when many of these same complacent Democrats didn't show up again, and ceded the Senate to Republicans as well.... The only way for Democratic voters to tidy this up, and put safeguards in place to prevent similar outrages going forward, is to vote in overwhelming numbers and retake Congress altogether." -- CW

Other News & Views

Sam Levin of the Guardian: "Barack Obama has suggested the Dakota Access pipeline could be rerouted around sacred Native American lands in comments that are the president's first on the controversial oil project since police arrested hundreds of indigenous protesters during violent clashes. After months of pleas from activists in North Dakota to stop construction of a pipeline that the Standing Rock tribe says could contaminate its water supply and threaten its cultural heritage, Obama said in an interview released on Tuesday night that the government was 'going to let it play out for several more weeks and determine whether or not this can be resolved in a way that I think is properly attentive to the traditions of the first Americans'." -- CW

Matt Apuzzo & Adam Goldman of the New York Times: "A federal judge has rejected the settlement of a lawsuit stemming from the New York Police Department's surveillance of Muslims, saying the proposed deal does not provide enough oversight of an agency that he said had shown a 'systemic inclination' to ignore rules protecting free speech and religion." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

What Is Wrong with Us? Liam Stack & Christine Hauser of the New York Times: "Adam Crapser was adopted from South Korea nearly four decades ago, but today he languishes in an immigration detention center in Washington State awaiting deportation because his American parents never filed citizenship paperwork for him.... According to the Adoptee Rights Campaign, an advocacy group, there are about 35,000 people in the United States who were adopted by American couples as children but who do not have citizenship." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times: "The Roman Catholic Church's teaching that women cannot be ordained as priests is likely to last forever, Pope Francis said on Tuesday as he flew back to Rome from Sweden. Francis had traveled to Sweden for a historic ceremony commemorating the year leading up to the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. He was embraced at an ecumenical church service by the primate of the Church of Sweden, Archbishop Antje Jackelen, who is a woman." -- CW

Beyond the Beltway

There Are Still Heroes. Travis Andrews of the Washington Post: A San Francisco cop, Sgt. John Cagney, would not give up on finding men who in 2014 brutally beat to death a disabled homeless man for the fun of it. This year he arrested two of the three (alleged) murderers.

Time for Another Armed Standoff. Kevin Sullivan & Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "Less than a week after being acquitted at a trial over last winter's armed occupation of an Oregon federal wildlife refuge, Nevada rancher Ryan Bundy said another protest action will be justified if President Obama goes ahead with plans to create a huge national monument abutting the Bundy family's ranch here." CW: Thanks, Oregon jurors!

News Ledes

ESPN: "After a century and eight years, the Chicago Cubs are world champions, and they did it by surviving a game for the ages, a contest in which they finally slew demons that refused to be exorcised. The baseball facts matter, especially these, though they hardly do justice to the scale of the outcome or the level of drama that unfolded. In what seemed like the most heartbreaking yet of nightmarish Cubs postseason games gone wrong, Ben Zobrist's 10th-inning double off Bryan Shaw broke a 6-6 tie, and the Cubs outlasted the Cleveland Indians 8-7 in a title-winning, drought-breaking, impossible-to-believe Game 7 of the World Series on Wednesday." -- CW

Washington Post: "Two police officers in central Iowa were shot and killed early Wednesday morning in a pair of 'ambush-style attacks,' the Des Moines Police Department said. Police said both officers were sitting in their squad cars when they were killed. Authorities on Wednesday morning named Scott Michael Greene, 46, as the suspect in the shootings that killed the officers from Des Moines and Urbandale, a nearby city." -- CW ...

     ... Des Moines Register Update: "The suspect in Wednesday's killings was removed [by police] from Urbandale High School's football stadium Oct. 14 after he claimed his Confederate flag was stolen by other spectators, authorities said. The stadium is at the intersection where one of officers was found dead early Wednesday." Clarke apparently took videos of parts of the incident. In the videos, he accused the police of abuse & of violating his civil rights." -- CW

The Commentariat -- November 1, 2016

Afternoonish Update:

WTF? Tom LoBianco of CNN: "The FBI on Tuesday -- one week from Election Day -- released heavily redacted files from its 2001 investigation of President Bill Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich.... The release was posted on Twitter by @FBIRecordsVault, an account that posts material from FOIA requests on subjects of public interest.... Prior to Sunday, however, the account hadn't tweeted since October 2015.... Bill Clinton pardoned Rich on his last day in office, one of his most controversial decisions as president. 'Absent a (Freedom of Information Act) litigation deadline, this is odd. Will FBI be posting docs on Trump's housing discrimination in '70s?' tweeted Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Clinton's campaign." Comey had pursued Rich when Rich was a fugitive from the U.S. Thanks to BobbyLee for the heads-up. -- CW: Looking forward to seeing a link to the Starr Report prominently placed on the FBI's home page. And more pix of the blue dress, please. ...

... It Gets Worse. Dara Lind of Vox: "... federal investigators ultimately concluded that the Clintons hadn't done anything wrong. That federal investigation, incidentally, was supervised by then-US Attorney James Comey.... The problem is that the documents the FBI just released don't actually establish that there wasn't any wrongdoing -- because they don't cover the end of the investigation. This is 'part 1' of the document dump (presumably other parts will be released later). Instead, what we get are 64 entirely redacted pages, followed by 100 heavily redacted pages -- with the exception of passages outlining Clinton's pardon of Rich, and saying 'it appears that the required pardon standards and procedures were not followed.'" CW: The unusual release is just a coincidence, I'm sure.

Matt Apuzzo & Adam Goldman of the New York Times: "A federal judge has rejected the settlement of a lawsuit stemming from the New York Police Department's surveillance of Muslims, saying the proposed deal does not provide enough oversight of an agency that he said had shown a 'systemic inclination' to ignore rules protecting free speech and religion." -- CW

What Is Wrong with Us? Liam Stack & Christine Hauser of the New York Times: "Adam Crapser was adopted from South Korea nearly four decades ago, but today he languishes in an immigration detention center in Washington State awaiting deportation because his American parents never filed citizenship paperwork for him.... According to the Adoptee Rights Campaign, an advocacy group, there are about 35,000 people in the United States who were adopted by American couples as children but who do not have citizenship." -- CW

*****

Presidential Race

** "Comey's Blunder Could Make Trump President." Jonathan Chait of New York: "We don't know yet if James Comey's surprise Friday announcement will reshape the race in a similar fashion. But it is entirely plausible to believe that it will. He has revived Clinton's ethics and alleged illegality as the front-and-center question before the voters in the race's final week. To assume Comey's statement will have no effect, as many hopeful Clinton supporters do, is to assume the voters will respond in a way they have not responded before.... It is vanishingly unlikely that Comey had any intent to sway the electorate." --safari ...

... Mark Hensch of the Hill: "... Donald Trump has overtaken ... Hillary Clinton for the first time since May in the ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll. Trump has a 1-point lead over the former secretary of State, 46 to 45 percent, as of Tuesday morning.... Clinton led Trump by 1 point, 46 percent to 45 percent, in the same poll over the weekend. She held a 12-point lead, 50 to 38 percent, in the poll just more than one week ago." Emphasis added. -- CW ...

... Nate Silver: "We got another set of mixed results on Monday on whether the election has tightened further as a result of FBI Director James Comey's letter to Congress about Hillary Clinton's email server. Overall, however, this is a fairly negative set of data for Clinton." -- CW ...

... Greg Sargent speculates on what may happen if Clinton wins a close election. -- CW ...

... Ruby Cramer of BuzzFeed: "Eight days from the election, Hillary Clinton's closing argument now includes a brief aside: 'We are about to enter the final week of this election.... But let me start with this: I am sure a lot of you may be asking what this new email story is about...;.' Kicking off the first of two rallies here in Ohio, during one of her final swings through the crucial battleground state, Clinton diverted from a speech targeting Donald Trump's foreign policy credentials to address the new headlines about the FBI and her private email server." -- CW ...

... John Wagner, et al., of the Washington Post: "Top aides for Hillary Clinton on Monday accused FBI Director James Comey of a 'double standard' in his handling of the investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server as secretary of state. Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook called on Comey to explain why he rushed to disclose new information about the status of the investigation into Clinton, while reportedly opposing, on the grounds that it would be too close to the election, a public statement by the FBI that the Russian government was seeking the influence the presidential race. 'It is impossible to view this as anything less than a blatant double standard,' Mook said.... Clinton's press secretary, Brian Fallon, said that Comey 'set a standard for narrating a play-by-play for matters involving Hillary Clinton,' but has not set the same standard for inquiries into Russian hacking and potential ties to Republican nominee Donald Trump's campaign. 'Director Comey owes the public an explanation for this inconsistency,' Fallon said." -- CW ...

     ... Patrick Caldwell of Mother Jones elaborates on the Clinton campaign's conference call with reporters." -- CW ...

     ... ** The Guardian's story, by Dan Roberts & others, is here. ...

... ** Eamon Javers of CNBC: "FBI Director James Comey argued privately that it was too close to Election Day for the United States government to name Russia as meddling in the U.S. election and ultimately ensured that the FBI's name was not on the document that the U.S. government put out, a former bureau official tells CNBC. The official said some government insiders are perplexed as to why Comey would have election timing concerns with the Russian disclosure but not with the Huma Abedin email discovery disclosure he made Friday. In the end, the Department of Homeland Security and The Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued the statement on Oct. 7." --safari (See also the WashPo's expanded story, linked below, by Sari Horwitz, et al.,.) ...

It's important that [federal] authorities are tempered by longstanding practice and norms that limit public discussion of facts that are collected in the context of those investigations.... And there are a lot of good reasons for that. The president believes that it's important for those guidelines and norms to be followed. -- John Earnest, press briefing, Monday ...

... Michael Schmidt, et al., of the New York Times: "The F.B.I. on Monday began loading a trove of emails belonging to a top aide to Hillary Clinton into a special computer program that would allow bureau analysts to determine whether they contain classified information, law enforcement officials said.... Whether they will be able to complete their review by Election Day is unclear.... Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said on Monday that the White House did not have an official position on Mr. Comey's decision to alert Congress. But Mr. Earnest came close to suggesting that President Obama saw Mr. Comey's decision as problematic." CW: Nice to know Comey gets to drop an election-altering bombshell on Friday, but he doesn't put his agents on weekend OT to clean up his mess, even as millions of Americans are voting. ...

... Sari Horwitz & Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post: "The Justice Department sent a brief letter to six lawmakers Monday, saying that the department will work closely with the FBI to take 'appropriate steps as expeditiously as possible' in the renewed investigation into emails potentially tied to Hillary Clinton's private email server. The three paragraph letter written by Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs Peter J. Kadzik said that the department and FBI will 'dedicate all necessary resources' to the investigation, but provided no further details about the contents of the emails or whether they are significant. The short statement on behalf of Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and FBI Director James B. Comey represents an effort by the Justice Department to stabilize and assert control over a politically explosive situation....' -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... The story has been expanded. "Justice officials said there will be no further statements or news conferences about the Clinton investigation until it is completed.... Comey’s disclosure about the Clinton probe is particularly striking, national security officials said, because he had argued against the administration publicly accusing Russia of trying to meddle in the 2016 election as a move that would seem too political too close to Election Day." -- CW ...

     ... Ed Kilgore: "... it will be hard to unring that bell [Comey rang Friday], just as it will be difficult for Comey to make it sound like he had no choice but to toss a stink bomb into the presidential campaign in late October." -- CW ...

     ... Betty Cracker of Balloon Juice: "Comey is either willfully injecting himself into the presidential race, too chickenshit to stand up to partisan dickheads like Jason Chaffetz and rogue agents who allegedly threatened to leak investigation details or lacks the judgment to comprehend the effect of his actions. Whether through partisan hackery, cravenness or naiveté, he's not fit to lead the FBI." -- CW ...

... Amber Phillips of the Washington Post: "Comey's GOP critics seem to be piling up by the hour. On Monday, one of the most conservative members of Congress criticized Comey's timing. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) chairs the hard-line conservative House Freedom Caucus and has been agitating for Clinton to be investigated for perjury related to her use of a private email server. But he told told Fox News Radio: 'I think this was probably not the right thing for Comey to do -- the protocol here -- to come out this close to an election, but this whole case has been mishandled, and now it is what it is.' Jordan was the first sitting GOP member of Congress to publicly criticize Comey, a Republican appointed by President Obama. But within minutes, others joined him." -- CW

... New York Daily News Editors: "FBI Director James Comey's democracy-bending decision to inform America, 11 days before its presidential election, that the bureau is digging into a trove of additional emails demands the highest condemnation. And he must resign." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... New York Times Editors: "... thanks to Mr. Comey's breathtakingly rash and irresponsible decision, the Justice Department and F.B.I. are scrambling to process hundreds of thousands of emails to determine whether there is anything relevant in them before Nov. 8 -- all as the country stands by in suspense. This is not how federal investigations are conducted. In claiming to stand outside politics, Mr. Comey has instead created the hottest political football of the 2016 election.... In an election that has featured the obliteration of one long-accepted political or social norm after another, it is sadly fitting that one of the final and perhaps most consequential acts was to undermine the American people's trust in the nation's top law enforcement agencies." -- CW ...

... Dana Milbank: Comey has clammed up. So "let's imagine what a fully transparent Comey might say about the mess he made." Pretty funny. "What I would like to do today is tell you three things: what we did, why we did it and what we found. The answers: 'We screwed up,' 'I was trying to cover my backside' and 'Darned if I know.'" -- CW ...

... Conservative WashPo columnist Jennifer Rubin reads Comey the riot act. She even spells out what Comey could have written if he really felt such a compelling need to suck up to Congressional Republicans. As Kevin Drum points out, linked below, even crazy winger Joe Walsh tweeted that "what [Comey] just did 11 days b4 the election is wrong & unfair to Hillary." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... J. Edgar Comey. Digby in Salon: Comey has a history of bad acts going back to the Whitewater witch hunt. "... it wasn't long [after his appointment as director] until he showed that he wasn't going to adhere to the normal rules. Indeed, Comey is the first FBI director since J. Edgar Hoover to flout institutional processes, ignore scientific data and independently wield his authority however he chooses. Since taking office on 2013 he’s battled with the executive branch on sentencing reform and how to handle the Black Lives Matter movement. He's defied the White House in its attempt to create new policy on cybersecurity issues. He's gone around the country ginning up hysteria about ISIS infiltration in small-town America. And then there's the Clinton email investigation.... Law enforcement and justice officials have for years worried that his independent, authoritarian style was dangerous, making him politically unassailable in the same way that Hoover was back in the bad old days.... Unfortunately the damage [Comey did Friday] is already done. It's a mess that can be only cleaned up with Comey's resignation." -- CW ...

... Nancy LeTourneau of the Washington Monthly: "... we are witnessing the politicization of the FBI -- something that is extremely dangerous to our Constitutional order. What Comey (and AG Loretta Lynch) are now facing is something very similar to what has come to be known as the 'Saturday Night Massacre' when Attorney General Elliot Richardson resigned rather than politicize the Watergate investigation. The difference is that in that case, the pressure came from the president rather than rogue elements in the FBI. This goes way beyond what is/isn't contained in these new emails. That is why the focus has shifted from Hillary Clinton to Comey's FBI." -- CW ...

... CW BTW: If I were a minority voter, I would identify in Comey's stunt exactly what law enforcement does to me every day: rushes to cast suspicion on me because of who I am. ...

... AND Robin Lakoff, in a Time op-ed: "Emailgate is a bitch hunt, but the target is not Hillary Clinton. It's us. The only reason the whole email flap has legs is because the candidate is female. Can you imagine this happening to a man? Clinton is guilty of SWF (Speaking While Female), and emailgate is just a reminder to us all that she has no business doing what she's doing and must be punished, for the sake of all decent women everywhere.... James Comey ... has repeatedly talked down to Clinton, admonishing her as a bad parent would a 5-year-old. He has accused her of 'poor judgment' and called her use of a private email server 'extremely careless.'... If the candidate were male, there would be no scolding and no 'scandal.'" -- CW ...

... CW: I don't know how Lakoff could write that. After all, the reason we're in this mess now is that Jim Comey was not about to listen to what a black woman told him to do just because the black woman was, you know,, his boss.

Hadas Gold of Politico: "CNN says it is 'completely uncomfortable' with hacked emails showing former contributor and interim DNC chair Donna Brazile sharing questions with the Clinton campaign before a debate and a town hall during the Democratic primary, and has accepted her resignation. Hacked emails posted by WikiLeaks show Brazile, whose CNN contract was suspended when she became interim DNC chair over the summer, sharing with the Clinton campaign a question that would be posed to Hillary Clinton before the March CNN Democratic debate in Flint, and sharing with the campaign a possible question prior to a CNN town hall also in March." CW: In her story, Gold doesn't bother to repeat what she herself has reported before: that Brazile denied giving the Clinton campaign a heads-up on questions and claimed she never had access to the questions in the first place. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... CW Update: I was wrong about Gold's report. In earlier reporting, she nailed Brazile for lying. Brazile's denial is bull.

... Michael Grynbaum's New York Times story makes it seem Brazile did in fact leak questions to the Clinton campaign, right down to the description of the voter who would ask the question. -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Tim Hains of Real Clear Politics: "At a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Donald Trump comments on the latest twist in the Hillary Clinton email saga. 'Thank you, Huma,' he declared to Hillary Clinton's top aide Huma Abedin. 'Good job, Huma.' To her husband he said: 'Thank you, Anthony Weiner!' '650,000 emails. You know what I call that? That's the motherlode,' he said about the emails discovered by the FBI on a computer owned by Anthony Weiner." -- CW

** The Biggest Tax Cheat. David Barstow, et al., of the New York Times: "Stretching the Law Beyond Recognition." Donald J. Trump proudly acknowledges he did not pay a dime in federal income taxes for years on end. He insists he merely exploited tax loopholes legally available to any billionaire -- loopholes he says Hillary Clinton failed to close during her years in the United States Senate.... But newly obtained documents show that in the early 1990s, as he scrambled to stave off financial ruin, Mr. Trump avoided reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxable income by using a tax avoidance maneuver so legally dubious his own lawyers advised him that the Internal Revenue Service would most likely declare it improper if he were audited. Thanks to this one maneuver, which was later outlawed by Congress, Mr. Trump potentially escaped paying tens of millions of dollars in federal personal income taxes. It is impossible to know for sure because Mr. Trump has declined to release his tax returns, or even a summary of his returns, breaking a practice followed by every Republican and Democratic presidential candidate for more than four decades." Read on. -- CW

** Ken Dilanian, et al., of NBC News: "The FBI has been conducting a preliminary inquiry into Donald Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort's foreign business connections, law enforcement and intelligence sources told NBC News Monday. Word of the inquiry, which has not blossomed into a full-blown criminal investigation, comes just days after FBI Director James Comey's disclosure that his agency is examining a new batch of emails connected to an aide to Hillary Clinton. And it comes a day after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid criticized Comey's revelation and asserted that Comey possesses 'explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government.'" CW: Of course, Comey is not talking about that. At all. Because that would be wrong. ...

... David Corn of Mother Jones: "... a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence tells Mother Jones that in recent months he provided the bureau with memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump -- and that the FBI requested more information from him.... A senior US government official not involved in this case but familiar with the former spy tells Mother Jones that he has been a credible source with a proven record of providing reliable, sensitive, and important information to the US government." Part of the spy's report to the FBI reads, "Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance." -- CW ...

... Hunter of Daily Kos: "Slate's Franklin Foer is reporting that computer experts say they've detected something very, very odd: A computer registered to Donald Trump's company that seems to have been set up to send and receive emails exclusively from a Russian bank." CW: I've linked to Hunter's post because Foer's is long & technical. You'll find it here. ...

... Kevin Drum credits this sudden interest in Trumpy the Putin Puppet to Harry Reid's "A+ troll" of Comey. ...

... BUT. FBI Immediately Exonerates Trump. Eric Lichtblau & Steven Myers of the New York Times: "For much of the summer, the F.B.I. pursued a widening investigation into a Russian role in the American presidential campaign. Agents scrutinized advisers close to Donald J. Trump, looked for financial connections with Russian financial figures, searched for those involved in hacking the computers of Democrats, and even chased a lead -- which they ultimately came to doubt -- about a possible secret channel of email communication from the Trump Organization to a Russian bank. Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government. And even the hacking into Democratic emails, F.B.I. and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump." CW: Could we be having another Judith Miller moment? Just asking. I'm not a partisan hack, you know. ...

... Josh Marshall of TPM: "Such an effort [Russia has made] to manipulate a US election by a hostile foreign government is all but unprecedented.... When you put it together with Trump's close support of Russian government policies on almost every front, his financial ties to Russian, and the number of close advisors with close ties to Putin and his allies, it's more than enough to ring every alarm bell.... If Trump is advocating for Russia in the US political arena (he is), and Russia is conducting an espionage and disruption campaign on Trump's behalf in the US political area (highly likely), do I need to know if they're actually talking to each other while both these things are happening? I'm not sure I do." -- CW

Kurt Eichenwald of Newsweek. "Over the course of decades, Donald Trump's companies have systematically destroyed or hidden thousands of emails, digital records and paper documents demanded in official proceedings, often in defiance of court orders. These tactics ... have enraged judges, prosecutors, opposing lawyers and the many ordinary citizens entangled in litigation with Trump.... Trump and entities he controlled also erected numerous hurdles that made lawsuits drag on for years, forcing courtroom opponents to spend huge sums of money in legal fees as they struggled -- sometimes in vain -- to obtain records. This behavior is of particular import given Trump's frequent condemnations of Hillary Clinton ... for having deleted more than 30,000 emails from a server she used during her time as secretary of state.... Trump has suggested repeatedly on the campaign trail that they were government documents Clinton was trying to hide and that destroying them constituted a crime." Clinton has asserted the deleted e-mails were not related to official business. -- Akhilleus (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

AND Trump Stiffs His Pollster. Matea Gold of the Washington Post: "Donald Trump's hiring of pollster Tony Fabrizio in May was viewed as a sign that the real estate mogul was finally bringing seasoned operatives into his insurgent operation. But ... [Trump] appears to have taken issue with some of the services provided by the veteran GOP strategist, who has advised candidates from 1996 GOP nominee Bob Dole to Florida Gov. Rick Scott. The Trump campaign's latest Federal Election Commission report shows that it is disputing nearly $767,000 that Fabrizio's firm says it is still owed for polling." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... German Lopez & Andrew Prokop of Vox: "There are hundreds of accusations that Trump refused to pay contractors and workers what they were owed, which the Wall Street Journal and USA Today compiled this year. 'The actions in total paint a portrait of Trump's sprawling organization frequently failing to pay small businesses and individuals, then sometimes tying them up in court and other negotiations for years,' USA Today's Steve Reilly wrote. 'In some cases, the Trump teams financially overpower and outlast much smaller opponents, draining their resources.'... This is, apparently, how Trump has long done business. And it's only one small part of his long history of shady business practices and even outright corruption." -- CW

Travis Gettys of the Raw Story: "Author Salman Rushdie reminded voters that Trump will stand trial later this month in a racketeering lawsuit and then again next month as part of a lawsuit filed by a woman who claims the Republican presidential nominee raped her when she was 13 years old. 'He is a sexual predator, hasn't released his tax returns, and has used his foundation's money to pay his legal fees,' Rushdie posted Sunday on his Facebook page. 'He has abused the family of a war hero and ... oh, but let's talk about some emails Hillary didn't send from someone else's computer, that weren't a crime anyway, because that's how to choose a president. Come on, America. Focus.'' -- CW

Eric Levitz & James Walsh of New York provide you a run-down on some of the craziest shit that has come out of the Trump campaign, just so you don't forget for election day. --safari

Henry Gomez of Cleveland.com: "Gov. John Kasich, who had vowed not to vote for ... Donald Trump, voted Monday by absentee ballot. His choice? Sen. John McCain of Arizona.... The vote essentially is a symbolic gesture. Because McCain is not among the 18 certified write-in candidates in Ohio, Kasich's vote for president will not count." -- CW

Meet Your Trump Supporters, Ctd. Gideon Resnick of the Daily Beast: "Prominent white nationalist William Johnson, an ardent supporter of Donald Trump's campaign who was previously listed as a California delegate for the Republican National Convention, has paid for a new robocall targeting #NeverTrump independent candidate Evan McMullin in Utah." In the robocall, scheduled to have begun last night, Johnson says McMullin's mother is a lesbian, and "I believe Evan is a closet homosexual." "Johnson has previously paid for robocalls on behalf of Trump, including one in February of this year where he implored voters not to support a 'Cuban' -- a reference to Trump's primary opponent Marco Rubio." -- CW

Senate Races

Another Confederate Confesses Bloodlust for Hillary Clinton. Manu Raju of CNN: "Sen. Richard Burr privately mused over the weekend that gun owners may want to put a 'bullseye' on Hillary Clinton, according to audio obtained by CNN. The North Carolina Republican, locked in a tight race for reelection, quipped that as he walked into a gun shop 'nothing made me feel better' than seeing a magazine about rifles 'with a picture of Hillary Clinton on the front of it.'...'I was a little bit shocked at that -- it didn't have a bullseye on it,' he said Saturday to GOP volunteers, prompting laughter from the crowd...But he also bluntly said that if Clinton is elected, he will do everything in his power to deny her the right to fill the vacant Supreme Court slot, aligning himself with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's position on the issue." This man is truly despicable. --safari ...

... Colin Campbell of the Raleigh News & Observer: "U.S. Sen. Richard Burr apologized Monday for saying he was surprised a magazine about guns didn't put a 'bullsey' on Hillary Clinton's face.... 'The comment I made was inappropriate, and I apologize for it,' Burr said in a written statement.... Libertarian Senate candidate Sean Haugh weighed in on Twitter: 'Yet another way @SenatorBurr and I are the exact opposite -- I'm firmly against assassinating my opponents.'... In other highlights from the leaked recording: Burr says he'll oppose any Clinton Supreme Court nominee: 'If Hillary becomes president, I'm going to do everything I can do to make sure that four years from now, we're still going to have an opening on the Supreme Court,' he said.... He's proud of blocking President Barack Obama's court appointment: ... 'I had the longest judicial vacancy in the history of the United States on the Eastern District of North Carolina. Not many people know that.'" -- CW ...

... Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Press? Callum Borchers of the Washington Post: "Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) is taking [Donald Trump's media] blacklist to a new level. He is not merely withholding press passes from the News & Observer of Raleigh; he is refusing to even give the newspaper a schedule of events for his reelection campaign. The move, according to News & Observer reporter Colin Campbell, is 'effectively limiting the newspaper from reporting on Burr's public appearances.' It's tough to cover events you don't know about." -- CW

I'm just a politician from Missouri and proud of it. -- Harry Truman

New York Times Editors: Sen. Roy Blunt (R), in a tight race for re-election against Democrat Jason Kander, is "strapped to Donald Trump."

Election News & Views

** David Leonhardt of the New York Times on What to Do about Drumpf: Make a plan to vote. Tell your friends about it and ask them about theirs. Follow up. CW P.S.: If your friends are white guys of a certain age and POV, alter the plan.

So what's your plan?

Andy Sullivan of Reuters: "Democratic Party officials sued ... Donald Trump in four battleground states on Monday, seeking to shut down a poll-watching effort they said was designed to harass minority voters in the Nov. 8 election. In lawsuits filed in federal courts in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and Ohio, Democrats argued that Trump and Republican Party officials were mounting a 'campaign of vigilante voter intimidation' that violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act and an 1871 law aimed at the Ku Klux Klan." -- CW

Marc Caputo of Politico: "After the first full weekend of in-person early voting ended Sunday, African-American turnout failed to meet expectations -- or historic precedent -- leaving top Democrats and activists fuming or worried that Clinton's campaign isn't living up to the hype in Florida." CW: Yo, Clinton campaign: Can't you remind Florida voters that Jim Comey fucked up the presidential election because he refused to do what his boss -- a black woman -- advised him to do? Wake up, people.

Other News & Views

"Trump's Appeasers." Frank Rich: "Once [aviator/fascist Charles] Lindbergh signed on to America First in April 1941, his pronouncements sounded like the Ur-text for much of Trump's America First campaign.... If Trump, who took to talking about 'the illusion of democracy,' often sounds like a dumbed-down version of [Lindburgh, so the Vichy Republicans supporting Trump use some of the same arguments Lindbergh and his fellow appeasers trotted out to rationalize their support of Hitler.... Some Hitler appeasers also judged Hitler as a lesser evil to FDR. As Hitler's bombs were raining down on England in 1940, Senator Robert Taft of Ohio argued that 'there is a great deal more danger of the infiltration of totalitarian ideas from the New Deal circles in Washington than there will ever be' from the Nazis. This is of a piece with the Vichy Republicans who claim that a Trump presidency is preferable to letting Clinton nominate justices to the Supreme Court.... " Read on. -- CW

David Gelles of the New York Times: "... the extreme right has a problem with Chobani: In its view, too many of those employees are refugees. As [owner & founder Hamdi] Ulukaya has stepped up his advocacy -- employing more than 300 refugees in his factories, starting a foundation to help migrants, and traveling to the Greek island of Lesbos to witness the crisis firsthand -- he and his company have been targeted with racist attacks on social media and conspiratorial articles on websites including Breitbart News.... Tthe mayor of Twin Falls[, Idaho,] has received death threats, partly as a result of his support for Chobani." CW: I have three tubs of Chobani in the fridge right now. Guess I'll go buy some more.

Beyond the Beltway

Ted Sherman & Matt Arco of NJ.com: "After six weeks and 35 witnesses, the defense and prosecution in the Bridgegate trial finished summations Monday, handing the case over to seven women and five men who will determine the fate of two former Christie administration insiders charged in a bizarre scheme of Jersey-style political retribution. In a dramatic final day, defense attorney Michael Critchley decried the government's chief witness as someone with 'a sick mind' whom he dubbed as the 'Bernie Madoff of New Jersey politics.' At the same time, prosecutors, in their rebuttal, told jurors the evidence showed that 'when they thought no one else was watching,' the two defendants engaged in a scheme to punish a mayor over his failure to support Gov. Chris Christie." -- CW

Capitalism is "Awesome", Ctd. Oil barons edition. Check out the allegedly sleazy tricks used by the oil companies trying to quell the Native American protests. In the backdrop of the Bundy Brothers acquittal, it's amazing to see how both issues have been completely buried by the establishment media, given the serious long-term implication of each one. --safari

Way Beyond

Loveday Morris & Mustafa Salim of the Washington Post: "Iraqi commanders on Tuesday said they were fighting inside an industrial district on the outer edge of Mosul, making their first breach into the northern Iraqi city that has been under Islamic State control for more than two years. Bringing the fight across the city lines does not change the overall challenges facing Iraqi troops trying to oust the militants from their last major stronghold in the country. But it reflects the steady advances by Iraqi soldiers and allied forces -- backed by U.S. airstrikes -- since the campaign to recapture Mosul was launched last month." -- CW

Capitalism is "Awesome", Ctd. Rob Evans, et al. of the Guardian: "Rolls-Royce plc, Britain's leading manufacturing multinational, hired a network of agents to help it land lucrative contracts in at least 12 different countries around the world, sometimes allegedly using bribes. An investigation by the Guardian and the BBC has uncovered leaked documents and testimony from insiders that suggest that Rolls-Royce may have benefited from the use of illicit payments to boost profits for years. The network of agents is now the focus of large-scale investigations by anti-corruption agencies in the UK and the US." --safari

The Commentariat -- October 31, 2016

Afternoon Update:

AND Trump Stiffs His Pollster. Matea Gold of the Washington Post: "Donald Trump's hiring of pollster Tony Fabrizio in May was viewed as a sign that the real estate mogul was finally bringing seasoned operatives into his insurgent operation. But ... [Trump] appears to have taken issue with some of the services provided by the veteran GOP strategist, who has advised candidates from 1996 GOP nominee Bob Dole to Florida Gov. Rick Scott. The Trump campaign's latest Federal Election Commission report shows that it is disputing nearly $767,000 that Fabrizio's firm says it is still owed for polling." -- CW

Sari Horwitz & Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post: "The Justice Department sent a brief letter to six lawmakers Monday, saying that the department will work closely with the FBI to take 'appropriate steps as expeditiously as possible' in the renewed investigation into emails potentially tied to Hillary Clinton's private email server. The three paragraph letter written by Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs Peter J. Kadzik said that the department and FBI will 'dedicate all necessary resources' to the investigation, but provided no further details about the contents of the emails or whether they are significant. The short statement on behalf of Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and FBI Director James B. Comey represents an effort by the Justice Department to stabilize and assert control over a politically explosive situation....' -- CW ...

... CW: I've been listening to Josh Earnest's briefing, and he surely is noncommital about Comey's stunt. The only thing he's willing to do is speak favorably about DOJ guidelines, which, um, Comey so flagrantly flouted. He's also said Comey's letter "did not have his intended effect." The suggestion to me was, "Comey screwed up. Stay tuned." ...

... New York Daily News Editors: "FBI Director James Comey's democracy-bending decision to inform America, 11 days before its presidential election, that the bureau is digging into a trove of additional emails demands the highest condemnation. And he must resign." -- CW ...

... Conservative WashPo columnist Jennifer Rubin reads Comey the riot act. She even spells out what Comey could have written if he really felt such a compelling need to suck up to Congressional Republicans. As Kevin Drum points out, linked below, even crazy winger Joe Walsh tweeted that "what [Comey] just did 11 days b4 the election is wrong & unfair to Hillary." -- CW ...

... Nancy LeTourneau of the Washington Monthly: "... we are witnessing the politicization of the FBI -- something that is extremely dangerous to our Constitutional order. What Comey (and AG Loretta Lynch) are now facing is something very similar to what has come to be known as the 'Saturday Night Massacre' when Attorney General Elliot Richardson resigned rather than politicize the Watergate investigation. The difference is that in that case, the pressure came from the president rather than rogue elements in the FBI. This goes way beyond what is/isn't contained in these new emails. That is why the focus has shifted from Hillary Clinton to Comey's FBI." -- CW ...

... CW BTW: If I were a minority voter, I would identify in Comey's stunt exactly what law enforcement does to me every day: rushes to cast suspicion on me because of who I am.

Hadas Gold of Politico: "CNN says it is 'completely uncomfortable' with hacked emails showing former contributor and interim DNC chair Donna Brazile sharing questions with the Clinton campaign before a debate and a town hall during the Democratic primary, and has accepted her resignation. Hacked emails posted by WikiLeaks show Brazile, whose CNN contract was suspended when she became interim DNC chair over the summer, sharing with the Clinton campaign a question that would be posed to Hillary Clinton before the March CNN Democratic debate in Flint, and sharing with the campaign a possible question prior to a CNN town hall also in March." CW: In her story, Gold doesn't bother to repeat what she herself has reported before: that Brazile denied giving the Clinton campaign a heads-up on questions and claimed she never had access to the questions in the first place. ...

     ... Update: See my comment in Nov. 2 Commentariat. I owe Gold an apology.

... Michael Grynbaum's New York Times story makes it seem Brazile did in fact leak questions to the Clinton campaign, right down to the description of the voter who would ask the question. -- CW

Kurt Eichenwald of Newsweek. "Over the course of decades, Donald Trump's companies have systematically destroyed or hidden thousands of emails, digital records and paper documents demanded in official proceedings, often in defiance of court orders. These tactics ... have enraged judges, prosecutors, opposing lawyers and the many ordinary citizens entangled in litigation with Trump.... Trump and entities he controlled also erected numerous hurdles that made lawsuits drag on for years, forcing courtroom opponents to spend huge sums of money in legal fees as they struggled -- sometimes in vain -- to obtain records. This behavior is of particular import given Trump's frequent condemnations of Hillary Clinton ... for having deleted more than 30,000 emails from a server she used during her time as secretary of state.... Trump has suggested repeatedly on the campaign trail that they were government documents Clinton was trying to hide and that destroying them constituted a crime." Clinton has asserted the deleted e-mails were not related to official business. -- Akhilleus

*****

Presidential Race

Jeremy Peters & Matt Flegenheimer of the New York Times: "Hillary Clinton has established a slim edge over Donald J. Trump in early-voter turnout in several vital swing states, pressing her longstanding advantages in state-level organization and potentially mitigating the fallout from her campaign's latest scrap with the F.B.I.... In the states that are most likely to decide the election -- among them Florida, Colorado and Nevada -- close to a quarter of the electorate has already cast ballots. While their votes will not be counted until Election Day, registered Democrats are outperforming Republicans in key demographics and urban areas there and in North Carolina...." CW: Please bear in mind that these voters are not required to vote for their party's nominees! ....

... Nate Cohn of the New York Times: "Donald J. Trump has slowly but surely improved his standing in state and national polls since the final presidential debate. A New York Times Upshot/Siena poll released Sunday is consistent with that trend: It gives Mr. Trump a four-point lead in Florida, 46 percent to 42 percent, in a four-way race. In our first poll of Florida a month ago, Mr. Trump trailed Hillary Clinton by a percentage point. The survey is Mr. Trump's best recent poll in Florida, and it should be interpreted with caution. In general, it is best to look at an average of polls. Mrs. Clinton still leads in an average of recent Florida surveys by nearly three points." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Scott Clement & Emily Gustin of the Washington Post: "Republicans' growing unity behind ... Donald Trump has helped pull him just 1 percentage point behind Hillary Clinton and has placed GOP leaders who resist him in a vulnerable position, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News Tracking Poll. A majority of all likely voters say they are unmoved by the FBI's announcement Friday that it may review additional emails from Clinton's time as secretary of state. Just more than 6 in 10 voters say the news will make no difference in their vote, while just more than 3 in 10 say it makes them less likely to support her; 2 percent say they are more likely to back her as a result." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Harry Enten of 538 looks at the effects [link fixed] October Surprises have had on earlier elections. Mostly, only one or two points, and the later the "surprise," the smaller the effect. CW: So I guess that's why Comey rushed out his surprise within a few hours of the time he learned about whatever it was he thought maybe might be in those Abedin e-mails. However, this may bolster the argument that Comey's Surprise will affect down-ballot candidates, to whom voters have given far less thought. The Comey Effect may be on the Congress, and could severely limit -- by dint of a Republican majority -- Clinton's ability to be an effective president.

Fire Jim Comey.

Hill: "Hillary Clinton's campaign sent out a letter Sunday night signed by nearly 100 former prosecutors and Department of Justice officials ... including ex-Attorney General Eric Holder ... slamming FBI Director James Comey.... 'Justice Department officials are instructed to refrain from commenting publicly on the existence, let alone the substance, of pending investigative matters, except in exceptional circumstances and with explicit approval from the Department of Justice officials responsible for ultimate supervision of the matter,' the letter says. 'They are also instructed to exercise heightened restraint near the time of a primary or general election because, as official guidance from the Department instructs, public comment on a pending investigative matter may affect the electoral process and create the appearance of political interference in the fair administration of justice.'" -- CW ...

... Eric Holder, in a Washington Post op-ed: "... I am deeply concerned about FBI Director James B. Comey's decision to write a vague letter to Congress about emails potentially connected to a matter of public, and political, interest. That decision was incorrect. It violated long-standing Justice Department policies and tradition. And it ran counter to guidance that I put in place four years ago laying out the proper way to conduct investigations during an election season. That guidance, which reinforced established policy, is still in effect and applies to the entire Justice Department -- including the FBI.... These rules ... are intended to ensure that every investigation proceeds fairly and judiciously.... Director Comey broke with these fundamental principles." -- CW ...

... Matt Apuzzo, et al., of the New York Times: "Federal investigators have obtained a warrant to begin searching a large cache of emails belonging to a top aide to Hillary Clinton, federal law enforcement officials said Sunday, as prosecutors and F.B.I. agents scrambled to review as much of the information as possible before Election Day. It remains unclear, though, whether they can finish their work by then.... A federal law enforcement official said agents had discovered hundreds of thousands of Ms. Abedin's emails on her husband’s computer, but investigators expected to seize only a portion of the total. Agents will have probable cause to search only the messages related to the Clinton investigation." -- CW ...

... Matt Zapotosky, et al., of the Washington Post: "FBI agents argued -- based at least in part on news accounts — earlier this year that the Clinton Foundation should be investigated for potentially giving donors special political access and favors. The Justice Department's public integrity unit said they did not have enough evidence to move forward. The Clinton Foundation said it was never contacted by the FBI, suggesting the bureau's efforts were in a preliminary stage as prosecutors weighed in. But agents in New York have sought to keep their inquiries alive, feuding with the Justice Department about the lengths to which they can go, according to people familiar with the matter.... The revelation, though, that public integrity section prosecutors -- who are not politically appointed -- felt FBI investigators did not have a case is a strong defense for Clinton." ...

     ... CW: If you recall those "news accounts" came up with a big nothing. Nonetheless, the FBI, not surprisingly, is so politicized that agents thought even attempts by the media to finger the foundation were cause for an "investigation"/witch hunt. ...

... John Cole of Balloon Juice, incorporating a WSJ story on FBI "internal deliberations": "No one is in control. No one. There's a general level of incompetence that is staggering. How could applying for a warrant in this case be an oversight? There appear to be careerists in the FBI who have been engaging in a wide-ranging fishing expedition regarding the Clintons for some times, to the extent of attempts at prosecutor shopping. The place leaks like sieve." -- CW ...

... Paul Krugman: "It seemed obvious from the start that Mrs. Clinton's decision to follow Colin Powell's advice and bypass State Department email was a mistake, but nothing remotely approaching a crime. But Mr. Comey was subjected to a constant barrage of demands that he prosecute her for ... something. He should simply have said no. Instead, even while announcing back in July that no charges would be filed, he editorialized about her conduct -- a wholly inappropriate thing to do, but probably an attempt to appease the right. It didn't work, of course. They just demanded more.... The moral of the story is that appeasing the modern American right is a losing proposition. Nothing you do convinces them that you're being fair, because fairness has nothing to do with it.... They're trying to create bias, not end it, and weakness -- the kind of weakness Mr. Comey has so spectacularly displayed -- only encourages them to do more." -- CW ...

... CW: Here's the evidence to prove Krugman's assertion. David Edwards of the Raw Story: "NBC News Justice Correspondent Pete Williams reported on Sunday that Donald Trump's baseless claim of a 'rigged' election influenced FBI Director James Comey to break with the Justice Department's policy against taking actions that could influence elections.... [Williams said,] "they [meaning Comey & his top advisors] thought that if they waited until after election and then it was discovered that they had found these emails, that would play into this whole scenario about how the system is rigged.'" -- CW ...

In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government -- a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity. I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released to the public ... and yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information. -- Harry Reid, letter to James Comey ...

... ** Give 'Im Hell Harry. Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post: "Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid on Sunday accused FBI Director James B. Comey of breaking federal law in disclosing possible new evidence in the Hillary Clinton email investigation. Reid (D-Nev.) said in a letter sent to Comey that his disclosure to Congress, made 11 days before the election, might have violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits partisan politicking by government employees. 'Your actions in recent months have demonstrated a disturbing double standard for the treatment of sensitive information, with what appears to be a clear intent to aid one political party over another,' Reid wrote. 'I am writing to inform you that my office has determined that these actions may violate the Hatch Act, which bars FBI officials from using their official authority to influence an election. Through your partisan actions, you may have broken the law.' Reid's letter is the most forceful denunciation leveled by a high-ranking elected official. In the letter, Reid drew a contrast between how Comey has treated the Clinton email probe and how he has handled what Reid described as 'explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government.'" ...

     ... Kevin Drum: "... this is A+ trolling from Reid.... It's hard to find anyone, Democrat or Republican, who approves of how Comey has handled this situation.... Either the field is full of rogue agents pursuing a vendetta against Hillary Clinton, or else the senior ranks of the Justice Department is full of political hacks who will stop at nothing to protect Hillary Clinton." -- CW ...

... CW: I wasn't sure the other day if Obama could fire Comey. Jonathan Vankin of Heavy: "... according to a 2014 report by the Congressional Research Service, 'there are no statutory conditions on the President's authority to remove the FBI Director.' In other words, the President can indeed fire the FBI director. An FBI director can also be removed by congress, through the impeachment process.... Because firing an FBI director is certain to bring accusations of playing politics with law enforcement against any president who chooses to do so, [President Bill] Clinton repeatedly asked [FBI director William] Sessions to resign his post. But Sessions refused to step down. So in July of 1993, saying that he had been advised by then-attorney general Janet Reno that Sessions 'can no longer effectively lead the bureau and law enforcement community,' Clinton fired the FBI director." Obama should fire Comey. ...

... Orrin Kerr, a right-wing constitutional law professor, in a Washington Post op-ed, argues that there is a good chance the FBI violated the Fourth Amendment when agents decided to open folder(s) in Anthony Weiner's computer which held Huma Abedin's e-mails. After citing a court case -- People v. Herrera -- that suggests the search was not legal, Kerr adds this: "... the alleged Weiner texting crimes apparently occurred in 2016. I gather that the Clinton emails were from her time as secretary of state, which was several years earlier from 2009 to 2013. If I'm right that there was a several-year gap between the warrant crime [Weiner's sexting with underage girls] and the second investigation, it's not clear the government could search through older emails for evidence of such a recent crime." Kerr goes on to discuss the "plain-view" doctrine (which despite its name is extremely ambiguous & in a state of flux regarding computer files), but here again, he thinks the agents may have violated Abedin's rights. -- CW ...

... Josh Marshall of TPM: "... everything we've learned over the last 48 hours-plus suggests Comey had no basis to believe there was significant new evidence, indeed no clear reason to think there was anything new at all. At best, Comey combined extremely poor judgment with a decision to place a near absolute priority on protecting himself from criticism over carrying out his professional and ethical obligations.... No one who actually knows what Comey's legal, professional and ethical responsibilities were in this case can find a basis to defend his actions." -- CW ...

... John Dean, who went to jail for Watergate-related crimes, in a New York Times op-ed: "Donald J. Trump wasted no time in seizing on the unprecedented letter that the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, sent to Congress on Friday, regarding the bureau's investigations into Hillary Clinton's emails. 'This is bigger than Watergate,' Mr. Trump's team tweeted just a few hours after the letter was made public.... Only someone who knows nothing about the law, and the darkest moment of our recent political history, would see a parallel between Nixon's crimes and Mrs. Clinton's mistakes.... Whatever mistakes Mrs. Clinton made, her actions bear no similarities whatsoever to Nixon's criminalization of his presidency, and his efforts to corrupt much of the executive branch.... Mr. Trump's insistence that 'Emailgate' is worse than Watergate serves to divert attention from the fact that, in my opinion, Mr. Trump is remarkably Nixonian, perhaps even more so than Nixon himself." -- CW ...

... Matt Zapotosky, et al., of the Washington Post: "The FBI agents investigating Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server knew early this month that messages recovered in a separate probe might be germane to their case, but they waited weeks before briefing the FBI director, according to people familiar with the case.... It is unclear why investigators did not tell Comey sooner." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... E.J. Dionne: "History shows that appeasing bullies never works. Maybe Comey has learned this lesson and will try to make amends in coming days. As for the voters, my hope is that they reject this perversion of justice all the way down the ballot." -- CW ...

... Jim Fallows of the Atlantic puts Comey's antics in a context that is imperative to understand if you want to know what, for the most part, the Republican party, thus our political landscape, is about these days: "The rules in politics haven't changed that much in recent years. What has changed is adherence to norms, in an increasingly destructive way.... For its survival, a democracy depends on norms. That's why the shift matters." Thanks to citizen625 for the link. -- CW ...

... Jamie Gorelick & Larry Thompson, in a Washington Post op-ed: "As former deputy attorneys general in the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, we are troubled by the apparent departure from these [normative] standards in the investigation of Hillary Clinton's email server. First, the FBI director, James B. Comey, put himself enthusiastically forward as the arbiter of not only whether to prosecute a criminal case -- which is not the job of the FBI -- but also best practices in the handling of email and other matters. Now, he has chosen personally to restrike the balance between transparency and fairness, departing from the department's traditions. As former deputy attorney general George Terwilliger aptly put it, 'There's a difference between being independent and flying solo.'" -- CW ...

... Mallory Shelbourne of the Hill: "... Tim Kaine said Sunday that FBI Director James Comey's letter to lawmakers regarding the Hillary Clinton email server investigation is 'unprecedented.' 'I just have no way of understanding these actions. They're a completely unprecedented move,' the Virginia senator said during an appearance on ABC's 'This Week' with George Stephanopoulos. 'When you haven't even seen the material yourself 11 days before an election, why would you talk about an ongoing investigation?' Kaine asked." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Mallory Shelbourne: "Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Sunday that FBI Director James Comey's email to lawmakers regarding the Hillary Clinton email server investigation was 'a terrible error in judgment.' 'I think this was a terrible error in judgment by the director, to release this kind of ambiguous letter. These may be pertinent; they may be significant; they may not be significant. They may not be pertinent,' Schiff, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, told ABC's 'This Week.'" -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... ** Richard Painter, "the chief White House ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007," in a New York Times op-ed: "... on Saturday, I filed a complaint against the F.B.I. with the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates Hatch Act violations, and with the Office of Government Ethics.... [James Comey's] letter was sent in violation of a longstanding Justice Department policy of not discussing specifics about pending investigations with others, including members of Congress. According to some news reports on Saturday, the letter was sent before the F.B.I. had even obtained the search warrant that it needed to look at the newly discovered emails. And it was sent days before the election, at a time when many Americans are already voting.... We cannot allow F.B.I. or Justice Department officials to unnecessarily publicize pending investigations concerning candidates of either party while an election is underway. That is an abuse of power." CW: Yeah, you read that right. A Bush II lawyer has filed formal complaints against Comey for abusing his office. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... ** Riley Roberts, former speechwriter for Eric Holder, in Politico Magazine: "... increasing numbers of critics believe [James Comey] has displayed a worrying disregard for the rules and norms that have constrained all but one of his predecessors, straying with blithe confidence -- and with increasing regularity -- across the fine line that separates independence from unaccountability.... Over the past three years, current and former Justice Department officials have watched with growing discomfort as his 'streak of self-righteousness,' now essentially unchecked, has made him the most isolated, outspoken and openly defiant FBI director since [J. Edgar] Hoover." CW: This is a long, scathing indictment of Comey. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)...

... CW: What Comey should do Monday is apologize to Clinton, to the President & to the public for his egregious lapse of judgment. Then, since he's so fond of letter-writing, he should hand his letter of resignation to the POTUS, and Obama should accept it. Of course, that's not going to happen, because in Comey's mind, if the FBI director does it, it's A-Okay. Sound familiar?

Mallory Shelbourne: "... Donald Trump on Sunday accused the media of 'burying' the FBI's investigation into Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's private email server. 'Wow, Twitter, Google and Facebook are burying the FBI criminal investigation of Clinton. Very dishonest media!' Trump tweeted." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Jeremy Diamond, et al., of CNN: "Donald Trump for the second day in a row questioned the validity of [Colorado]'s largely mail-in voting system, the latest instance of the Republican nominee expressing skepticism about the legitimacy of the electoral process.... He then encouraged his supporters to get a 'new ballot' in person at a local polling location. 'They'll give you a ballot, a new ballot. They'll void your old ballot, they will give you a new ballot. And you can go out and make sure it gets in,' Trump said.... It was unclear whether Trump was encouraging his supporters to get a new ballot even if they had already voted, which would constitute voter fraud." CW: Whatever he meant, some Trumpbots will follow Trump's "advice" & vote twice. They're not that smart, after all.

Gabriel Sherman of New York: "In recent weeks, I spoke with more than two dozen current and formerTrump advisers, friends, and senior Republican officials, many of whom would speak only off the record given that the campaign is not yet over. What they described was an unmanageable candidate who still doesnot fully understand the power of the movement he has tapped into, who can't see that it is larger than himself." A long read, with some great anecdotes on the positioning of all of the hustlers inside the TrumpTower, such as this: "To hear Kellyanne Conway talk about managing her boss is to listen to a mother of four who has had ample experience with unruly toddlers...It's like saying to someone, 'How about having two brownies and not six?'"--safari

Meet Your Trump Supporters. Ben Schreckinger of Politico: "A speaker warming up the crowd for Donald Trump at a campaign rally Sunday morning fantasized about the deaths of Hillary Clinton and a senior aide. Conservative commentator Wayne Allyn Root, describing his fantasy of a made-for-TV movie about Clinton and aide Huma Abedin, said, 'We all get our wish. The ending is like "Thelma and Louise."' In the 1991 film, the title characters drive over a cliff to their death. Root's line drew cheers from rally attendees. Root's call is the latest elevation in the increasingly extreme and violent rhetoric directed by Trump and his surrogates at Clinton at campaign events." -- CW

Other News & Views

** Jonathan Chait: "The accommodations [Republican party] leaders have made to their erratic and delirious nominee underscore a capacity to go further and lower to maintain their grip on power than anybody understood. More consequentially, the horrors Trump has unleashed are the product of tectonic forces in American politics." CW: This is a long piece on the conservative takeover of the GOP & well-worth a read.

Way Beyond the Beltway

Mohammed Tawfeeq & Angela Dewan of CNN: "Iraqi special forces are hundreds of meters from ISIS-controlled Mosul and will enter in a 'matter of hours', the country's counter-terrorism chief said Monday.... A coalition of around 100,000 Iraqi-led forces have been in a decisive push toward Mosul since October 17 to end more than two years of the militant group's brutal rule. On Monday, they launched a new phase in the offensive, advancing on three separate fronts." -- CW