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Wednesday, May 20, 2020

UPDATED: Susan Rice: The WH Counsel Told Me To Write It

So Senator Ron Johnson's earlier speculation in the course of a Fox News interview turned out to be well informed speculation. Johnson stated that the Susan Rice email-to-self read like something she was told to write by--Johnson suggested--the White Counsel. That is confirmed by Gillian Turner, citing Rice's "team":

Gillian Turner
@GillianHTurner
#BREAKING: 
@AmbassadorRice’s team confirms to #FoxNews that she was directed by White House Counsel to write the Jan 20, 2017 memorandum documenting an Oval Office meeting in which President Obama & National Security officials discussed #MichaelFlynn.
12:08 PM · May 20, 2020

The White House Counsel at that point would have been long time Clintonista Neil Eggleston.

Remember the FBI's Flynn FD-302? It took weeks to write and turned out to be a team effort. Maybe the Rice email-to-self was like that. We know it took weeks to write, and now Senator Johnson's suggestion that it was a team effort may turn out to be right on the money. And after all, if you wanted to CYA, wouldn't you prefer to have a legal operative like Eggleston do it rather than a Susan Rice?

No doubt John Durham will want to discuss this with Eggleston. In front of a Grand Jury.

UPDATE 1: shipwreckedcrew has an article at RedState that parses the Rice email-to-self--and related correspondence--in excruciating detail. Based on that parsing he poses the question: Has Susan Rice Made Herself a “Target” for Durham Probe With Langauge in Her CYA Memo? His answer is: Yes.

Shipwreckedcrew argues that the email actually represents Obama's own self serving version of his meeting with Comey and Yates. He concludes, based on that understanding (which I agree with):

Andy McCarthy has posited — convincingly in my view — that the true purpose of the Memorandum written by Rice was to allow Pres. Obama to point the finger of blame at Comey for whatever might happen in the aftermath of the transition into power of the Trump Administration.  According to Rice’s Memorandum, Pres. Obama told Comey to do everything “by the book”, and if Comey did not do so then Comey — and only Comey — was to blame. 
Did Rice put herself present in the room just so she could avoid setting forth in the Memorandum that the details she memorialized had come from Pres. Obama? Was she playing the “loyal soldier” by creating the impression that Obama’s version of the conversation had at least one supporting witness — herself — rather than have it as a “He said, He said” between Pres. Obama and Jim Comey at some future point in time? 
Whichever answer is true, neither is a defense to the crime of violating Section 1001.

UPDATE 2: Brett Tolman nails it:



20 comments:

  1. Kathryn Ruemmle is Susan Rice's attorney. She worked under Weisman on Enron, with Mueller as FBI director. Small world!

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    1. That's not the half of it. She was WH Counsel for Obama.

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    2. https://observer.com/2014/10/sex-lies-and-white-house-counsel-ruemmler-blunders-into-secret-service-mess/

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    3. Wow - Sidney Powell is a national treasure.

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  2. I had intended to place this comment under: "UPDATED: Brett Tolman Analyzes The Susan Rice Email To Self", but this post is even more appropriate.

    I see another aspect to the Rice e-mail. It appears to me to be a severance point between the political left and the Deep State should the sea state get too rough. It certainly is more of a Cover-"My"-Ass letter than "Your's".

    The political socialists are, in many respects, natural allies of the Deep State but the former is on a mission to resurrect Stalin while the latter has mostly personal turf to defend or expand. There is at least a veneer of cover for the WH poli-soc's in the Rice letter by a nod to the "book". There is not the ghost of an escape hatch for DS'ers Brennan, Clapper, or Comey, whom the e-mail practically points a finger at as the "brains" (used ironically or sarcastically) of the caper. This responsibility demarcation line makes it very clear that the Deep State is the weaker ally. The Deep State needs the poli-soc's but that isn't necessarily reciprocal.

    Valerie Jarrett's masters will fry the three stooges and Robin Mueller and his merry band of legal beagle highwaymen if necessary to protect the narrative, and consider it one of their easier decisions made before breakfast. Not nearly as significant as what tie to wear that day. B. C. & C. should be very worried. Jeffery Epstein didn't kill himself, and they know it.
    Tom S.

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    1. To put a Finer point on it:

      This e-mail is a clear indicator that anything on the DS side of the ledger is expendable and can be replaced out of petty cash. Obama is an important part of the narrative. Huge amounts of capital, both monetary and human, have been expended over at least the last 3 decades, if not from literally the day of his conception, ensconcing him in the narrative. Great lengths will be gone to to protect that asset.
      Tom S.

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    2. Wouldn't it have been better for the White House not to have memorialized the meeting? There must have been huge debate about it. Apparently the ayes prevailed.

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    3. Perhaps the WH didn't trust Comey.

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    4. Not unreasonable to distrust Comey. Knowing what we know, how could anyone trust that guy? Since hearing what was in the redacted portion of Rice's email, it seemed obvious to me Comey was being thrown under the bus.

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    5. No honor among thieves.
      Tom S.

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  3. "This responsibility demarcation line makes it very clear that the Deep State is the weaker ally."
    Gripping stuff.

    When do you think it started to be like that?
    After Benghazi, or the WMD fiasco, or Waco, or...?

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  4. If the council wrote it, that might explain why Rice was talking about second meeting, something she didn't attend.


    Rob S

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  5. If Eggleston helped Rice write the email, I would also guess his ultimate client read it. If Obama read it he probably helped write it, too. Perhaps a few others pitched in. Memos written by committee and delivered against a deadline (noon on 1/20/16) are never any good.

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  6. Slightly off thread, but where was Loretta Lynch between December 20, 2016 and January 20, 2017? Andrew McCarthy (and others) have referred to Sally Yates as Acting AG during this period, but didn't she assume that position on January 20 after the inauguration?

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    1. She was one of the smartest in maintaining what distance she could, but may yet be snared.

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    2. Mark

      That's what I was driving at. I'll offer my interpretation of the tarmac meeting and its aftermath in support.

      1. Bill Clinton ambushed Lynch on the tarmac on June 28, 2016, to tell her to get in line on the investigation of his wife's email server.

      2. Comey went on national TV on July 5, 2016 to exonerate Mrs Clinton because, he said, Bill Clinton's meeting with Lynch on the tarmac forced him to do it.

      I'm not sure Bill Clinton intended to create a news event on the tarmac which would disqualify Lynch from managing the email investigation. Maybe the meeting was supposed to be secret and he was just trying to strong arm her into getting on board with the exoneration gambit. But when the tarmac incident went public it gave Comey a 'plausible' excuse to do what Lynch perhaps wouldn't do. Maybe it was, in fact, planned. At this point, nothing the Clintons are discovered to have done would surprise me.

      It also must have been deeply embarrassing to Lynch both to have her unethical ex parte meeting with Bill Clinton publicly exposed and to have had her authority as AG publicly usurped by the now disgraced FBI director . It also suggests that Comey was among the 'small group' of conspirators and Lynch was not.

      Perhaps its not surprising then that Lynch let Comey hang out there on his own in his October 28, 2016 letter to Congress disclosing the discovery of classified Clinton emails on Anthony Weiner's laptop.

      In any event, if Lynch was both humiliated and infuriated by the Clintons and Comey, perhaps she decided to step away from the conspirators, thus explaining her absence from the January 5, 2017 Oval Office coup planning session and the events that followed.

      I wonder if John Durham has asked her how she feels about all this.

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    3. She had enough experience with the Obama and Clinton mafias to understand that sooner or later the music would stop and she didn't want to be the one without a chair. That would appear to be Comey.

      I would say I would think Rosenstein a likely candidate for pigeon, but he was never more than a time serving careerist toady trying to ingratiate himself with the real players. Notice he was never invited to any of these heavy hitter meetings unless it was to rubberstamp something. He was just their notary. Just punishment would be for him to be transmogrified into a ferret; but, he's already a weasel, so there's that.
      Tom S.

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