Just a quick aside to start with, the less than transparent Sarah Huckabee Sanders just said that not only did the President loser confidence in Comey, not only did ther DOJ lose confidence in Comey, but the “line agents in the FBI” had lost confidence in Comey. Considering that Politico is REPORTING that agents at various field offices are in some cases literally “in tears”, I’ll take her assertion with a grain of salt.
I have to give them at least some credit, when the running fan gets brown, MSNBC tends to put the pedal down. They went live with news of the Comey firing as it occurred yesterday, and for the next 6 hours they had one commercial break at 11:39 pm EDT. Needless to say, there was plenty of repetition from various guests, but there were also a couple of very interesting nuggets that came from it.
The first was from a guest who said that Donald Trump had just “Walked into the room, shook hands with, and became on a first name basis with the concept of unintended consequences”. His opinion was that the manner and excuse for the firing was so over the top that even the GOP would find it difficult to cover Trump on this. His opinion was that there would be either a special prosecutor or at least independent investigation within 6 months, the reasoning being that public pressure on GOP MoC’s would be at least as intense if not more intense than the protests over the healthcare bill. Personally, I think this might be a bit sunny of an outlook, but I’d take it. and there may be a perfectly good reason for his confidence.
The second thing that intrigued me was something I had been thinking about myself almost since I had first heard the news. A couple of days ago, Sally Yates nailed the GOP’s hide to the wall on the content of the “friendly heads up” that she conveyed to the WH Counsel. But the GOP Senators seemed to have a different bur under their saddles. They were much more interested in getting any crumb that they could to try to find out who and how the leak about Mike Flynn had occurred in the first place. It was all about the leaks.
And this is exactly why the confidence of the commentator may not have been misplaced. Comey in part got into this hot water because “rogue” agents in the NY office were leaking select information on Hillary, and Comey claimed that he only sent the letter to congress to keep the information being leaked, tarnishing the reputation of the FBI. This didn’t bother the GOP since it worked to their benefit, but they were infuriated about the leak that nailed Flynn once and for all. So far, these leaks have been selective and scattered.
To my mind, all bets are now off. The only sane view that can be taken of the Comey firing is that it was a thinly veiled, terribly executed attempt to at least sidetrack if not derail the Trump=-Russia investigation. And Democratic politicians and most functional Americans are not the only ones who feel that way. What happens if some of the agents in the counter intelligence unit feel that this administration is trying to muzzle them, to bury their work?
I cannot conceive of a scenario in which we do not see new leaks, directly involving the Russia investigation, and shortly. This is Trump’s downfall every time. He gets cocky, lies his ass off, then spikes the football at getting away with it, and within days, a juicy leak has come out that wipes that smile off of his face. This time His Lowness is not taking on a political opponent, he’s fired a man who according to all of the comments yesterday had deep and sincere respect and admiration from the majority of the people he bossed. What better way to honor him than to show publicly the fact that he was doing an honest job, and there was a serious reason for this investigation. It won’t be anything that compromises the ongoing investigation, but I would be surprised if Mike Flynn, Carter Page or possibly Paul Manafort are not getting some very unwanted press over the weeks to come, information that the media can dig into to uncover things that the FBI has already uncovered, and that show their probable culpability.
There are two probable outcomes if there are in fact new leaks, and they are substantive. First, it will drive Trumpenstein right up the wall in a frothing rage. The whole point of firing Comey in this bungled and public manner was to get this damn Russia probe taken care of once and for all, and now the press has more fresh information to chew over for days if not weeks. But the more problematic thing is that if information about specific subjects comes out, people like Page, Manafort and Flynn will know that the investigators have at least something, but the question is, is this the worst they have, or is there more damaging shit that they’re holding close to the FBI is holding close to their vests? This kind of uncertainty could crack one or more of these people so that they don’t end up taking the fall all by their lonesomes.
The last possible affect would be that new, damaging revelations about what the FBI has already found could up the pressure on the GOP to finally side with the Democrats in pushing for an independent investigation. It all depends on what the information is, and how damaging to Trump it could be. But this is exactly what the first guest who snagged my attention was talking about when he spoke to Trump running nose first into the wall of “unintended consequences”.