RUTHFULLY YOURS

For much of Preet Bharara’s first year as an assistant United States attorney in the Southern District of New York, your humble correspondent was his supervisor. I have always thought highly of him, personally and professionally, so I’m sorry to see him end a memorable tenure leading our former office with a politicized prima donna schtick.

One of the great things about law enforcement done right is that I didn’t know Preet’s politics back then. The SDNY is headquartered in Manhattan and its prosecutors and alumni tend to come from the nation’s top law schools (Bharara went to Harvard, then Columbia Law). Naturally, they tend to lean left. But political predisposition is irrelevant to a job that is principally about figuring out facts and applying legal principles to them.

It wasn’t until he emerged, in the mid-oughts, as Sen. Chuck Schumer’s chief counsel that I realized Preet was a partisan Democrat. I wasn’t surprised, though, to hear that he was well-liked by peers and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, particularly on the Judiciary Committee. His smarts and competence combine nicely with a winning temperament. I was delighted when President Obama nominated him to return to the SDNY as the boss, and fully expected that he would do a bang-up job, as he did.

Unfortunately, he seems to have forgotten the defining attribute of the great institution that is the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York: The work is bigger than any one person doing it. It is an easy mistake to make: When big cases are successful, the prosecutor in charge gets the plaudits; you must constantly remind yourself that you are being celebrated for the collective effort of scores of people; their dedication is responsible for the glow in which you bask.

In just the last generation, before Preet’s turn came, the SDNY was run by Rudy Giuliani, Mary Jo White, Jim Comey, and Mike Garcia among a handful of other stellar prosecutors who made their distinct mark before taking other lofty posts in public life. In each case, when the boss moved on, a new boss moved in and the work of the office went on seamlessly.

Contrary to the media consternation — which is more about loathing of the incoming president than loving of the outgoing U.S. attorney — the work will go on without Preet, too. All of it, including the political corruption cases. The “Sovereign District” has always prided itself on independence from Main Justice; the party in power in Washington made little or no difference to the day-to-day in Manhattan.

WASHINGTON — The Republican and Democratic leaders of the House Intelligence Committee declared today that they have seen no evidence of Obama administration wiretapping at Trump Tower, while the president retorted that wiretapping was a broad term and “interesting” things related to his tweet would surface within a couple of weeks.

“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” Trump tweeted March 4 while in Mar-a-Lago. “Is it legal for a sitting President to be ‘wire tapping’ a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!”

That sparked congressional review of the claims in committees already probing Russia’s influence campaign during the presidential election.

“We don’t have any evidence that that took place… I don’t believe there was an actual tap of Trump Tower,” Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) told reporters today at a joint press briefing on Capitol Hill with Ranking Member Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

Nunes, who served on Trump’s transition team, said there remains the possibility of the “incidental collection on Americans who were tied to the Trump campaign” in the course of other investigations, but they’ve yet to substantiate that.

Schiff added, “I’ve seen no evidence that supports the claim that the president made that his predecessor wiretapped he and his associates at Trump Tower — thus far, we have seen no basis for that whatsoever.”

The Justice Department missed this week’s deadline to turn over evidence of wiretapping to the committee; Schiff said the committee extended the deadline until March 20 and stressed that both he and Nunes are willing to use “the compulsory process” if necessary. He added that FBI Director James Comey will be asked in open session if such evidence exists at a March 20 hearing.

“It concerns me that the president would make such an accusation without basis,” Schiff said. “I would think it’s in the public’s interest that this be addressed very openly by the director, and we certainly expect that he will.”

Russian government spies were behind Yahoo Inc.’s notorious 2014 security breach, stealing information about more than a half billion online accounts, including those used by U.S. military officials and by employees of firms in banking, finance and transportation, federal authorities said Wednesday.

The Justice Department announced the indictments of Dmitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev and Igor Anatolyevich Sushchin, officers of Russia’s Federal Security Service, known as the FSB, alleging they directed and paid for the illegal collection of information in the U.S. and abroad. It is the first such criminal case to directly target Russia.

The case is expected to escalate tensions between the U.S. and Russia over cybercrime and espionage. Congress and federal investigators are probing what U.S. intelligence agencies have described as aggressive efforts by Russia to influence the 2016 election, which it has denied.

The House Intelligence Committee has a hearing next week on the matter, with scheduled appearances by James Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence.

Authorities said the two Russian agents worked with indicted co-conspirators Alexsey Belan and Karim Baratov to hack into Yahoo computer systems, starting in January 2014. They gained access to the content of 6,500 accounts and used information stolen from Yahoo to target other email providers, including Google.

“The criminal conduct at issue, carried out and otherwise facilitated by officers from an FSB unit that serves as the FBI’s point of contact in Moscow on cybercrime matters, is beyond the pale,” said Mary McCord, who runs the Justice Department’s national security division

The Russian spies paid the hackers to steal information seen as useful to Moscow, prying into the accounts of diplomats and journalists, authorities alleged; company officials were targeted for economic intelligence.

Mr. Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican, was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, 2004-07.

The spy world is cloaked in secrecy, but last week’s leak of documents from the Central Intelligence Agency offers a tiny glimpse into what America’s operatives can do. It seems the CIA can hack smart televisions to listen in on conversations, even when the set appears to be off. Smartphones might be less secure than many assumed. The CIA can supposedly penetrate a computer network and leave fingerprints implicating someone else. Man, these guys are good!

Personally, I’m thrilled to hear that the CIA has developed these capabilities. Stealing information from other countries is what spies do. But it’s devastating to see details about America’s intelligence operations leaked to the press. These kinds of intrusions recently have compromised billions of dollars worth of sources and methods, showing the world—including Islamic State and al Qaeda—how Washington knows what it does. They have also caused Americans to ask serious questions about their spy agencies.

The leaks by Chelsea (née Bradley) Manning in 2010, Edward Snowden in 2013, and now at the CIA demonstrate that the intelligence community does not have in place the systems and controls necessary to protect its most sensitive information. That raises the question of whether spy agencies can credibly say that these capabilities are not used against the American people.

The intelligence community can explain what the law says and even cite internal policies that exist to inhibit spying on Americans. But a spy agency that is incapable of keeping its secrets cannot say with confidence that it has effective means of controlling itself. When James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, says America does not spy on its citizens, he doesn’t really know. He hopes that the internal controls and culture will prevent abuse, but he cannot be certain.

After the Manning leak, I’m sure that America’s spymasters thought they had learned their lesson and put in place new, more effective controls. After the Snowden leak, I’m sure they thought those controls had been updated enough to solve the problem. Yet here we are, reading about the CIA’s secrets on the front page of the newspaper.

In 2013 Mr. Clapper testified in an open congressional hearing that the intelligence community did not maintain a cyberdatabase on Americans. That wasn’t true. He misled Congress and the public. The Snowden leak soon showed that the NSA did indeed have a massive database of telephone metadata.

Now the intelligence community has been implicated in the release of information damaging to the incoming president. Telephone conversations involving Mike Flynn, who briefly served as President Trump’s national security adviser, were collected and leaked to the media.

For 10 years I served on the House Intelligence Committee, and the men and women I met from America’s spy agencies were dedicated, hardworking and committed to serving their country. But these episodes indicate that at least a few within that cadre are willing to risk the security of the U.S. for what they must see as some higher purpose. In the process, they betray their oath and tarnish the reputations of their organizations.

We have seen coups of sorts in Washington before, not that anyone one calls them that. (Remember JFK, Nixon.) The one against Trump is of a different order of magnitude. It had been plotted by the Deep State even before he was inaugurated. Significant power nodes had always refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of this presidency, and they remain relentless. Regime media ceaselessly pump out false stories designed to smear the President and his team, the leaks have turned into a deluge, the courts usurp executive powers . . .
This is without precedent here, but Deep State perpetrators did it in Ukraine and elsewhere—and pronounced it marvelous. Why not do the same at home? The Constitution has been a near-dead letter for decades anyway, as witnessed by the blocking of the immigration order by the Ninth Circuit. The judges have blatantly substituted their ideological preferences for the constitutional and statutory authority of the president—the border-security equivalent of Roe and Obergefell. The message is that even in the areas most directly under legitimate executive authority (as opposed to presidential usurpation of Congress’s war power, with which the plotters are perfectly pleased) the judiciary has now said, “We rule here, not you.”
The only way to defeat this coup is to proceed with shock and awe. Trump needs to keep changing the narrative on his enemies so as to keep them off balance. This must include a vigorous campaign of legal prosecutions against and/or related to Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, the Clinton Foundation, Flynngate, etc. Doubling down on his populist domestic and foreign policies must be part of the countercoup, Russia included. Most self-described Republicans support Trump’s declared desire for constructive relations with Russia. This is a potentially winning policy, but he has to spell it out, arrange a quick meeting with Putin, brave the hysteria as he well knows how to do, and serenely go about dominating the national debate.
The most important motivation for die Putschisten in the Deep State is forestalling any rapprochement with Moscow. The mobs of useful idiots on the streets are motivated by disparate enthusiasms that all converge on a hatred of the identity and values of the traditional American nation. But the paymasters behind the disorders, notably George Soros, are concentrated like a laser on the Russophobic primary goal of the Deep Staters. There are open calls for a removal of Trump by the intel professionals, as our “last line of defense.” Thus do progressives reveal the undemocratic, even totalitarian, impulse at the core of their worldview. A rapprochement (better yet, an entente) with Russia is still possible. Moscow will still welcome it, even if it’s appalled by what we all have witnessed since January 20. Trump has to be willing to tell any officials who refuse to collaborate, “You’re fired!”
At the time of this writing the signs are not encouraging. With the removal of Flynn and installation of McMaster (and with NATO-forever enthusiasts like Pence, Mattis, Haley, and McFarland already on board), the chief aim of the plotters vis-à-vis Moscow appears within reach. If they succeed, they may let a neutered Trump remain in office as a colorful, twitterful figurehead while they ensure a continuation of the failed strategies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. On the other hand, the risk that Trump might do something impulsive—like withdraw from NATO, or terminate our defense pacts with Japan or South Korea, which he could do with a signature—is too great. In the end they need to be rid of him.

It has been barely a week since the Republican plan to (sort of) repeal and replace Obamacare was unveiled and already the proposal has been savaged from both left and right, by most of the media, by various interest groups, including doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies, and by virtually anyone else with an opinion. Outside of Paul Ryan, it is hard to find anyone who truly likes this bill. Indeed, in my opinion, this is a deeply flawed bill that perpetuates — and in some cases exacerbates — some of Obamacare’s worst flaws. Still, there are some important things to keep in mind.

1. There will be losers as well as winners. The Republican talking point that everyone will be better off under their proposal is silly and just gives opponents an easy target. Every piece of legislation creates winners and losers. Obamacare did. There were far more losers than winners, but some of those who won under Obamacare will be losers under the Republican plan. They will receive lower subsidies, have to pay more for insurance, or be forced to switch to less inclusive plans. Denying this simply allows Democrats and the media to search for someone getting hurt and blow it up into a big story.

2. There will be more winners than losers. The media coverage of the Congressional Budget Office’s report has focused on the reduction in insurance coverage (more on this below). But the report also showed that premiums would be lower under the GOP plan starting in 2020, about 10 percent lower by 2026. That represents a substantial savings for millions of Americans. The Republican plan would also give millions of Americans more choice of insurance plans, making it easy to find the type of coverage and the provider networks that suit their needs. Nor should we ignore more than $1 trillion in tax cuts, many for the middle class, or the $337 billion reduction in deficits over the next ten years. Those cuts mean more jobs and economic growth, a big win for everybody.

3. No, 14 million people are not having their insurance taken away. Media reports have focused on CBO’s conclusion that there would be 14 million fewer insured Americans next year under the GOP replacement plan, and as many as 25 million fewer by 2027, though more people would still be insured than before Obamacare. Those numbers may or may not be accurate (CBO’s model has consistently relied on a belief that the individual mandate would cause people to sign up for Obamacare, a belief that hasn’t held up in practice), but they are badly misleading. Much of the projected decline in coverage stems from CBO’s belief that, without the individual mandate, many people would choose not to buy insurance. Whether or not that is a wise choice on their part, free people should have the ability to make even unwise choices. That’s not “taking their insurance away,” it is treating people like adults.

4. Of the 25 million fewer insured in 2026, 14 million would come from a reduction in Medicaid enrollment. That may sound alarming, but Medicaid was not only fiscally unstainable in its current form, stressing both federal and state budgets, it provided barely minimal care. Reforming Medicaid in a way that encourages states to innovate and focus more of their resources on the most vulnerable populations, rather than, say, the elderly in nursing homes, many of whom are middle class and simply shifting the burden from their families to taxpayers, or single, childless men, can only benefit those most in need.

5. The alternative is Obamacare not Utopia. In comparing the GOP alternative to Obamacare, it is important to remember that Obamacare was teetering on the edge of collapse. Projections of how many people would be insured or what premiums would be ten years from now assume that Obamacare would survive that long. It couldn’t, not in its current form. When Democrats point out someone who would lose their insurance under the GOP replacement, we should ask what would happen to that person when — not if — Obamacare spirals into oblivion.

The debate over the repeal and replacement of Obamacare has been hard for many on the right to parse because the concept of “repeal” — a term with a straightforward meaning that is isolated from “replace” — can lose its clear meaning when the two are joined at the hip.

Obamacare touched on so many aspects of health policy — aspects any reform effort would inevitably need to address, albeit in a different manner — that evaluating any one element of the law in isolation from the others is enormously difficult. Which aspects are central, and which are peripheral, is no easy question to answer for such a massive law. That difficulty is compounded by the lack of consensus among Republicans on an ideal replacement. Sound Obamacare replacement ideas in the minds of some may double down on Obamacare’s worst features in the minds of others. A further complication is introduced by the sequencing of reform. Some replace concepts, though in isolation of potential merit, may take on a different character in a policy context where metastatic remnants of Obamacare remain on the books pending repeal at a later date.

“Repeal and replace” has become a mantra in many corners on the right but it has long been a source of unease for some conservatives who have feared that “replace” might in practice not represent true “repeal.” The reaction to American Health Care Act represents the eruption of such concerns, which have brewed under the surface of our Obamacare debates for years, into the spotlight.

Sensing that things might play out precisely this way, many conservatives, Heritage Action included, urged Congress to lay the groundwork last Congress for an immediate repeal of Obamacare shortly after the inauguration of Barack Obama’s successor. That process culminated in the passage of the 2015 reconciliation bill that the same conservatives have urged Congress to pass for the last several weeks. But that bill was imperfect, as many noted at the time. Its authors, reluctant to test the limits of the Senate’s Byrd Rule, which limits what can be included in a reconciliation package, prematurely omitted from the bill the repeal of Obamacare’s various insurance regulations. Though it repealed Obamacare’s taxes and spending, it was understood at the time to be a floor, not a ceiling, for repeal. More work, we all knew, would be needed.