Grading The Trump Presidency As An Act Of Theatre
Trump’s political drama is unlike anything we’ve seen before. No one can figure out the rules of the script. Just when you think the action is building to a climax — the Mueller report, impeachment, more than 200,000 dead from a pandemic — a different calamity usurps our attention. – Los Angeles Times
Today, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) under Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) released the unclassified House Intel Cmte releases summary – The China Deep Dive - executive summary of its report, “The China Deep Dive: A Report on the Intelligence Community’s Capabilities and Competencies with Respect to the People’s Republic of China.” The Committee voted to approve the report by voice vote. This report is the culmination of a two year-long review by the Committee to determine whether the nation’s intelligence apparatus is focused, postured, and resourced to address the growing threat from China.
The Committee sought to assess the IC’s ability to execute, with respect to China, its core mission of “collecting, analyzing, and delivering foreign intelligence and counterintelligence” to America’s leaders so they can make sound decisions. The Committee found that “the United States’ Intelligence Community has not sufficiently adapted to a changing geopolitical and technological environment increasingly shaped by a rising China and the growing importance of interlocking non-military transnational threats, such as global health, economic security, and climate change. Absent a significant realignment of resources, the U.S. government and intelligence community will fail to achieve the outcomes required to enable continued U.S. competition with China on the global stage for decades to come, and to protect the U.S. health and security…”
The Hill: “A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Department of Justice (DOJ) to publish information redacted from the Mueller report that had been designated as privileged. District Judge Reggie Walton said the Trump administration had failed to justify certain redactions from the report on the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The specific redactions he took issue with cover the decisionmaking process within former special counsel Robert Mueller‘s team over whether to charge certain people with crimes during the probe.
Based on the Court’s review of the unredacted version of the Mueller Report, the Court concludes that the Department has failed to satisfy its burden to demonstrate that the withheld material is protected by the deliberative process privilege,” Walton, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, wrote in his 40-page opinion. The decision comes as a result of a pair of lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) brought by a journalist with BuzzFeed News and the Electronic Privacy Information Center that sought to have the full, unredacted report released to the public…”