Eric Felten

Transcripts.

In 1918, Henry Ford ran for the Senate and lost. Did he concede? Are you kidding?

Does 12 or 13 count as an early age to become disillusioned? Maybe it was once on the young side for lost innocence. On the other hand, maybe I was just a slow learner.

A Democratic takeover of the House will change things.

But where’s the crime?

Julie Swetnick's allegations gave the judge the fire he needed.

In February, one reporter filed to have information about Carter Page’s warrant released. Now? The paper worries about ‘security concerns.’

When Christopher Steele was hired to compile his “dossier” on Donald Trump in 2016, he already had an extensive history of presenting private intelligence analysis to U.S. policymakers. The former British spy had for years been funneling reports on Russia and Ukraine to senior State Department…

Voting by mail eliminates the privacy we've always known.

Lanny Davis, Michael Cohen, and the Steele dossier.

He was actually associate deputy attorney general until recently.

The meeting that launched a thousand controversies.

The first of a pair of Paul Manafort trials began this week in a courthouse in Virginia. The international lobbyist and onetime head of the Trump presidential campaign is charged with parking millions in cash offshore to evade taxes and otherwise launder his earnings. These are common enough…

Did the FBI really sever its relationship with Christopher Steele?

The footnotes

As if weren’t enough that Donald Trump waffled about whether Russia has been interfering with U.S. affairs as Vladimir Putin stood next to him on Monday, his dissembling came on the same day a Russian woman was charged in a U.S. district court with interfering in U.S. affairs.

Charges are also warning to anyone who may have communicated with the Russians that lying about it is a bad idea.

Former FBI official to testify before the House judiciary and oversight committees.

His relationship with James Comey could present problems.

It’s a measure of how overabundant the scandal news is in the Justice Department inspector general’s report that the Peter Kadzik story has been pushed to the side. Maybe it’s because the Kadzik materials don’t start until page 461. Or maybe it’s that the Kadzik affair lacks the expletive-laced…

Former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland made a bombshell admission Wednesday at an otherwise quiet hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. She admitted that during the waning days of the 2016 election, the Obama State Department hosted…

Parsing the Inspector General’s report.

Revisiting Page's encounter with a Russian spy in the wake of James Wolfe's indictment.

Senator Ron Johnson continues his effort to claw documents out of the grip of a reluctant FBI and Department of Justice. As chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, he has been fighting to acquire materials involving the FBI and DoJ investigations both into…

The Democratic lawmaker recently praised the bureau for its work on the Russia investigation. But the Page-Strzok texts reveal the feeling isn’t mutual.

Eric Felten's long-ago summer reading.

President Donald Trump persists in vulgarly describing long-time Cambridge professor Stefan Halper as a “spy.” Not so, insists official Washington—not because the old don wasn’t working to get secret information as part of an FBI counter-intelligence operation, but because spy is the wrong word.…

Correspondence between FBI employees Lisa Page and Peter Strzok has been rendered particularly opaque.

Analyzing a former Trump aide’s claim.

What exactly was the FBI ‘informant’ who engaged with George Papadopoulos doing, anyhow?

Senator Ron Johnson is unhappy about the amount of redactions appearing in documents sent to Congress by the FBI, and he’s doing something about it.

Also, the president should think long and hard before sitting down with the special counsel.

How that might have been the act that got us the special counsel investigation.

Did the former FBI director try to give himself an advantage with the way he categorized his material?

I recently wrote in these pages about a conundrum that has long fascinated lawyers and legal scholars, the blackmail paradox (“You’ve Got Blackmail,” Feb. 5). If I know damaging information about you and that information was not acquired under privileged circumstances—that is, I’m not your priest…

Special counsel Robert Mueller referred the case to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

Former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele used to be Mr. Chatty when it came to the allegations of Russia-Trump collusion he had assembled. In the months before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Steele talked with the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, Yahoo News,…

If our scribblings here at The Weekly Standard have, for the last two years, had a jittery, anxious quality, it might be because we haven’t had a minute’s calm. And I don’t mean the mad whirlwind that is the Age of Trump. I refer to the daily slam-bang from the construction site next door.

The House Intelligence Committee majority announced Monday that, having found no evidence of collusion between Trump and the Russians, they are wrapping up the information-gathering part of their Russia probe. “We will now be moving into the next phases of this investigation,” said Rep. Mike…

The so-called “Trump dossier” continues to be the most important—and contested—document in the many probes of Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election. Since its publication by BuzzFeed on January 10, 2017—bearing the remarkable disclaimer that “the allegations are unverified, and the…

The Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, led by Californian Adam Schiff, have taken on an awkward, crosswise task with their memo rebutting the majority’s memo, which alleged FBI abuse of the FISA court process. The task is crosswise because it requires the minority to do two…

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s February 16 indictment of 13 Russians and three Russian companies for interfering with the 2016 election fits with much that we already know. The Russians were opportunistic, stirring the pot and turning up on both sides of the partisan divide. This holds true not…

The Russia-probe indictments announced Friday certainly sound quite ominous. The Russia-based Internet Research Agency “had a strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” Derogatory information was posted online against various…

Friday’s Washington Post featured an op-ed by an old Washington hand, late of the State Department, who was right in the middle of the dossier affair, a Mr. Jonathan M. Winer. His byline bio identifies him as “a Washington lawyer and consultant,” and “a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of…

When the House Intelligence Committee released its memo arguing that the FBI and Department of Justice had abused the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court by using political opposition research as a basis for repeated surveillance requests, James Comey expressed perfectly the inconsistent…

When I asked a top Washington defense lawyer a few weeks ago about William Burck, the answer was eloquent in its unambiguous simplicity: “Bill Burck is an excellent attorney.” The context of the question was the rumors being floated by congressional Democrats that Burck was at risk of conflicts of…

The story of The President and the Porn Actress (our era’s The Prince and the Showgirl) isn’t going away. The tale of pseudonyms and secret payments made through here-today-gone-tomorrow Delaware corporations has proved to be far juicier than anything so tired as an allegation that Donald Trump was…

The pace of all things Trump and Russia is accelerating. Every day comes news of either campaign or administration workers having been interviewed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team, or new revelations about the content of intra-office FBI text messages—or the news that many such messages…

The House Intelligence Committee on Thursday released an interview members had this fall with Glenn Simpson, honcho of Fusion GPS. Much of the questioning involves how, and for whom, the firm commissioned the controversial Trump “dossier” compiled for Fusion by former British spy Christopher…

The blast waves from Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury continue to ripple through Washington. Today, the New York Times reported that special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has subpoenaed former Trump adviser Steve Bannon to appear before a grand jury.

Robert Mueller was supposed to be fired by now. That was, at the end of 2017, the fervent hope of both Democrats eager for a Saturday Night Massacre rerun and of some burn-it-all-down fans of the president. They saw the document demands by GOP lawmakers and their challenges to the impartiality of…

Robert Mueller was supposed to be fired by now. That was, at the end of 2017, the fervent hope of both Democrats eager for a Saturday Night Massacre rerun and of some burn-it-all-down fans of the president. They saw the document demands by GOP lawmakers and their challenges to the impartiality of…

Capitol Hill Republicans are working to keep the focus of the Russia story on the dossier created by an opposition research firm hired by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, Fusion GPS. The dossier was compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele. Senate Judiciary…

When John Coltrane died 50 years ago this July, the New York Times wrote that he “was considered one of the most gifted modern jazz musicians of this decade.” It was a reserved, careful judgment​—​was considered not was; of this decade not of all time. In the years since, the qualifiers have all…

When John Coltrane died 50 years ago this July, the New York Times wrote that he “was considered one of the most gifted modern jazz musicians of this decade.” It was a reserved, careful judgment​—​was considered not was; of this decade not of all time. In the years since, the qualifiers have all…

"I hope you can let this go," Donald Trump is reported to have said in a private conversation with James Comey. The president was apparently asking the then-FBI director to put the kibosh on the bureau's investigation into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. The reported quote is said…

It's been over six years since IBM's Watson bested a pair of Jeopardy! champions, and now another venerable game show is getting the man-vs.-computer treatment. Starting this month contestants will battle a music-recognition app on #BeatShazam, a digital-age update of Name That Tune—a show I found…

It's been over six years since IBM's Watson bested a pair of Jeopardy! champions, and now another venerable game show is getting the man-vs.-computer treatment. Starting this month contestants will battle a music-recognition app on #BeatShazam, a digital-age update of Name That Tune—a show I found…

Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign has been all the buzz in Washington. The book, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, is full of stories that probably never would have been told if Hillary had eked out an Electoral College win. Not just because a victorious campaign tends not to air…

Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign has been all the buzz in Washington. The book, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, is full of stories that probably never would have been told if Hillary had eked out an Electoral College win. Not just because a victorious campaign tends not to air…

After the shocking denouement of the Oscars telecast, in which La La Land was incorrectly announced as "Best Picture," rumors have been swirling in Hollywood that the Academy Awards results may have been hacked by Russian intelligence. The on-camera snafu Sunday night, it is now believed, may have…

To hear New York Times correspondent Eric Schmitt tell it, his FBI sources are dishing confidential information from their investigations of Donald Trump's team out of selfless concern for the country. "Many of them are taking risks in order to confirm information that they feel is important for…

Former president Barack Obama just couldn't help himself. Barely a week out of office, he inserted himself into the fray. He gave his benediction to the protests against President Donald Trump's executive order on travel. "President Obama is heartened by the level of engagement taking place in…

Scottish teenager Kate Hume was no stranger to tragedy. By the time the great European powers hurtled into war at the end of July 1914, her older brother had already been dead more than two years: Violinist John "Jock" Hume was a member of Wallace Hartley's eight-man orchestra that had played on…

Scottish teenager Kate Hume was no stranger to tragedy. By the time the great European powers hurtled into war at the end of July 1914, her older brother had already been dead more than two years: Violinist John “Jock" Hume was a member of Wallace Hartley's eight-man orchestra that had played on…

One night at the beginning of November an African-American church in Greenville, Mississippi, was spray-painted with the slogan "Vote Trump" and then torched. There was no hesitation to pronounce the arson a hate crime perpetrated by vicious Trump-inspired racists. "I see this as an attack on the…

Hillary Clinton could do worse than to take up the trombone.

Hillary Clinton could do worse than to take up the trombone.

The Trump win was supposed to sink the economy. Instead, things—at least so far—seem to be looking up. And so a new media narrative has just been launched: If Donald Trump succeeds, it will be because President Barack Obama gave him such a great push. How else to explain the near simultaneous…

As a general organizing principle, if Nancy Pelosi is for something, it's probably a bad idea. What, you ask, could be wrong with chocolate ice cream? And yet, when one learns that the House minority leader has a scoop on a sugar cone every morning for breakfast, the stuff immediately goes from…

As a general organizing principle, if Nancy Pelosi is for something, it’s probably a bad idea. What, you ask, could be wrong with chocolate ice cream? And yet, when one learns that the House minority leader has a scoop on a sugar cone every morning for breakfast, the stuff immediately goes from…

Just one week ago, the number-crunchers at FiveThirtyEight.com gave Democrats 68.9 percent odds the party will take control of the Senate as a result of Tuesday's elections. The betting odds then were not that far from the peak likelihood predicted by the website: 74.6 percent, on October 18. Yet,…

Here at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, we already know the end results--at least when it comes to our campaign cocktails competition. We returned to Bar Pilar and tested out the finalist recipes submitted by you the reader. It's a hard job but somebody had to do it!

Yet another reason to hate early voting: It has eroded the journalistic exit-poll armistice, the agreement to embargo information about how Americans are voting until after the polls have closed. Without notice or discussion, mainstream news sources such as NBC and the New York Times have taken to…

Tim Kaine kept returning to one telling word Sunday. Hillary Clinton's running mate appeared on ABC News's This Week and was on-message responding to Friday's news that FBI director James Comey is looking at a new source of emails in Clinton's home-brew server scandal. "This is an unprecedented…

The mystery of the "unrelated investigation"—by which the FBI director James Comey says the Bureau came across new emails-of-interest involving Hillary Clinton—didn't last long. The New York Times is among sites reporting that the FBI found the emails in question on devices belonging to disgraced…

Oprah Winfrey is excited about the election: "I see that we're about to have a woman president," she told talk-show host T.D. Jakes. And that's important not just for the mundane matters of governance—for finding someone competent to sit in the big chair—but for the larger impact it has on society:…

"Wellesnet," the online Orson Welles news and fan site has noted that Donald Trump's campaign is coming, more and more, to resemble the doomed election bid of Charles Foster Kane in the 1941 film. One will remember that things for Citizen Kane started to come unraveled when he threatened, at a big…

Is there anyone concerned at the ugly turn the election has taken with the release of a few pages of Donald Trump's taxes from 1995? The ugliness is not that Trump's taxes have been revealed, per se, but that it was done, in part it appears, by getting an elderly lawyer to violate his duty of…

Come the great Republican party split in 1912, Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose splinter inspired no shortage of cocktails.

“It must be something really important, even terrible, that he's trying to hide," Hillary Clinton said during Monday night's debate. She suggested that Donald Trump hasn't released his tax returns because they would reveal venal tax-dodging: "Maybe he doesn't want the American people, all of you…

All day long the mantra has been the same: In Monday's debate the bar is lower for Donald Trump—all he has to do is appear plausibly presidential. Commentators on the right and left have all hit the same note, arguing that Trump needs to ditch the feisty tabloid style that he brought to many of the…

"NEW ROOSEVELT DRINK PROMISES GREAT RESULTS," screamed the headline in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in June of 1910. Teddy had just returned from safari, where he had picked up the nickname "Bwana Tumbo," and St. Louis bartender Henry "Papa" Harris—"eminent artificer of mixed intoxicants"—was…

If there were any doubts whether Team Trump would make a campaign issue of Hillary Clinton's maladies, they were dispelled today with a new fundraising pitch.

Hillary Clinton has been putting herself forward as the carefully reasoned candidate, behaving in calm contrast to the shoot-from-the-hip (and often shoot-in-the-foot) emotionalism of Donald Trump. Clinton's camp is convinced this strategy will win her the election. But it may actually be the thing…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD and Bar Pilar have created a contest to find the best drinks for this presidential election season. The bartenders of Bar Pilar and the cocktail editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD will try original drinks submitted by you and we will pick the best drink in honor of Hillary and the…

How hard it is these days for Republicans to propose policies—even ones that are rather liberal—that don't get dismissed as favoring the wealthy? Consider the maternity leave and child care policies officially put forward by Donald Trump this week: The proposals are progressive enough that they…

Late in November of the presidential election year 1888, the Detroit Free Press asked "What is Fame?" After all, things like elective office, or battlefield laurels, or citations and awards, all may fall under the cautionary motto sic transit gloria. But to have a cocktail named after you: Now…

All the best sorts of people have been talking for weeks about the dangerous pathology revealed by questions about Hillary Clinton's health—that pathology being a toxic, mutant strain of Right-Wing-Derangement Syndrome.

John Bills was a Chicago city hall flunky who took some $2 million in bribes to expand the Second City's infamous red-light traffic camera system. The Chicago Tribune broke the story in 2012, and the paper has the denouement on Monday, reporting on Bills's fate: A federal judge is sending him to…

It was 50 years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught…wait, no, that's not right. What was 50 years ago on Monday was the last time the Beatles took to a stage to perform a concert. It might be argued that the January 1969 London rooftop jam session was the Beatles' last public performance, but their final…

Jazz musicians, like their colleagues in the other performing arts, are not exactly known for being politically conservative. Hear of a jazz project with political overtones, and you can be forgiven for expecting that it will have a stridently left-wing "message."

Aetna announced this week that it will no longer be providing Affordable Care Act "marketplace" insurance plans in nearly a dozen states, including Arizona. Aetna joins other insurers, including Humana, UnitedHealthcare, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Arizona, and Health Net in dropping Obamacare…

Now that campaigns are in full swing—from races for local sheriff to the long presidential slog—we won't be able to escape the silly season soundtrack, the music that underpins TV and radio attack ads and feel-good spots alike. You've heard it all before: the gloomy, grim, and portentous sounds…

Since when did Arizona become a swing state? Since Donald Trump became the Republican nominee for president.

Donald Trump's promotional team has a new web ad up on sites including Politico.com. In keeping with the GOP candidate's strange affinity for Russia, the ad has a certain uncanny resemblance to a Lenin classic.

It's settled: The U.K. is in “uncharted territory." In the immediate wake of the British decision last month to leave the European Union, an aide to Prime Minister David Cameron got the mantra going, declaring, "We're in uncharted territory." The New York Times picked up the motif and proclaimed…

Why are pro-regulation liberals opposed to government intervention when it comes to ride-hailing darlings Uber and Lyft?

Arizona governor Doug Ducey signed legislation into law this week that eliminates some of the state's onerous professional licensing requirements. Now free to make a living without first getting government approval are citrus packers, "assayers," driving instructors, and yoga-teacher trainers.

I'm being stalked by a pair of cheap eyeglasses. They keep looking out at me with their eyeless stare. They’re joined by a zombie pair of khakis, Hillary Clinton, and, creeping along on their spindly little legs, folding music stands. None of them will leave me alone.

Tucson

Rick Perry was vindicated today, when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals tossed the last of the criminal case that derailed Perry's presidential bid last year. As governor of Texas, Perry had threatened to veto funding to the Texas "Public Integrity Unit," a creature of the liberal Travis County…

Hillary Clinton seems to have learned nothing from last night’s spanking in New Hampshire. Given that she lost every demographic except seniors, one would think that team Clinton would be putting its prodigious war chest into wooing the young (where the young count as anyone under 64). And yet this…

The Washington Post editorialized in November that it was time to regulate how much sugar Americans consume. Sugar causes obesity, which leads to heart disease and diabetes. Government has to pick up much of the tab for treatment, which justifies the feds putting themselves between consumers and…

If tonight’s debate presented an opportunity for Jeb Bush, John Kasich, or Dr. Ben Carson to get back into the race, it hasn't worked out that way. Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Chris Christie all have presence tonight – an intensity and urgency that suggests they know they're in the…

Add LeBron James to the ranks of Obamacare pitchmen: The basketball star is featured in new ads urging his fans to sign up at HealthCare.gov. “You can go there to find an affordable health plan that’s part of the health care law.”

It may have been the worst moment for Jay Carney in what was a very bad press briefing. The president’s spokesman was fumbling his way through the administration’s justifications for the catastrophic Obamacare rollout when ABC’s Jonathan Karl pressed him about the fines the law imposes on the…

EVERYONE SEEMS TO AGREE that Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, President Bush's nominee for a spot on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, has about as much chance of getting past Judiciary Committee Democrats as James Traficant has of getting back into Congress. The reason: The…

News Item: INS HONORS ELIAN AGENTS

AS PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON has told us time and again, there are three legs to the New Democratic platform: opportunity, responsibility, and community. It is a troika that might, in good conscience, have been trimmed to just opportunity and community (this is, after all, a man whose lack of personal…

In late 1943, film mogul Jack Warner paid the extravagant sum of $ 300,000 to Cole Porter for the rights to make a movie about the composer's life. But it would be more than a year before filming would start -- in no small part because Warner Brothers' screenwriters had no idea how to make the…

PRESIDENT CLINTON'S "REBUTTAL" to the Starr report denies there are grounds for impeachment because the report fails to provide unambiguous evidence of perjury. Any members of the House inclined to take the word of David Kendall and Charles Ruff, the lawyers who penned the rebuttal, will want first…

CNN and Time's retraction of their false story on nerve-gas use by American soldiers in Laos has made one thing clear: CNN gave free rein to left-wing conspiracy theorizing masquerading as investigative journalism. The media establishment doesn't want to admit this, but it's the case. How do we…

Two weeks ago, some of the biggest guns in American journalism made a horrifying accusation: A U.S. Special Forces unit in September 1970 had cold-bloodedly dropped lethal nerve gas on civilians in Laos while on a mission to assassinate American defectors thought to be in the village. This…

WHEN THE NAACP -- outraged that Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines the word "nigger" as "a black person" -- threatened last year to boycott Webster's dictionaries, it was hardly the first time the company had heard from angry readers: Merriam-Webster is always getting complaints.

Just nine months ago, David Brock was promoting an article he had written for Esquire, in which he ostentatiously renounced his status as "Right- Wing Hit Man." Brock was the star investigative reporter for the American Spectator. He had written the huge 1993 article on "Troopergate" -- 17,000…

October 24 was one of those days when everyone in the news business seemed to have been reading the very same obscure academic journal. "Discrimination May Affect Risk of High Blood Pressure in Blacks," was the New York Times headline; "Study: Discrimination May Cause Hypertension in Blacks,"…

So questionable is the Clinton administration's record on fighting drugs that FBI director Louis Freeh pressed a scathing memo into the hands of the president last year denouncing the president's lack of leadership. The letter was brutal enough that the White House is keeping the text under wraps.…

Stan Kenton had a grand ambition. He wanted to transform jazz into the modern equivalent of classical music. Over the years, Kenton wandered down one blind and tone-deaf alley after another in search of his new musical paradigm. Even before he had figured out what he wanted his new highbrow music…

THE GLOBAL WARMING DEBATE is in a rut. In mid-July, for example, Undersecretary of State Timothy Wirth called for a crackdown on the emission of so-called greenhouse gases that are the inescapable byproduct of burning coal and oil. Any effort to choke off carbon-dioxide emissions will hit the…

Becky Cain, president of the League of Women Voters, doesn't like labels. " We don't characterize people by labels," she says. "I think that's part of the problem of taking the issues and saying if you're one way or another, you are therefore in this category." Known primarily as the sponsor of…

It would have given Kingsley Amis no end of pleasure to learn that his New York Times obituary gave him credit for writing a number of novels that made it to the silver screen, most notably Lord Jim. "Laziness," Amis told me one bright September morning in Wales, "laziness has become the chief…

When the baseball players strike threatened to scuttle two seasons" wo!th of ball, the whole sordid battle between petulant millionaire infielders and petulant millionaire owners produced only one hero in the public consCiousness -- Peter Angelos, the owner of the BaltimorOrioles, the owner who…