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Benjamin Wittes
@benjaminwittes
, 6 tweets, 2 min read Read on Twitter
I've been reading about the Whiskey Ring scandal as part of @Susan_Hennessey and my book research, and wow, Grant's reaction to the prosecutions is really Trumpy. Consider:
(1) He fired a special prosecutor for questioning his authority to interfere with the activities of the secretary of the treasury.
(2) He drew a red line around his sons and demanded that reports that they were investigative subjects be rebutted.
(3) He railed against flipping witnesses and basically instructed the attorney general to advise Midwestern U.S. attorneys not to let anyone flip in exchange for immunity.
and...
(4) His treatment of his Treasury Secretary, Benjamin Bristow, really has a bullying Rosenstein/Sessions-like feel to it. Bristow eventually resigned citing "withdrawal of your confidence & official support."
I had known that Grant tolerated a lot of corruption and had a blind spot for his sleazy friends. I had even known about Trump's testimony in the Orville Babcock trial. And yet I totally was a Grant fan anyway. Really didn't like this discovery. It makes it hard. sorry @jon_rauch
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More from @benjaminwittes see all

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Benjamin Wittes
@benjaminwittes
Here's a question I posed on the emergency podcast yesterday which I am now posing more generally: If I were a senior FBI official and I had just opened a CI sub file on POTUS, one thing I would make damn sure of is that the Gang of Eight knew.
If the bureau leadership in fact briefed Congress, does that mean that Devin Nunes has known all this time about this? And Mitch McConnell?
Here's a data point!
Read 4 tweets
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Benjamin Wittes
@benjaminwittes
I am actually glad the President is hiring competent counsel. It does not serve the process for Trump, or the presidency, to be as badly represented as it has been. Some of the people mentioned in this story are excellent lawyers. The whole process works better that way.
If you've listened to @maddow's podcast, "Bagman," consider how much more difficult the negotiation over Agnew's resignation would have been without lawyers like Marty London representing Agnew.
Yes, such lawyers assert their clients' rights and entitlements aggressively, tenaciously even. But competent counsel is also an address to discuss matters and reach accommodations. Don't underestimate the importance of that when things get really ugly--as they surely will.
Read 5 tweets
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Benjamin Wittes
@benjaminwittes
This guy seems nice. What's the over-under on Facebook taking action against his account, which I just reported?

Reminder: You have no reasonable expectation of privacy in threatening strangers.
Further reminder: If you send me abuse, I will out you. And that's a promise. No exceptions.
Update: Facebook's response.
Read 3 tweets

Related threads

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Andrew Seeder
@oyveyistmir_
Here's a thread about the books I read this year!

#reading #books #libraries #readingrainbow
1. "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House" by Michael Wolff. Yes, I hate-read this book in a matter of days. Problematically, Bannon comes across as an articulate, insightful source and not an arch nationalist parasite. Will Wolff's depiction be hagiography in the future?
2. "The Invention of the White Race, Volume 1: Racial Oppression and Social Control" and "The Invention of the White Race, Volume 2: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America" by Theodore Allen. Who knew how important Bacon's Rebellion (1676) was to the history of racism?
Read 27 tweets
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Jewhadi™
@JewhadiTM
Susan Collins just saved the women’s movement and its progress on rape prosecutions washex.am/2CvE3of
The fight over Justice Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation exposed fatal flaws in the “Believe the Victim” approach to sexual assault.
That approach is spreading rapidly through the country and is being actively promoted as the basis for deciding campus misconduct complaints as well as criminal cases.
Read 19 tweets
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ThreeMonkeys AndMe
@We3forDemocracy
Consider Clinton. She has investigated (a farce by all accounts) by the FBI
This was regarding 👉🏼hard evidence, in the public domain, (not rumour) that for anyone else would have resulted in a jail term

Wasn’t that investigation led by some of same guys doing a hit job on Trump?
In the case of Clinton’s FBI investigation, wasn’t there?
👉🏼No audio.
👉🏼No verbatim records.
👉🏼Production of evidence was voluntary.
👉🏼Not everyone was interviewed
👉🏼2 of her chief sidekicks (witnesses) were in w her during her interview. Weren’t they and others given immunity?
Sure Clinton had a hearing; but that hearing was over things she actually did, triggered in part by the utterly unbelievable way the FBI had handled the token investigation they made in her case.
Read 17 tweets
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Adam Felber
@adamfelber
Wow, Brit. Let’s look at this thread.

-“The organized left...” Ok, we’re starting with that. Demonizing reactions from the left. They’re not just reactions... they’re a cynical product of “the organized left!” Horrors! (1/x)
- “is lying.” So now, anything negative said is a lie, because it’s all part of the aforementioned “organized left.” Whereas to me, most of the reaction was opinion, not facts. Certainly not lies.

We’re four words in, and already two rhetorical atrocities. Can we not do better?
The real chicanery comes in the next bit. “Can you think of other institutions, such as marriage or military units in which the less people have in common, the more cohesive they are?”

Many have pointed out that there’s strong research on diversity. I want to go different way:
Read 15 tweets
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Blessing Abeng
@Ms_Einsteinette
A Letter to Chimamanda Adiche about Feminism, Egalitarianism and Me.

THREAD.
Dear Chimamanda,
I planned to write you this letter privately through A mutual friend but he likes to shy away from controversy. So I thought to write it here on social media, hoping it gets to you and you read it objectively and maybe we can discuss it sometime in the future.
In your @TEDx speech about Feminism, the part @Beyonce adapted, you described a feminist as a person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes. This definition/intention sits well with me as it doesn’t favor any gender.
Read 45 tweets
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DevChick
@jynclr
1/25 This is an analogy that has been swirling around in my thoughts for a while. As a World of Warcraft player it occurred to me that the @GOP are like a raid in WoW. It's my first #thread, and yeah, it's long.
2/25 If you've played WoW and understand raids, you can skip to tweet #12. For those who have not played, continue reading to understand my analogy.
3/25 In World of Warcraft, players can get into groups known as a "raid." It is literally what it means, an attack on an enemy by troops. The "troops" being the players. Raids consist of 10, 20, and 40 players, but this isn't really germane to the analogy.
Read 25 tweets

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