A Sweat Smell Of Panic Creeps Over Washington as the Release of the Memo Looms

A little earlier in the week, Wisconsin Republican Sean Duffy was interviewing New York Republican Lee Zeldin on Duffy’s podcast. The subject to “the memo” came up and this is what Duffy had to say:

Rep. Sean Duffy (R., Wis.), speaking about the decision, said allegations in the memo “will be shocking to many Americans and warrant the removal of a number of high [level] FBI and DOJ individuals as well as at least one of those individuals being prosecuted,” according to comments made in the lawmaker’s podcast, an advanced copy of which was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

“There is a lot of smoke blowing around the FBI, the DOJ,” Duffy said during a chat with his colleague, Rep. Lee Zeldin (R., N.Y.), on national security issues and Trump’s upcoming State of the Union address.

I wish our guys wouldn’t say stuff like that because it is ultimately dysfunctional. One of the primary rules of sales is “under-promise and over-deliver.” The same in politics. For instance, don’t promise a wall from the Gulf to the Pacific when a) it isn’t necessary and b) it is virtually impossible to do. Don’t promise DREAMers a path to citizenship and protected status for their parents/siblings when you don’t control either house of Congress or the Presidency.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d like to see a reenactment of Tamerlane’s capture of Bagdad, with Trump in the starring role, and have it end with him building a freakin pyramid of heads outside the FBI and Justice Department buildings. But, unless I’m totally shocked, the body count is not going to move. Comey, McCabe, Baker, and Rybicki are gone. Bruce Ohr is on life support at Justice. Most of the other players in this drama were political appointees and they have already departed and I doubt anyone has the stomach for prosecuting them.

Sometimes, though, I get a little twinge of hope when I see the abject panic that is hitting a lot of quarters.

I suspect there is going to be stuff in there that will reveal the FISA Court as the sham rubber-stamp operation many of us have always thought it was. I suspect that there will be other things that are going to show both FBI and Justice in a very bad light. I doubt seriously, seriously to the point of utter disbelief, that an classified sources or methods are going to be revealed. I also suspect that some of the findings are going to be ambiguous and how you look at them is going to depend upon your predisposition (or not) to assume the FBI was action non-politically and in good faith.

But the panic is there. There’s no doubt about it.

The post A Sweat Smell Of Panic Creeps Over Washington as the Release of the Memo Looms appeared first on RedState.