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host of foreign policy “experts” are now explicitly calling for “regime change” in Russia following Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine. Reminiscent of the establishment’s failed calls for regime change in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, whose military conflicts cost countless American lives and resources, the sentiment appears to be at odds with the majority of the country. Nearly three-quarters of Americans oppose playing a major role in the unfolding conflict.Benjamin Wittes, a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution, epitomized the establishment’s ultimate policy goal for Russia in a recent tweet: “Regime change: Russia.”

It could be a coincidence that so many key names in this timeline — from John Brennan and James Comey, to Ukraine and CNN — factor into the Trump impeachment push. And, further, it could be a coincidence that we have ended up where some Trump critics said they hoped to be, even before he was sworn in. On the other hand, in retrospect, the biggest surprise might be that, all things considered, it took them so long to get to this point.

The schemes of Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler are predictable. As we said three months ago, Robert Mueller would not be allowed to testify without a handler. Small group participant Aaron Zebly will now join Mueller for his testimony. This has always been the plan, but strategically announced today. Remember, Mueller’s team is working closely with Nadler’s team; they are part of the same purpose. They are all part of the same network. The impeachment objective is a group effort from inside government & outside (Lawfare). These are not separate groups. The pre-planning was why Chairman Nadler hired...

A "good friend" of former FBI Director James Comey indicated there is cause for concern in Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's resignation letter. In announcing his resignation on Monday, Rosenstein thanked President Trump for "the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations.”

Whatever happens to Brett Kavanaugh, Democrats have normalized yet another illiberal position in their pretend crusade to save the Constitution from Donald Trump. “Doesn’t Kavanaugh have the same presumption of innocence as anyone else in America?” CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono this past Sunday. “I put his denial in the context of everything that I know about him in terms of how he approaches his cases,” was her unexpectedly honest answer. Plainly put, Hirono argues that because Kavanaugh—who earned the highest rating from the ABA during his time on the DC appellate court—has a record of originalist...

Scott Anderson and Benjamin Wittes, who is a friend of former FBI Director James Comey, sued the administration on Friday after they failed to initially release the results of the survey, Talking Points Memo reported. The men had initially requested the documents under the Freedom of Information Act in April but filed the lawsuit after the federal government didn't hand over the information in the timeframe required by law. The anonymous annual "climate survey" gauges employee's feelings about the agencies and was conducted from February to March, according to the report. The lawsuit argues that there is a high level...

Friday’s outing of longtime CIA and MI6 asset Stefan Halper as an FBI asset sent to infiltrate the Trump campaign has social media abuzz today. Reactions have ranged from celebration to outrage, with little inbetween. To recap, after two weeks of hunting for a “mole” in the Trump campaign, the New York Times and Washington Post both printed incredibly detailed descriptions of Halper – withholding all but his name, solidly corroborating a March report by the Daily Caller‘s Chuck Ross about Halper’s meetings with the Trump aides. Neither publication give Ross credit, of course. Somehow several anti-Trump intellectuals got their...

[FULL TITLE] Anatomy of a Presidential Untruth: What Data Did the Justice Department Really Provide the White House? On Feb. 10 of last year, a Justice Department lawyer in the department’s National Security Division (NSD) assembled some data on international terrorism convictions for transmission to the White House. The lawyer, a man named George Toscas, included in his email to his superiors what he described as “some general statements that are supported by [the data] and can be used publicly.”**snip**In the wake of that analysis, Benjamin Wittes filed a Freedom of Information Act suit to find out how precisely the...

Editor’s Note: Lawfare’s Board of Directors has published a post regarding this article and our editorial standards here. In the United States, the latest Iranian protests have sparked a kind of debate in which we argue fervently about whether the U.S. should tweet its support or just shut up. At the risk of making the Trump administration look moderate, I think we can choose between more than waving our hands and sitting on them. Remember, when the Iranian regime decided it didn’t like U.S. activities in Iraq, it found considerably more direct ways to express its disapproval. It just started...

Benjamin Wittes, a friend of former FBI Director James Comey, said that he's unable to say how far President Trump is willing to push the legal bounds of the presidency because it would involve "looking into his soul" — and he's not quite sure Trump has one. Asked by former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara on his podcast "Stay Tuned with Preet" how far he thinks Trump is willing to stretch the constitutional constraints of his office, Wittes said he would need to look into Trump's soul to answer that question. "I'm hesitant to answer that question because it involves looking...

With Ominous Tweet, Comey Pal Suggests Bombshell Story Is Soon To Drop This was the headline last Friday, four days ago. Read about it on FR by clicking the link above.

James Comey may have misled senators on May 3, when he testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he had never been an anonymous source in news reports related to the Russia investigation. By that time, he had already leaked several private conversations he had with President Trump to his friend Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of the blog Lawfare and former editorial writer for the Washington Post.

Wittes wrote on Twitter that the upcoming story could be published later Friday or on Monday. The heads-up comes a day after Trump revealed that he was bluffing last month when he suggested that he had recorded his conversations with Comey. May 16 appears to be his first time Wittes previewed Comey stories. Hours after Wittes posted the foreboding message that day, The Times published a shocking story: “Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him To End Flynn Investigation.” The piece cited a memo that Comey filed just after a Feb. 14 meeting he had with Trump at the White House....

Long time CTH readers will note we extended well over a year of benefit-of-the-doubt to the motives of former FBI Director James Comey with regard to the severity of his politicized nature and disposition. Throughout the entire Clinton investigation we remained ambivalent to Comey’s motives. Indeed it wasn’t until after the Pulse nightclub terrorist attack when Comey obtusely noted the FBI had been contacted (prior to the attack) about the sketchy behavior of Omar Mateen by a ‘random concerned citizen’ -and our finding that the actual ‘citizen’ was the far more substantive St Lucie county sheriff Ken Mascara– that we...

James Comey, the ousted FBI director, once wore a dark blue suit to a White House gathering to blend in with the curtains because he hoped that would help him avoid being called out by President Donald Trump, The New York Times reported Thursday. Benjamin Wittes — a friend of Comey's, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and the editor-in-chief of Lawfare — told The Times about the incident, which he said Comey described to him. "He thought he had gotten through and not been noticed or singled out and that he was going to get away without an...

Altamahaw (United States) (AFP) - While many see Donald Trump's presidency as a slow-motion car crash, the core voters who elected him are standing by their man, shrugging off the scandals and thrilled he is sticking it to Washington's establishment. That was a common view at the auto races at Ace Speedway in rural North Carolina, where America's stock car racing tradition was born. "I think the Democrats are trying to make things hard for him," Robin Hall said as she sat in the grandstands on Friday. The 53-year-old daycare worker dismissed the chaos cascading into the White House in...

The New York Times reporter who wrote the article alleging that Trump pressured Comey to drop investigation of Flynn, Benjamin Wittes, is married to Tamara Wittes. “Wittes is in fact a senior advisor on the Clinton campaign’s Middle East working group” http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/10/inside-hillary-clintons-massive-foreign-policy-brain-trust/ “Wittes was a top Middle East policy official under Clinton when she was secretary of state” http://www.jta.org/2016/05/04/news-opinion/politics/hillary-clintons-foreign-policy-advisers-are-exactly-who-youd-expect-them-to-be-which-is-now-rare

Yesterday, a friend of James Comey by the name of Benjamin Wittes, editor and writer for lawfare blog, now steps out and admits he was one of the primary sources for the New York Times Comey Memo article (Michael Schmidt); and in so doing outlines the severity of the political nature of the former FBI Director: