When the other shoe drops...

[TygrBright]

That's how someone on Twitter described the feeling on Capitol Hill this weekend: "Waiting for the other shoe to drop."

Most people have heard by now: On Friday, Comey held a tight, closed-door briefing session with members of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee. Staff not included. Afterwards, most of the Senators -by then on their way out of town for a long holiday weekend- declined comment.

But ranking Democrat Mark Warner said he had "a high level of confidence" the Committee would have access to the information needed to carry out their investigation.

Late last night, Reuters reported (quoting "five current and former government officials with direct knowledge of the situation,&quot that the FBI is conducting three separate probes related to Russian activity:

• A cybersecurity-focused investigation into the pre-election hacking of the DNC, being conducted by the Bureau's Pittsburgh field office- this investigation has apparently progressed the furthest.
  
  
• An operation by the San Francisco field office focused on identifying "Guccifer 2"- the hackers who took credit for posting Clinton campaign manager John Podesta's emails.
  
  
• A Washington-based counterintelligence inquiry focusing on foreign communications intercepts and field informants- including (but not limited to) financial transactions conducted through middlemen and front companies, by Russian people and companies with links to >Redacted< associates.

Reuters was unable to obtain comment on this information from the White House, or further on-the-record information from the Bureau to confirm the extent and progress of the investigations.

Intelligence Committee staff, and staff of the Senate committee members, have also denied any knowledge related to Comey's Friday briefing.

>Redacted<, of course, went to Florida to attend a woozy sploogefest of word salad and press-bashing with the local supporters that share his nostalgic jones for campaign-level adulation and excitement. Also job-interview NSA candidates, golf, and schmooze Mar-a-Lago pals.

The White House sent out Reince Priebus for the Sunday morning barbecue rituals, but apart from an ominous response to a query on >Redacted<'s characterization of the press as "enemy of the American people" ("...certainly we would never condone violence" What would you condone, Reince? A little gentle state censorship? Government imposed 'truth standards'?) he merely repeated the same old talking points.

Oh, except for two things: "It never happened" has morphed into "it never happened that I know of" (contact between >Redacted< campaign personnel and Russian Intelligence) and the assertion that Pence WAS aware of the internal probe into Flynn's trustworthiness PRIOR to February 9th. Your turn under the bus, Mikey.

And that's where things stand, as of now.

I expect we'll start seeing more cracks sometime tomorrow. Watch for damage-control trial balloons, and perhaps a major distraction or two from >Redacted< himself, tomorrow or Tuesday.

Then, mid-week, the wheels will start to come off. Probably in slow motion. I don't think it will be a big dramatic explosion. More like a series of cracks, the rushing of water coming in, gathering slowly to a thunderous crescendo over the next few weeks. With a side of noisy, attention-deflecting distractions.

And I think that's deliberate.

For all the anticipatory glee about a really big blow to the clown krewe jammed into the front seat of the Executive Branch bus, no one who's really thought it through wants to see a big smash that would render one third of the mechanism of government (as opposed to policy and leadership) non-functional. There will be plenty of behind-the-scenes negotiations and bureaucratic bunfights about how to keep things running in the mean time.

They'll come up with compromises. We may end up with President Pence. Or not. There may be some off-camera reshuffling, leverage applied, that will leave >Redacted< with a Potemkin Presidency, while a new team of Executive staff managers and Cabinet-level appointees keep cranking from behind the scenes.

And, although we may be able to rejoice in the departure of some of the more egregious neo-nazis and incompetent kleptocrats, the end result will be less than the apocalyptic, Wagnerian comeuppance many of us passionately desire to see visited upon >Redacted<.

Because it will have to be. And that will, in the long run, be a good thing.

We need every hour of every day of the next forty-eight months to rub GOP noses in the mess and pull together a viable clean-up crew.

speculatively,
Bright