We love former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi because he explains difficult topics with ease and professionalism, we also love people that could make five times what they made on their government salary and chose public service anyway, and we love Nicolle Wallace because she’s Nicolle Wallace, that’s why. Today, the two of them had one of the most interesting discussions in a long time. Wallace wanted to know how it was that DNI Ratcliffe could downplay a report on Russia interfering in our election and instead chose to concentrate on Iran sending out emails intending to “damage Donald Trump.” In other words, how did the Director of National Intelligence take a report and emphasize it completely backassward?

This, after all, is not how a liberal democracy – where truth matters most – works. Barack Obama withheld similar intelligence so as not to appear partisan.  Figliuzzi explained that the answer was easy. Ratcliffe is not an intelligence professional, he’s a politician.

“He’s lost all credibility and that performance that night has really led to the place we’re at, which is if we have an ugly season coming up with this election, He will not have any credibility. If he attempts to get to the podium and tell us what is going on with election results or foreign meddling, I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to hear him. The other thing he did was he downplayed that night, he downplayed the role of Russia. And he emphasized the role of Iran.

But Ratcliffe knows he has a legitimacy problem and tried solving it in a unique way. He had the press conference from the Hoover Building, FBI HQ, all to make it sound and look more legitimate. That upset Figliuzzi almost as much as the report.

Nicolle, being Nicolle, also noted that the press release came out of the White House and not the DNI Office or the FBI, which is – to say the least – a bit unusual. The Frank got down to being the best Frank:

 Look, Ratcliff is the guy you have at work where you think you agree and he sneaks off to the boss and boom there is a surprise and he feigns ignorance. It doesn’t sit well with career professionals and I’m sure it didn’t sit well with anybody at FBI headquarters and again we’re going to learn truths after this election is over. Whenever President Trump eventually leaves office, we’re going to see documents of first drafts and second drafts of this press conference and other things and it is going to just curl our hair as to what was twisted, what was exploited, and what really happened.”

Figliuzzi isn’t the type to use hyperbole to continually get booked as a guest. He is on TV plenty. He is also not a flamethrower, nor is he a partisan for anything but the truth.

He is also a guy that likely still has many friends at the agency and they talk shop. Though we doubt they break rules about spilling secrets, they can say things like: “You will not believe the stuff you see when he’s out of office.”

I suspect that is right. We will learn stuff that will curl our hair. We won’t have any problem believing it happened. We will have a problem with how Trump always get away with it, as president of the U.S.

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Peace, y’all
Jason
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