Two Of The More Interesting (And Under-Reported) Stories From The Campaign (with updates)

The first one is what folks are calling the "Trumpland" story.  Spencer Ackerman at The Guardian has the goods:

Deep antipathy to Hillary Clinton exists within the FBI, multiple bureau sources have told the Guardian, spurring a rapid series of leaks damaging to her campaign just days before the election. Current and former FBI officials, none of whom were willing or cleared to speak on the record, have described a chaotic internal climate that resulted from outrage over director James Comey’s July decision not to recommend an indictment over Clinton’s maintenance of a private email server on which classified information transited.

“The FBI is Trumpland,” said one current agent.

Ackerman further notes: "The Daily Beast reported on Thursday on ties between Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, and the FBI’s New York field office, which reportedly pressed the FBI to revisit the Clinton server investigation after beginning an inquiry into Weiner’s alleged sexual texting with a minor." The Daily Beast reported that "a former New York field office chief, highly critical of the non-indictment, runs a military charity that has received significant financial donations from Trump."

But the most interesting parts of this story is that (1) this rogue, anti-HRC New York FBI field office actually based a Hillary investigation on a book written by a Breitbart/Alt-Right operative, and (2) Rudy Giuliani appears to have gotten advanced notice that Comey was going to release his bullshit letter last week.  If I was Barack Obama, I would fire FBI Director Comey on November 9 -- the day after the election -- and then appoint an independent prosecutor to look into that rogue New York field office to find out exactly what the fuck is going on there.  I'm hoping that such an investigation will lead to -- among other things -- Rudy Giuliani being indicted for conspiracy to violate the Hatch Act.

The second story I believe is under-reported is the Trump-Russia Connection, and Newsweek published a piece on that today.  Here is one of the more fascinating paragraphs in that article:

Trump’s behavior *** has at times concerned the Russians, leading them to revise their hacking and disinformation strategy. For example, when Trump launched into an inexplicable attack on the parents of a Muslim-American soldier who died in combat, the Kremlin assumed the Republican nominee was showing himself psychologically unfit to be president and would be forced by his party to withdraw from the race. As a result, Moscow put its hacking campaign temporarily on hold, ending the distribution of documents until Trump stabilized, both personally and in the polls, according to reports provided to Western intelligence.

The fact that Russia believed Trump's attack on the Gold Star Family would end Donald's campaign speaks volumes as to how fucked up the GOP is at this moment.  With a few exceptions, Republicans are rallying behind Trump even though he is an unqualified, racist piece of shit.  The GOP owns him now.

Indeed, the Comey letter from last week may actually help to hasten the end of the GOP.  When the letter came out, Republicans flocked to Trump because they believed he had a real shot at winning.  They couldn't care less that Trump was wholly unfit to be President.  But now that Comey's partisan effort to hand Trump the White House has back-fired in a big way, folks like Mitch McConnell -- who recently got onboard the Trump bandwagon -- are stuck with Donald, and it is too late for them to back away now.

UPDATE:  Steve Benen has additional information on Rudy Giuliani and his involvement in the corruption scandal now engulfing the FBI field office in New York.

UPDATE II:  In one of the big "Holy Shit!" moments of this election, Rudy Giuliani just lied to Wolf Blitzer about whether he had advance notice with regard to the Comey letter, and Blitzer called him on it and proceeded to grill him on this matter for another five minutes. I'll post video when it becomes available.  It was devastating.  And the best part -- Giuliani is scheduled to appear on Chris Matthews' show in a couple hours.  I'm thinking Rudy will probably cancel that interview.