Let’s look at Biden’s transition team…
Hollywood loves sequels. Most of them are terrible, but studio executives seem addicted to them. Rocky will likely be rolling his way into the ring for fifteen rounds of wheelchair boxing before the franchise finally fades away, and the Fast and the Furious will be probably be burning rubber long after they have become the Feeble and the Infirm.
The Swamp has the same problem.
Joe Biden recently named the key members of his presidential transition team. These are the individuals charged with putting together the apparatus, which will take control of the levers of power in D.C. should Joe win in November. They are a predictable lot:
Senator Ted Kaufman, a longtime Biden advisor and the guy who was named to serve out Biden’s term in the Senate after Biden became Vice-President.
Yohannes Abraham, a former top aide to Valerie Jarrett in the Obama White House. He’s also been the chief operating officer of the Obama Foundation.
Gautam Raghavan, chief of staff to Representative Pramila Jayapal, who was co-chair of Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign.
Angela Ramirez, chief of staff to Representative Ben Ray Lujan Assistant Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Evan Ryan, a former aide to then Vice-President Biden.
Julie Siegel, formerly Elizabeth Warren’s senior counsel for economic policy.
But, one name really stands out for what it portends vis a vis the ongoing investigations into the attempted coup against President Trump and the efforts of both the Congress and U.S. Attorney Durham to get to the bottom of this unprecedented event and the threat posed to American democracy.
Avril Haines.
Haines will lead the transition team’s work on national security and foreign policy. Given the cloud hanging over the FBI and the CIA and the possible complicity of the Obama Administration in extra-legal efforts to sabotage the Trump campaign in 2016 and depose the sitting President after his election, there could hardly be a more important post in this transition team.
So, who is Avril Haines?
Avril Haines is the former owner of an independent bookstore and coffeehouse in Baltimore, Maryland. The bookstore won the Baltimore City Paper’s “Best Independent Bookstore” award in 1997 and was known for featuring local writers, small press publications, and erotica reading nights. Tiring of life as a bookstore owner, Haines eventually enrolled in law school and graduated from Georgetown in 2001.
Haines then embarked on the familiar path of an aspiring bureaucrat and ladder climber in Washington, D.C. Her first stop was a legal officer at the Hague Conference on Private International Law. Within a year of taking that job, however, she had moved on taking a position as a law clerk for the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Judge Danny Julian Boggs. Again, within a year she was gone.
The next stop was the Department of State where Haines worked in the office of the Legal Adviser, first in Treaty Affairs and then in the Office of Political-Military Affairs. By 2007 Haines had parlayed that experience into a position as Deputy Chief Counsel for the Majority Senate Democrats on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. The chairman of the committee at the time, predictably enough, was Joe Biden.
Haines had made the critical connection. She was a made woman.
From 2008 to 2010 this former owner of an independent bookstore was the assistant legal adviser at the Department of State for treaty affairs.
In 2010, Haines was appointed to serve in the White House as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President for National Security Affairs at the White House.
In 2013 Haines became Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. As such she was the second most powerful person in the Agency, reporting only to the Director, John Brennan. Haines replaced Mike Morrell, infamous for his complicity in the coverup of the Benghazi disaster in this position. Morrell eventually testified before Congress that the analysis he chose to believe over human-sourced reporting was flawed, but there was “no political intent.”
A little over a year later Haines was named to be the Deputy National Security Adviser in the Obama White House. In this capacity, she worked directly for Obama’s National Security Adviser, Susan Rice.
The list of individuals who have lined up over the years to laud her performance reads like a Who’s Who of individuals implicated in or close to the attempted coup and the Spygate scandal.
“I am thrilled to welcome Avril back to the National Security Council (NSC) to serve as my principal deputy. Previously at the State Department, NSC and Central Intelligence Agency, Avril has been indispensable in implementing the Administration’s strategy to address the full range of threats and challenges to our national security… I could not be happier that Avril will help me lead the dedicated NSC staff as we continue to make our country safer and stronger and advance American leadership in the world.”
Susan Rice 2014
“I am pleased and proud about Avril Haines’ move back to the White House to serve as deputy national security advisor…On behalf of the entire Intelligence Community, I congratulate Avril on her new job.”
DNI James Clapper 2014
“The selection of Avril Haines to serve as the President’s Deputy National Security Advisor is a fitting testament to her outstanding intellect, superb judgment, substantive expertise, and total dedication to our country’s security. As much as I wish she could continue to serve as Deputy Director of CIA — a role in which she has excelled — I know that Avril is ideally suited to serve the President and our country in her new assignment. I very much look forward to continuing our partnership as we address the wide array of national security challenges America faces around the globe.”
John Brennan 2014
For her part, Haines has made abundantly clear where she stands on Spygate and ongoing investigations into the scandal. She has characterized President Trump’s statements on the magnitude of the scandal as “ridiculous” and added, “It’s very unfortunate that the current president of the United States goes after the institutions that he is responsible for in a way that is not at least apparently the product of deliberation and thoughtfulness.”
Haines might well try to downplay the significance of the actions taken against this President. She is not simply a loyalist. She may very well be directly implicated in the scandal herself.
According to multiple press reports in 2016, the Obama White House held secret meetings related to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation and the “fusion cell” that CIA Director Brennan had created at CIA Headquarters. The purpose of these meetings was to quarterback efforts directed at the Trump campaign centered on allegations of Russian collusion. Contrary to common practice staff aides were prohibited from attending and closed-circuit video coverage of the meetings was shut off. Susan Rice chaired the meetings which included “principals,” – heads of agencies. Avril Haines reportedly chaired the deputies meetings.
The deputies meetings chaired by Haines included Director John Brennan, Central Intelligence Agency, Director James Clapper, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Director James Comey, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, United States Department of Justice and eventually, Vice President Joe Biden.
In short, Haines was at the very center of the efforts inside the Obama Administration which are currently under investigation and regarding which indictments may be issued any day. As such, her real role in any “transition” team is abundantly clear. She is to roll back the clock, erase any evidence, and ensure that none of the ongoing efforts to get to the bottom of what is perhaps the greatest scandal in American history ever bear fruit.
If she gets her chance, Haines will do her utmost to simply wash away all of what has transpired over the last three years. None of the revelations will mean anything. None of the wrongs will be righted. No one will be held accountable.
We will be where we were in 2016, with the Swamp and the bureaucracy ascendant and a corrupt elite that perceives itself as above the law in charge. We will pick up right where we left off in the waning days of the last administration with secret meetings, intrigue and plotting against the republic and the people.
I for one hope none of this ever transpires. I hope the stench coming from D.C. is palpable enough to the American people that they understand what a Biden victory portends.
We’ve seen this movie. We know how it ends. Badly for us.
