Welcome back to The Deep Dive. And before we
get started, just a quick note on the date. Happy
Ratification Day. That's right. 242 years since
the Treaty of Paris was ratified. Exactly. The
moment the U .S. was officially recognized. And,
you know, that history of sovereign independent
institutions is extremely relevant to what we're
talking about today. It really is because our
sources today are all focused on that very thing.
The political cost of attacking those institutions,
the cost of attacking the public's faith in them.
Yeah, precisely. We have a really dense analysis
of several major political battles happening
right now. Our mission today is tactical. We're
going to try to cut through the noise and find
the core strategic missteps, what our sources
are calling the unforced errors. Right. These
are the mistakes that turn a small fight into
a huge political disaster. We're going to start
with the fallout from the Minneapolis shooting,
then jump to the battles over Jerome Powell at
the Fed and Senator Mark Kelly. And we'll finish
up with something a little lighter. Oh, yeah.
A great dose of schadenfreude about some failed
dating sites. So the mission for you, the listener,
is to really grasp the political calculus here.
Why does a political party decide to double down
on a fight, even when the ground is crumbling
right under them? We're looking for those nuggets
of insight into strategy. And what we keep seeing
is this. That impers to double down creates new
legal problems and maybe more dangerously it
hands the opposition these Incredibly sympathetic
figures to rally around. Okay. Let's unpack that
starting in Minneapolis the fallout from the
Jonathan Ross shooting The sources lay out a
pretty stark political context. It's a very stark.
The administration is trying to do two things
at once Shield the shooter from criminal charges
and use the incident as a rallying cry for their
their aggressive domestic enforcement policies.
One source noted, pretty dryly I thought, that
it would have made Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard
Nixon blush. And they're doing this even though
the evidence just isn't there. That first video
completely contradicts their story. The second
one, I mean, it barely helps. It shows the victim's
wife, Renee Good, maybe behaving badly, but it's
not a justification for what happened. Not at
all. It doesn't come close. So they chose this
incident to send a message, but the facts on
the ground are actively working against that
message. Which brings us to the legal battlefield.
This is where the real blowback could come from.
Hennepin County attorney Mary Moriarty seems,
well, she seems very interested in fighting this
one out. She's signaling that this isn't just
about one conviction. It's about sending a message
that, in her view, law enforcement and the executive
branch are out of control. And the key thing
is, there's enough meat there for her to proceed.
Even with the federal stonewall. Even with that.
State charges can still be brought. And we have
to remember, it's not just criminal charges.
There's a huge wrongful death civil suit coming.
Right. And that civil case can drag this on for
months, even years. It'll keep it in the headlines,
much like the Jamal Khashoggi case did internationally.
But we've heard from legal experts like Andrew
McCabe, who say that without FBI cooperation,
no ballistics, no interviews, the state's case
is basically fatal. Is that really true? Well,
I think that analysis mistakes the difficulty
of the case for its impossibility. First, it
ignores the prosecutor's political motivation.
But second, it really overstates how necessary
federal cooperation is. How so? Federal agents
can be compelled by subpoena. They can be forced
to testify in a state court. And even more importantly,
the autopsy is coming. Ballistics tell you what
hit the victim, but the autopsy, the trajectory,
the angle of entry, that tells you how they were
shot. And that's evidence the state generates
itself. Exactly. It's totally independent of
the FBI. And let's be real, thousands of people
get convicted of murder every year without ballistics
or even eyewitnesses. The idea that the White
House can just hide some documents and make a
murder case disappear? Well, Morey already seems
ready to challenge that assumption. We should
probably also clarify the pardon situation, because
that seems like the administration's get -out
-of -jail -free card. It's a really common misconception.
The president cannot pardon state law violations.
Period. even if it's tried in a federal court.
Doesn't matter. The power is restricted to federal
offenses, and it definitely doesn't extend to
civil actions, which is where the family will
be seeking damages. So what could he do? He could
issue a preemptive pardon for future federal
charges, maybe in 2028 or 2029. But think about
what that means. It implies guilt. It completely
undermines the current message that the shooter
did nothing wrong. And Minnesota has no statute
of limitations for murder, so that legal risk
just It hangs around long after this administration
is gone. Which brings us to the human element.
This is where choosing this fight really, really
backfires. There's a great historical parallel
here from the Civil Rights Movement with Claudette
Colvin and Rosa Parks. Oh, absolutely. When you
need a flashpoint for a movement, you need a
symbol. And that symbol has to be incredibly
sympathetic, almost politically bulletproof.
And Rosa Parks was perfect. Yeah. Middle -aged,
married, well -groomed. Right. While Claudette
Colvin, who is a pregnant 15 -year -old, was
seen as too risky, the opposition is always looking
for dirt, so you need someone who is, you know,
beyond reproach. And in Renee Good, the administration
accidentally picked an opponent who is... Oh,
she's almost impossibly sympathetic. First story's
just heartbreaking. She was an innocent mom.
She happened upon a blocked road after dropping
your kid at school. It was pure happenstance.
And the details. Young, married, church -going,
wrote poetry, three kids. one of whom is now
a six -year -old orphan whose father was a military
vet. I mean, it's a perfect storm of sympathy.
It really is, and the sources point out how the
zeitgeist simplifies these stories. You know,
today people remember Rosa Parks' tired feet.
Not the complex strategy behind choosing her.
It's totally plausible that Renee Good's anti
-ice activism will just fade from the public
story. And what's left is the image of the mom
just dropping her kid off at school. That's the
image that will stick. And it's why you just
don't pick a fight with a figure like that unless
your facts are absolutely rock solid. And that
mistake led directly to the next one. Trying
to dig up dirt on the goods, investigating them
for mortgage fraud using the U .S. Attorney's
Office. And that effort led to immediate, powerful
institutional resistance. Six attorneys from
the U .S. Attorney's Office in Minnesota, led
by the top prosecutor Joseph Thompson, they all
resigned. Wow. They basically said they weren't
interested in becoming, as the sources put it,
creep V2 .0. A direct reference to Nixon's Dirty
Tricks Committee. Yep. The career prosecutors
just drew a line in the sand, and it speaks volumes.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O 'Hara had a
great quote about it. What are you saying? He
said, when you lose the leader responsible for
making the fraud cases, it tells you this isn't
really about prosecuting fraud. This is a perfect
example of professionals pushing back against
the weaponization of their own agencies. Speaking
of which, let's pivot to the next unforced error.
The attack on the Federal Reserve and Jerome
Powell. The strategy here seems pretty obvious.
Intimidation. Oh, clearly. It's a message to
all independent agency heads, especially the
Fed governors. Fall in line. But what's so strange
is the inability to just take a political off
ramp. I mean, once the fight starts, they can't
back down. The president doubled down calling
Powell. incompetent or he's crooked and then
promised that jerk will be gone soon. The problem,
of course, is that the Fed is literally designed
to be immune to this kind of political pressure
and the blowback was immediate and frankly massive.
And it wasn't just domestic. You had prominent
Republicans, Treasury Secretary Besant, members
of the banking committees. The very people who
have to approve any new Fed nominee. Right. But
the international response was maybe even more
powerful. It was unified. Leaders from 11 central
banks, the EU, the UK, Canada, Australia, they
all came out praising Powell and stressing the
need for the Fed's independence. Then you had
all three living former Fed chairs yelling Greenspan,
Bernanke, plus 10 former Fed governors. They
managed to unite the entire global financial
establishment against them. But the real core
of this unforced error. The thing that makes
the whole investigation fall apart was pointed
out by a reader, M .M. in Homasasa. A fantastic
point. The alleged fraud over the Fed headquarters
resurbishment. It's baseless because not one
single penny of taxpayer money was used. And
that's it. That's the whole ballgame. The Federal
Reserve is self -funded. The executive branch
has no jurisdiction over its budget, its spending,
its cost overruns. Which happen all the time
in DC on big projects like this. Especially when
you're dealing with historic buildings, asbestos,
lead paint. It's totally normal. So they launch
an attack on financial grounds against an institution
that is, by design, protected from that specific
attack. Which brings us back to that core idea
of faith. Exactly. The real crime here isn't
financial, it's existential. The simple appearance
of political interference in the Fed damages
faith in the U .S. economy. Our whole system
is built on full faith and credit. And the Fed
is the last real check on the administration's
economic power. It is. So attacking it so clumsily
doesn't just annoy some bankers in Europe. It
erodes the global trust that keeps the dollar
stable. It's an incredibly risky move. Let's
move to the third major institution they targeted.
The military. By going after Senator Mark Kelly,
Secretary of Defense Hegseth tried to punish
him just for repeating part of the UCMJ. Yeah,
the part that says soldiers don't have to follow
illegal orders, the goal was clearly to intimidate
active duty troops and stop them from speaking
out. But again, the strategy just completely
fell apart because the legal case was, well,
it was nonexistent. It was riddled with holes.
Let's just walk through them. First, Kelly just
repeated the UCMJ. That's not seditious. And
he's a sitting senator, so he has First Amendment
and speech and debate clause protections. That's
ground zero. But the procedural failures were
almost worse. They were just embarrassing. They
were stunningly bad. OK, so the procedure Hegseth
used only applies to actions someone took while
in service. Kelly's comments were made long after
he retired. Strike one. Strike two. The procedure
only applies to flag officers, generals and Admirals.
07 and above. Kelly's highest rank was captain,
an 0 -6. The rule literally did not apply to
him. That's right, 3. To get a court martial,
you have to prove a law was broken. He didn't
break a law. It was an absolute legal non -starter
from every possible angle. So not only did it
fail, it handed Mark Kelly a massive political
gift. A huge one. He immediately sued Hegseth
and the Pentagon for lack of due process. And
the case gets assigned to Judge Richard J. Leon,
who is a very independent -minded George W. Bush
appointee. And Kelly is happy to let this play
out in public. He's thrilled to drag this out
because every day the cases in the news, it elevates
his profile. He becomes the symbol of a non -politicized
military of free speech. It perfectly positions
him for, you know, a potential run for a bigger
office in 2029. Hegseth wanted to make an example
of him and he did, just not the way he intended.
OK, after all that, let's take a quick break
for our weekly dose of schadenfreude. We can
start with a comparison. The Ashley Madison hack
back in 2015. Right, where it turned out 100
,000 men were just talking to bots. The ultimate
online deceit, which sets the stage perfectly
for a white date. And its affiliates, White Child
and White Deal. These were dating sites set up
to connect white supremacists with so -called
tradwives. Their tagline was, and I'm not making
this up, European seeking tribal love. You just
you can't write this stuff. The sheer cringe
is off the charts. And of course, the humiliation
was swift. What happened? The site was hacked
live on stage at a security conference by a German
hacker named Martha Root. She said the security
was so bad. We're talking passwords stored in
plain text that it would make even your grandma's
AOL account blush. Oh, that is brutal. The breach
was huge. Yeah. A hundred gigabytes of data,
thousands of profiles. And when they looked at
the data, what did they find? Let me guess. Men
talking to bots. Almost entirely. wannabe Klansmen
and Nazis talking to automated scripts. It turns
out the pool of women who are racist, want to
be a trad wife, are tech savvy enough to find
this site and can't find a partner in their own
community. That pool is vanishingly small. So
the hack was the end of it. It was a fatal blow.
The site is offline, just like other sites like
Trump Singles that also failed. Just a beautiful
moment of Internet schadenfreude. So let's bring
it all together. What does this all mean? We
have the tragedy in Minneapolis, the attack on
the Fed, the targeting of Senator Kelly. What's
the common thread? The common thread is a profound
strategic misjudgment. In every case, the political
strategy was to go to war against an independent
institution, prosecutors, central bankers, the
military, or against a deeply sympathetic figure
like Renee Good. Even when the facts of the law
weren't on their side. Especially then. That
desire to double down on a story no matter what,
it just leads to these costly self -inflicted
wounds that end up empowering the opposition
and frankly destabilizing core parts of our national
infrastructure. It's all about the fragility
of faith. Precisely. Whether it's the full faith
and credit that our money is built on or the
public faith you need to believe a political
narrative, the consistent unforced error is to
attack that foundational trust for no good reason.
When you lose the faith of career prosecutors,
global bankers, and military heroes, you've crossed
a line that's very, very hard to come back from.
Which brings us to our final provocative thought,
and it goes back to Minneapolis. We know Minnesota
has no statute of limitations for murder. So
you have to consider a future. where the political
clock just runs out on this administration. The
case gets stonewalled, but eventually a new,
different administration comes in and just turns
all the evidence over to the state. So what does
it tell us about justice? When justice has to
wait for politics to change at the very highest
level, is justice delayed still justice? And
what does that long wait mean for the health
of our institutions? Something we need to think
about until our next deep dive.