Attention to the Unseen

Alexander Nazaryan writes: Even before the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Friday night, November’s presidential election was shaping up to be the most consequential in modern American history. President Trump said so himself, as did his Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. A procession of crises — the coronavirus pandemic, protests and urban unrest, rampant wildfires — only heightened the sense that, come Nov. 3, voters would choose not merely a president but a direction…

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Edward-Isaac Dovere writes: Nearly every reporter in Washington has experienced it: A Republican member of Congress says “off the record,” shifts into a quieter voice, and expresses how much he or she doesn’t like President Donald Trump. Soon after, you watch this same elected official speak up in favor of the president—or, more often, avoid saying anything meaningful at all. Sometimes about the same issue that they were complaining about to you in private. Sometimes within the same day. Sometimes…

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Timothy L. O’Brien writes: Maybe it’s all Senator Lindsey Graham’s fault. “It was Lindsey Graham who helped convince Donald Trump to talk to Bob Woodward,” Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson told his TV audience Wednesday night. “Lindsey Graham brokered that meeting. Lindsey Graham even sat in on the first interview between Bob Woodward and the president. How’d that turn out?” It hasn’t turned out well, of course. Trump admitted in a taped interview with the veteran investigative reporter that he…

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HuffPost reports: An anti-Joe Biden conspiracy theory pushed by President Donald Trump, his personal lawyer and his favorite television network has been labeled Russian interference into the coming U.S. election — by Trump’s own administration. “Andrii Derkach and other Russian agents employ manipulation and deceit to attempt to influence elections in the United States and elsewhere around the world,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday in a statement announcing sanctions against the pro-Russian Ukrainian lawmaker and three Russian employees of…

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BuzzFeed reports: Four years ago, billionaire venture capitalist and Facebook board member Peter Thiel made one of his biggest bets: He went all in on Donald Trump. The normally tight-lipped and enigmatic Thiel gave a very public imprimatur as a prominent speaker at the Republican convention, tying his reputation as one of the most successful figures in modern tech to a presidential candidate despised throughout Silicon Valley. “Tonight,” he said in a nationally televised address at the convention, “I urge…

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The Daily Beast reports: The president’s personal lawyer has been working closely with “an active Russian agent” trying to smear the president’s chief political rival. That’s the conclusion of the U.S. Treasury Department, which sanctioned on Thursday one of Rudy Giuliani’s Ukrainian allies for interference in the upcoming U.S. elections. Andriy Derkach worked closely with Giuliani—and with the Trump-friendly cable network, OANN—to push accusations of political misconduct against Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Derkach, a member…

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Business Insider reports: President Donald Trump bragged that he protected Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from congressional scrutiny after the brutal assassination of the American journalist Jamal Khashoggi. That’s according to the veteran reporter Bob Woodward’s upcoming book, “Rage,” set to be released next Tuesday. Insider obtained a copy of the book. Woodward conducted 18 wide-ranging interviews with the president for the book, as well as interviews with multiple senior White House officials and former administration officials. Still,…

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Reuters reports: Microsoft Corp recently alerted one of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s main election campaign advisory firms that it had been targeted by suspected Russian state-backed hackers, according to three people briefed on the matter. The hacking attempts targeted staff at Washington-based SKDKnickerbocker, a campaign strategy and communications firm working with Biden and other prominent Democrats, over the past two months, the sources said. A person familiar with SKDK’s response to the attempts said the hackers failed to gain…

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