Month: May 2017

Can You Spell RICO?

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Federal prosecutors are investigating Uber for criminal conspiracy to evade regulators.

It seems to me that this would be a good opportunity to apply the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) against them:

Pity the poor Uber lawyer who has to tell an already moody Travis Kalanick that homeboy’s got a new headache brewing…and this sh%$ is federal.

An inquiry by the United States Department of Justice into Uber’s use of a program to deceive some regulators has expanded.
The ride-hailing company has been under scrutiny from the Justice Department over a tool called Greyball, which The New York Times reported on in March. The Greyball tool allowed Uber to deploy what was essentially a fake version of its app to evade law enforcement agencies that were trying to clamp down on its service in cities including Portland, Ore., Boston and Las Vegas.

Oh man, it’s almost like Uber isn’t allowed to purposefully mislead local governments in its ongoing quest to do whatever the f%$# it wants whenever it wants. We know hedge funds with more self-control and less ego.

Greyball is the most concrete piece of evidence yet that Uber genuinely believes itself to exist somewhere beyond the silly laws of mere mortal companies. The Ayn Rand-themed car service that lives on your phone is such a complete and total Silicon Valley baby that it not only keeps trying to get away with sh%$ that no one else would, it keeps acting shocked and persecuted when it gets caught. Kalanick waged passive-aggressive cold wars with cities, states and nations, creating chaos in most of them and winning in even more, but many of his enemies have gone full stalking horse, waiting for their moment to exact revenge. Dumb hubristic sh%$ like “Greyball” is akin to handing them an invite that reads in embossed cursive “You may f%$# me back now.”

 (%$# mine)

RICO requires a conspiracy to further certain predicate offenses, which includes obstruction of justice, interfering with interstate commerce, and fraud.

The very existence of the Grayball software proves a conspiracy, and Ubers actions to evade regulation seem to involve the above three crimes, so perhaps we will see Uber and Kalanik in the dock in the not too distant future.

Honestly, it would do the world, and the tech community, a world of good if Kalanik ended up in jail for a few years.  It might other wannabee Galtian supermen.

This Business Will Get out of Control. It Will Get out of Control and We’ll Be Lucky to Live through It.

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A Tennessee woman hated that her congressman voted for the controversial Republican health-care bill in the House of Representatives, authorities said.

So Wendi L. Wright tried to run Rep. David Kustoff (R-Tenn.) off the road after he visited the University of Tennessee at Martin, they said.

The Weakley County Sheriff’s Department said Wright tailed the car carrying Kustoff. At some point, the congressman and his aide became afraid and worried that Wright wanted to force them off the road.

They then turned into a driveway and stopped. That’s where Wright got out, screamed at the congressman and struck the windows of his vehicle, even reaching inside the car, the sheriff’s department said.

Authorities said Wright then stood in front of the vehicle to try to keep Kustoff from leaving. At some point, someone called 911, but Wright left before authorities arrived.

The incident happened on May 8, four days after House Republicans narrowly passed a bill to overhaul the country’s health-care system.

Wright, 35, has been charged with felony reckless endangerment and was released after posting a $1,000 bond. Authorities say they found her after she posted details of the encounter with Kustoff on Facebook.

I think that characterizing this as an attempt to run the Congressman off the road is a bit much. It’s more of a stalking and a rant.

Still, this is major league crazy sh%$, and it is a profoundly unproductive course of action.

Why Offensive Cyber Operations are a Bad Idea

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Would you use a drone to launch a Hellfire at a terrorist if you knew that in so doing you would give that terrorist a drone loaded with Hellfire missiles and the capability to manufacture an infinite number of drones and Hellfires?

Well, this is what happens with cyber attacks: You are providing the weapon to your target.

Case in point, it appears that the largest ransomware attack in history was derived from an NSA hack:

Hackers exploiting malicious software stolen from the National Security Agency executed damaging cyberattacks on Friday that hit dozens of countries worldwide, forcing Britain’s public health system to send patients away, freezing computers at Russia’s Interior Ministry and wreaking havoc on tens of thousands of computers elsewhere.

The attacks amounted to an audacious global blackmail attempt spread by the internet and underscored the vulnerabilities of the digital age.

Transmitted via email, the malicious software locked British hospitals out of their computer systems and demanded ransom before users could be let back in — with a threat that data would be destroyed if the demands were not met.

By late Friday the attacks had spread to more than 74 countries, according to security firms tracking the spread. Kaspersky Lab, a Russian cybersecurity firm, said Russia was the worst-hit, followed by Ukraine, India and Taiwan. Reports of attacks also came from Latin America and Africa.

The attacks appeared to be the largest ransomware assault on record, but the scope of the damage was hard to measure. It was not clear if victims were paying the ransom, which began at about $300 to unlock individual computers, or even if those who did pay would regain access to their data.

Security experts described the attacks as the digital equivalent of a perfect storm. They began with a simple phishing email, similar to the one Russian hackers used in the attacks on the Democratic National Committee and other targets last year. They then quickly spread through victims’ systems using a hacking method that the N.S.A. is believed to have developed as part of its arsenal of cyberweapons. And finally they encrypted the computer systems of the victims, locking them out of critical data, including patient records in Britain.

The connection to the N.S.A. was particularly chilling. Starting last summer, a group calling itself the “Shadow Brokers” began to post software tools that came from the United States government’s stockpile of hacking weapons.

The attacks on Friday appeared to be the first time a cyberweapon developed by the N.S.A., funded by American taxpayers and stolen by an adversary had been unleashed by cybercriminals against patients, hospitals, businesses, governments and ordinary citizens.

Something similar occurred with remnants of the “Stuxnet” worm that the United States and Israel used against Iran’s nuclear program nearly seven years ago. Elements of those tools frequently appear in other, less ambitious attacks.

(emphasis mine)

This happens every time.

A state actor unleashes a cyber attack, and EVERYONE has the weapon within 6 months.

This is inseparable from offensive cyber operations, and it is something that is frequently ignored by folks like the NSA.

Q.E.D.

Well, This is a Bit of a Riddle

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Photos and video: USAF

Specifically, the USAF is operating the X-37 unmanned reusable space plane, and it just completed 2 years in orbit, which is kind of a long time for a technology demonstrator:

Top-secret military spaceplanes certainly know how to make an entrance.

The U.S. military’s X-37B, an uncrewed spacecraft that looks like a miniature version of the retired space shuttles, returned to Earth over the weekend after spending nearly two years in low-Earth orbit. It sent shockwaves rippling through the air as it entered the atmosphere over Florida, producing a sonic boom loud enough to jolt people awake across the state. The Air Force, which operates the X-37B, tweeted about its return minutes later, and soon posted a flurry of images and videos of the spaceplane online. “Our team has been preparing for this event for several years, and I am extremely proud to see our hard work and dedication culminate in today’s safe and successful landing of the X-37B,” said Brigadier General Wayne Monteith, the commander of the Air Force’s Space Wing.

To which many observers said, wait, what?

The news that the military had a space shuttle quietly orbiting Earth for more than 700 days came as a surprise to some. Why didn’t we know about this thing, the reaction seemed to go. The reaction illustrated the distinct line between the country’s civilian and military activities in space, and how much the general public knows about each. People know plenty about the civilian side—the missions to other planets, the SpaceX launches, astronauts’ cool Instagram pictures from the space station. But secret military spaceplanes? You usually need a sonic boom to hear about that.

What the hell was was this doing up there so long?

It would be simpler and cheaper to do performance testing on propulsion in a small non-returnable package.

The only thing that I can think it would be doing would be deploying and retrieving some sort of payload, but there should be no need for that:  Any surveillance data would be transmitted digitally these days, and if you were testing something like orbital targeting, it would be simpler, and less easily observed, if you simply deorbited the payload at the end of the test.

The only thing that would explain the duration of the mission is some sort of biological payload, but that would be something that NASA, and not the Air Force, should be doing.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Even Stupider than the Trump Administration

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The latest genius idea from establishment Democrats, including (of Course) Lawrence Summers, is that Donald Trump should appoint Merrick Garland as head of the FBI:

We live in a golden age of political stupidity, but I’m not being hyperbolic when I say this: The idea of pulling Judge Merrick Garland off the D.C. Circuit federal appeals court and into the FBI is one of the silliest ideas I’ve seen anyone in Washington fall for. It’s like Wile E. Coyote putting down a nest made of dynamite and writing “NOT A TRAP” on a whiteboard next to it. It’s also an incredibly telling chapter in the book that’s been written since the Republican National Convention — the story of how Republicans who are uncomfortable with the Trump presidency gritting their teeth as they use it to lock in control of the courts.

On Thursday, as we reported at The Washington Post, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) gave real oomph to an idea that had been bouncing around conservative media. Democrats had vetted and praised Garland when President Barack Obama nominated him for the Supreme Court — how, then, could they object to the idea of putting him in charge of the FBI?

The reasons to object were quickly explained by reporters and by liberal court analysts like Dahlia Lithwick. “Garland probably won’t want to give up his lifetime tenure as the chief judge of the second-most important court in the land,” Lithwick wrote, “and surely the most significant bulwark against Trump administration overreach, in exchange for a 12-minute gig on The Apprentice before he uses the wrong color highlighter and gets fired by a crazy person.” Among most court-watchers, the scheme was pretty obvious: Lee would give Republicans a chance to tweak a Garland-less court, changing a 7-to-4 liberal majority to a 6-to-5 majority. And in his tweet, Lee was explicit: If Garland went to the J. Edgar Hoover Building, Democrats wouldn’t need a President Trump/Russia special prosecutor. 

Of course, Larry Summers loves this idea:

Merrick Garland as FBI director would avert what could be a long national nightmare. Trump should propose. Dems should insist.

— Lawrence H. Summers (@LHSummers) May 12, 2017

Seriously, is there any bit of stupidity that Larry Summers won’t endorse?

Wisdom of the Day

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In a discussion of the nature of leaks and leakers, a point is made that is not often made:

The deeper threat that leakers such as Manning and Snowden pose is more subtle than a direct assault on U.S. national security: they undermine Washington’s ability to act hypocritically and get away with it.

This is the truth not only of whistle-blowers, but many of our secrets:  It is about protecting us from the consequences of our own hypocrisy.

I Like Frank

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I mean of course the Pontiff.

In his latest acknowledgement of reality, he has recognizes that the Big Bang Theory is real and throws a shindig:

The Vatican has invited the world’s leading scientists and cosmologists to try and understand the Big Bang.

Astrophysicists and other experts will attend the Vatican Observatory to discuss black holes, gravitational waves and space-time singularities as it honors the late Jesuit cosmologist considered one of the fathers of the idea that the universe began with a gigantic explosion.

The conference – which runs through the week – is part of an increasing admission by the church that scientific theories were real and not necessarily in contradiction with theological doctrine.

Pope Francis declared in 2014 for instance that God is not “a magician with a magic wand” and that evolution and Big Bang theory are real. 

Considering that the Vatican Observatory had a significant role in the genesis* of the Big Bang theory, this is very apropos.

*Pun not intended.

Some Context for the Comey Firing

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Click for full size graph pop up

The New York Times had a very interesting analysis of the effects of Comey’s “October Surprise” on the elections. The takeaway is that if you look at when the poll was taken, rather than when it was released, there appears to be little if any effect:

On Friday, Oct. 28, James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, sent a letter to Congress about new evidence in the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. Politicians, analysts and journalists are still debating whether the letter cost Mrs. Clinton the presidency. It’s certainly possible. But I am not at all sure, in part because of the final Upshot/Siena College poll in Florida.


I had learned the results of our survey that morning. It showed Donald J. Trump ahead of Hillary Clinton in the state by four percentage points, 46 percent to 42 percent.

………

But it’s now clear that Mrs. Clinton was weaker heading into Oct. 28 than was understood at the time. Several other polls were conducted over the same period that showed Mr. Trump gaining quickly on Mrs. Clinton in the days ahead of the Comey letter. And the timing of these polls — particularly the gap between when they were taken and when they were released — has probably helped to exaggerate the effect of Mr. Comey’s letter on the presidential race.

………

But the Upshot/Siena poll of Florida is one of several surveys that challenge this interpretation. That poll was completed the night before the Comey letter, but it was not released until Sunday, two days later — a longer lag than usual, since Sunday is seen as a better day for news media coverage than Saturday.

Some analysts have used poll aggregators or forecasting models to measure the effect of the Comey letter, and they have implicitly treated this Upshot poll, and others conducted before the news but released after, as evidence of a Comey effect. But it can’t be; for example, none of the people we polled for our survey knew about the letter.

………

In retrospect, there is virtually no evidence to support the view that Mrs. Clinton really had a six-point lead by Oct. 28, even if it was a very reasonable interpretation of the polls that had been released to that point. She didn’t have a six-point lead in any of the 16 (sometimes low-quality) national surveys that went into the field on or after Oct. 23 and were completed before the Comey letter, including her steadily shrinking lead in the ABC/Washington Post tracker.

A new report from the American Association of Public Opinion Research on 2016 polling reached a similar conclusion.

Of course, I don’t expect this to change the narrative being being promulgated by the Democratic Party establishment and the Clinton camp.

As Upton Sinclair once said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

The Difference Between Training and Credentialism

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A recent study has shown that, “only 36% of Indian engineers can write compilable code.”

This is an indication that the Indian education system has a problem.

Even ignoring the basic question of when one should educate, and when one should just train, it appears that Indian degrees are largely about acquiring credentials.

I have noticed this trend both in the US education and employment, but it’s no surprise that this is more of an issue in India: Credentialism, or more accurately its caste system, is at its core a system of societally enforced credentials, has been in force for thousands of years:

Only 36% of software engineers in India can write compilable code based on measurements by an automated tool that is used across the world, the Indian skills assessment company Aspiring Minds says in a report.

The report is based on a sample of 36,800 from more than 500 colleges across India.

Aspiring Minds said it used the automated tool Automata which is a 60-minute test taken in a compiler integrated environment and rates candidates on programming ability, programming practices, run-time complexity and test case coverage.

It uses advanced artificial intelligence technology to automatically grade programming skills.

“We find that out of the two problems given per candidate, only 14% engineers are able to write compilable codes for both and only 22% write compilable code for exactly one problem,” the study said.
 It further found that of the test subjects only 14.67% were employable by an IT services company.

When it came to writing fully functional code using the best practices for efficiency and writing, only 2.21% of the engineers studied made the grade.

I have heard this complaint for years from my IT friends, and now we have a study.

More of This

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Unlike some progressives, the Greens come to mind, it appears that Bernie Sanders Democrats are working to take over the California Democratic Party.

This is the sort of stuff that needs to be done, it is a grueling grind, but this is what the flying monkey wing of the Republican Party did after Goldwater’s loss in 1964, and it took them nearly 20 years to take over.

Seriously, more of this:

For California’s “Berniecrats,” the fire’s not out yet.

Nearly a year after propelling Sen. Bernie Sanders to a close second finish against Hillary Clinton in California’s presidential primary, some of his most ardent supporters are still organizing – this time within the state Democratic Party itself.

At stake is the party chairmanship held by the departing John Burton, a liberal icon, a longtime lawmaker and former Senate leader who became chair in 2009.

Vying to replace Burton are L.A. County Democratic Party leader Eric Bauman, currently the state party’s vice chair and a major power in California labor politics. Facing him is activist Kimberly Ellis, the director of Emerge California, which seeks to have more women and people of color elected to public office.

Rather than fading into the sunset with their defeated standard-bearer, Sanders’ activists emerged from November both irked and emboldened.

They have joined forces with other some other progressives to support Ellis and take over the party’s leadership, promote a more left-leaning policy agenda and diminish the clout of corporations and business-friendly moderates.

………

They surprised insiders by dominating the obscure process — electing a third of the delegates for the state convention, scheduled for May 19-21 in Sacramento. They believe they have turned the once-sleepy race for a new party chair into a serious contest with Bauman, long viewed as the front-runner.

“We see our biggest opportunity as the party,” Edelstein said. “We want to make a concerted effort. If we can change California, we can change the rest of the country.”

………

[Former Santa Cruz Assemblyman Fred] Keeley said the continued organizing and activism by Sanders backers is rooted in their long-term agenda.

“The organization has continued on because it wasn’t a personality cult or anything close to it,” he said. “These folks by and large are relatively sophisticated players. They do understand that while this may be mind-numbing and uninteresting to most people, this is the thing you need to do to effect change.”

Once the dust settled from November, California’s Berniecrats focused on the weekend party meetings held in January to elect state party delegates from each Assembly district. They partnered with other progressives to build slates of candidates and then used Hustle – a texting application used extensively in the Sanders campaign – to turn supporters out.

(emphasis mine)

This is how you gain effective political power.  It’s a lot duller than, for example, running Ralph Nader for president, but this sort of concerted efforts at the local level works  ……… If it can be sustained.

Win or lose, they are going to have to fight this battle for decades.

Well, This is Reassuring

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Pucker factor: 11

At one of the myriad of radioactive waste dumps in Hanford, Washington, a tunnel has collapsed:

Hundreds of workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford nuclear site in Washington state had to “take cover” Tuesday morning after the collapse of 20-foot-long portion of a tunnel used to store contaminated radioactive materials.

The Energy Department said it activated its emergency operations protocol after reports of a “cave-in” at the 200 East Area in Hanford, a sprawling complex about 200 miles from Seattle where the government has been working to clean up radioactive materials left over from the country’s nuclear weapons program.

The agency said in a statement that the 20-foot section is part of a tunnel that is hundreds of feet long and is “used to store contaminated materials.” The tunnel is one of two that run into the Plutonium Uranium Extraction Facility, also known as PUREX. The section that collapsed was “in an area where the two tunnels join together,” the department said.

The PUREX facility, once used to extract plutonium from spent nuclear fuel, has been idle for years but remains “highly contaminated,” the agency said.
………

 An August 2015 report by Vanderbilt University’s civil and environmental engineering department said the PUREX facility and the two tunnels had “the potential for significant on-site consequences” and that “various pieces of dangerous debris and equipment containing or contaminated with dangerous/mixed waste” had been placed inside the tunnels.

………

Former Energy Department official Robert Alvarez said that remotely controlled rail cars once carried spent fuel from a reactor to the PUREX chemical processing facility, which then extracted dangerous plutonium. He said the plant lies near the middle of the sprawling 580-square mile Hanford site and was “a very high-hazard operation.”

Many contaminated pieces of equipment, including the rail cars, have simply been left in the tunnels, he said. The Vanderbilt report said that there were eight rail cars in the older tunnel and 28 in the newer one.

The cave-in was discovered during “routine surveillance,” according to the Energy Department. Photographs showed a gaping hole, plainly evident because the tunnels are largely above ground.

Workers near the PUREX facility were told to shelter in place, and access to the area was restricted, according to the Energy Department statement. Officials requested that the Federal Aviation Administration put a temporary flight restriction in place, according to the FAA.

We still have billions of dollars of nuclear waste to clean up from the Truman administration.

Nuclear power is a suckers game.

Linkage

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John Oliver on the Republican “Health Care Plan”:

Make it Stop!!!

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Hillary Clinton will be launching a political organization shortly.

Can you say 2020?

Once again I feel compelled to murder the genius of Dr. Seuss for political commentary.  (After the break)

“Hillary Rodham Clinton will you please go now!
The time has come.
The time has come.
The time is now.
Just go.
Go.
Go!
I don’t care how.
You can go by foot.
You can go by cow.
Hillary Rodham Clinton will you please go now!
You can go on skates.
You can go on skis.
You can go in a hat.
But
Please go.
Please!
I don’t care.
You can go
By bike.
You can go
On a Zike-Bike
If you like.
If you like
You can go
In an old blue shoe.
Just go, go, GO!
Please do, do, do, DO!
Hillary Rodham Clinton
I don’t care how.
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Will you please
GO NOW!
You can go on stilts.
You can go by fish.
You can go in a Crunk-Car
If you wish.
If you wish
You may go
By lion’s tale.
Or stamp yourself
And go by mail.
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Don’t you know
The time has come
To go, go, GO!
Get on your way!
Please Hillary C.!
You might like going in a Zumble-Zay.
You can go by balloon . . .
Or broomstick.
Or
You can go by camel
In a bureau drawer.
You can go by bumble-boat
. . . or jet.
I don’t care how you go.
Just get!
Hillary Rodham Clinton!
I don’t care how.
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Will you please
GO NOW!
I said
GO
And
GO
I meant . . .
The time had come
So . . .
Hillary WENT.”

In Other Elections………

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In the UK, Labour and the UKIP got their clocks cleaned in local elections:

Theresa May’s Conservatives gained more than 550 council seats and swept to shock victories in mayoralty contests in the West Midlands and Tees Valley in results that placed her party on track to secure a thumping majority in the general election.
The prime minister insisted she was not taking “anything for granted” but the Tories enjoyed a stunning day that was matched by a dramatic decline for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party, which lost more than 300 seats.

The results forced Labour to hand over control of a series of English councils including Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Northumberland, while in Scotland the party lost its grip on Glasgow for the first time in 40 years. Paul Nuttall’s Ukip was crushed as every single councillor facing election suffered defeat.

The results were turned into a projected national vote share of 38% for the Tories, 27% for Labour and 18% for the Lib Dems, with Ukip plunging to just 5%. Although that prediction is narrower than the polls, it projects that May would win a solid majority in June’s general election.

UKIP’s implosion is no surprise:  After the Brexit passed, they are like a dog that has finally caught the car it was chasing.  They have absolutely no idea what to do now, and so they lost all the seats which stood for election

Labour clearly has problems as well, most notably that they have adopted a policy of complete hostility to the Scottish National Party (SNP), which has served to alienate Scottish voters (see Glasgow results).

There is also the fact that half of Labour is fighting with the other half, creating the most dysfunctional party in Britain this side of the Trotskyites.

It’s fairly clear that the Conservatives will do very well in the snap elections, and my hope is that whoever replaces Corbyn after will hew to similar policies.

Blairite politics is not sustainable.

Well, This Is a Fine F%$# You to Erdoğan

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The US has decidedly to supply arms directly to Kurdish fighters in Syria:

President Trump has approved a plan to directly arm Kurdish forces fighting in Syria, the Pentagon said on Tuesday, inflaming already strained ties with Turkey and putting the U.S. military a step closer to seizing a remaining Islamic State stronghold.

Pentagon spokeswoman Dana W. White said the president made the decision Monday, describing the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a diverse group dominated by Kurdish fighters, as “the only force on the ground that can successfully seize Raqqa in the near future.” For more than a year, the U.S. military has been advancing plans to capture Raqqa, the Syrian city that is the Islamic State’s de facto capital, as the final major step in its nearly three-year effort to defeat the militant group.

“We are keenly aware of the security concerns of our coalition partner Turkey,” White said in a statement. “We want to reassure the people and government of Turkey that the U.S. is committed to preventing additional security risks and protecting our NATO ally.”

………

Ankara sees the YPG as an extension of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which is considered a terrorist group by both Turkey and the United States.

Since Turkey is perhaps the 2nd worst external actor in Syria, after the House of Saud, so the fact that their agenda is going pear shaped is a good thing.

It’s fairly clear that Erdoğan is using the conflict with ISIS to reinforce his authoritarian rule, and it appears highly likely that he is intent on creating some sort of Turkish zone of influence akin to the Ottoman empire.

That reality is disabusing Erdoğan of his delusions is a good thing.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

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Trump just fired James Comey as FBI director.

First let’s be clear, this isn’t the Saturday Night Massacre in 1973.

Comey is not Archibald Cox, he is was a rather clueless narcissist who ignored standard law enforcement procedures because he wanted to ingratiate himself to Republicans.

I have mixed emotions about this: It’s like seeing your mother in law drive off a cliff in your brand new car.

I anticipate that whoever replaces Comey will be a complete political hack, but that’s about as inevitable as gravity.

There won’t be any meaningful political repercussions though, Republicans control both the House and the Senate.:

President Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey on Tuesday, at the recommendation of senior Justice Department officials who said he had treated Hillary Clinton unfairly and in doing so damaged the credibility of the FBI and the Justice Department.

The startling development comes as Comey was leading a counterintelligence investigation to determine whether associates of Trump may have coordinated with Russia to interfere with the U.S. presidential election last year. It wasn’t immediately clear how Comey’s ouster will affect the Russia probe, but Democrats said they were concerned that his ouster could derail the investigation.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that Comey’s deputy, Andrew McCabe, would be the acting director of the FBI. As a presidential candidate, Trump explicitly criticized Comey and McCabe for their roles in the Clinton probe while at other points praising Comey for his “guts.”

“The president has accepted the recommendation of the attorney general and the deputy attorney general regarding the dismissal of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters in the White House briefing room. The firing is effective “immediately,” he said.