Four Texts from J.D. Vance to Me

There are some issues here that ought to be teased out a bit more

I thought for a moment about whether I ought to feel bad about posting these four messages, and decided I didn’t. J.D. Vance’s second message to me congratulated me on being hired as a journalist, so the assumption is set that he’s speaking to one.

I’m not going to share all of our conversations. It is already well known that he’s a smart and thoughtful man. However, there are duties to truth and national security implicated here that he ought to answer for. To be clear, my issue is not that he’s a dove when it comes to Ukraine, I am too, and I favor a negotiated solution sooner rather than later.

First off, he reached out to me about some of the details regarding the Fusion GPS investigation. It’s an issue he has not broached publicly, but he is aware of. I suspect he is wary of getting on the wrong side of Paul Singer. To be clear, Singer is an intense partisan of Israel in the way that almost all right-wing Jews are, but it’s the assessment of parts of the Israeli deep state that he also has a Russia problem.

This raises some interesting questions about the Fusion GPS research. It succeeded in poisoning the well with conservatives when it comes to talking about Russian influence, but if Singer has a Russia problem the question that needs to be asked is whether that was, in fact, the point. Flood the zone with obvious bullshit, and it turns people off.

Sure would be nice to hear about those strong views, wouldn’t it! Those are from 2020.

In October of last year, I raised the issue of Special Agent Johnathan Buma, though Vance is not on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He says he’s skeptical:

What concerns me about this is that Buma was sourced up with a number of people close to the Claremont Institute. Charles Johnson was at one time, though he has distanced himself from it, and another source in the senate disclosure, we now know is Yuri Vanetik, who has also done Claremont stuff.

One thing the Claremont Institute is famous for is a sort of omertà. An instinct to defend one’s friends and allies is perfectly healthy, it’s pathological when it’s defending things like this. It’s worth noting that the pinky-and-the-brain duo running Vance’s Senate office, James Braid and Jacob Reses, are both Claremont fellows. So is that why Vance is skeptical of Buma?

Then there’s this:

I received no response to this. This is troublingly close to a willful denial of reality, which is sadly typical of Republicans but is considerably more objectionable in the context of ten months of an ethnic cleansing and with the threat of regional war looming. After having been betrayed on these issues time and time again, we need answers.