Tom Fitton discussing Comey Lawlessness, Smoking Gun Clinton Email, & New JW Lawsuits, Judicial Watch via YouTube, June 9, 2017
Archive for the ‘Deep state’ category
Total Vetting Fail: Left-Wing Snowden Fan Girl Reality Winner Gets Access to Our NSA Secrets
June 6, 2017Total Vetting Fail: Left-Wing Snowden Fan Girl Reality Winner Gets Access to Our NSA Secrets, Breitbart, John Hayward, June 6, 2017
(“[I]f the adventures of Reality Winner are an indication of the Deep State’s skill and discipline, Trump doesn’t have much to worry about.” Unfortunately, Ms. Winner is probably not “an indication of the Deep State’s skill and discipline.” — DM)
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Even with a valid top secret clearance, Winner had no legitimate reason to see the documents she allegedly purloined. She was only caught because the website she reportedly leaked to contacted the NSA to ask if her material was legitimate. The agency that was stunned by how much sensitive material Edward Snowden managed to abscond with still doesn’t seem to be properly compartmentalizing information and enforcing need-to-know rules.
Fans of the “Deep State” keep saying Trump made a big mistake picking a fight with them, but if the adventures of Reality Winner are an indication of the Deep State’s skill and discipline, Trump doesn’t have much to worry about. Also, it’s worth repeating that nobody voted to give the Deep Staters or Reality Winners control over America’s national security, law enforcement, and foreign policy.
Democrats created the environment in which left-wingers cannot be trusted in sensitive posts, not Donald Trump. Leftists and extreme NeverTrumpers excuse every offense against this administration by saying Trump brought it on himself, just by being himself. That’s not how the rule of law works.
This anything-goes climate has to be shut down, and fast, before permanent damage to our national interest is inflicted, if that hasn’t happened already. A few words from top Democrats about acknowledging elections, honoring their oaths, and respecting the Oval Office even if you despise the current occupant (remember that?) would be very helpful.
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The news reads like something out of a screwball comedy: a far-left activist named “Reality Leigh Winner” somehow received clearance to work for the National Security Agency, which she allegedly proceeded to rob of classified material in the name of the kookburger anti-Trump “Resistance.” In the post-Edward Snowden era, how does someone like this get anywhere near sensitive data?
Speaking of Snowden, Ms. Winner is a huge fan of his. He was one of only 50 accounts she followed on Twitter, along with WikiLeaks, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, and the Anonymous hacker collective. Her own Twitter posts were filled with foaming-at-the-mouth anti-Trump tirades such as, “Why burn a flag? Donald Trump thinks crosses burn much better.”
She was also a supporter of climate change hysteria and the Black Lives Matter radical movement. Her last Tweet, from February, was advice for rapper Kanye West to “make a shirt that says, ‘being white is terrorism.’”
She didn’t just follow the Iranian Foreign Minister, she tweeted at him. “There are many Americans protesting U.S. government aggression towards Iran. If our Tangerine in Chief declares war, we stand with you!” she gushed to Zarif.
She also referred to President Trump as “the orange fascist we let into the White House,” and some other names that cannot be reprinted at a family-friendly website without exceeding our allotment of asterisks for the day.
“On a positive note, this Tuesday when we become the United States of the Russian Federation, Olympic lifting will be the national sport,” she sneered in advance of the 2016 election.
The totality of the Reality Winner experience reads like a joke put together for a presentation by bored NSA staffers about the sort of person that should never, ever be given a security clearance. It’s as though a far-left blog downloaded itself into a human brain and chose a name by reading its own comments section.
It should also be noted that the circumstances of this Iran fangirl’s data theft are a blistering indictment of agency procedures. Even with a valid top secret clearance, Winner had no legitimate reason to see the documents she allegedly purloined. She was only caught because the website she reportedly leaked to contacted the NSA to ask if her material was legitimate. The agency that was stunned by how much sensitive material Edward Snowden managed to abscond with still doesn’t seem to be properly compartmentalizing information and enforcing need-to-know rules.
Fans of the “Deep State” keep saying Trump made a big mistake picking a fight with them, but if the adventures of Reality Winner are an indication of the Deep State’s skill and discipline, Trump doesn’t have much to worry about. Also, it’s worth repeating that nobody voted to give the Deep Staters or Reality Winners control over America’s national security, law enforcement, and foreign policy.
Some hay has been made over Winner’s support for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential election, but that’s not nearly enough reason to question someone’s security clearance by itself. It is, however, fair to ask when the media will get around to asking Sanders if he disavows his treacherous supporter – as the press would certainly be doing if a red-hatted MAGAphile supporter of Donald Trump, boasting a Twitter feed full of right-wing causes and celebrities, had looted the NSA to help a “resistance” movement take down President Hillary Clinton.
In the alternate universe where that happened, you may rest assured the media freakout about Trump saboteurs threatening the very fabric of democracy has pushed all other stories off the front page today, and the upcoming Sunday talk shows are already booked solid.
Of course, as we all know, Democrat politicians are firewalled from the misdeeds of their followers, and no left-wing Climates of Hate are ever detected. Certain Democrats have no compunctions about actually encouraging criminality, secure in the knowledge their party will never be made to pay a price for going off the rails:
Now more than ever we need whistleblowers to come forward. I created an official website on how to leak to the press https://lieu.house.gov/federal-employees-guide-sharing-key-information …
Federal Employees Guide to Sharing Key Information with the Public
Washington – On February 16, 2017, Congressman Ted W. Lieu (D | Los Angeles County) and Congressman Don Beyer (D | Virginia) released the following resource guide for federal employees who wish to…
lieu.house.gov
Remember the Democrat freak-out about President Trump supposedly compromising American secrets by warning the Russians about a terrorist plot? Some of them don’t actually seem all that concerned about real leaks of sensitive information, as long as it furthers their political goals.
Democrats have created an anything-goes, get-Trump-at-all-costs environment that’s guaranteed to drive their more loosely-wrapped supporters around the bend. If one believes, as Reality Winner evidently does, that Donald Trump is an illegitimate president who must be resisted by any means necessary, it’s not difficult to justify lawbreaking or even deliberately damaging America, for the greater good of shoving that reality-show usurper out of the White House.
Our security services absolutely must take this into account when granting clearances and sweeping sensitive departments for risky personnel. No one with Reality Winner’s political beliefs can be trusted with anything sensitive, period.
Democrats created the environment in which left-wingers cannot be trusted in sensitive posts, not Donald Trump. Leftists and extreme NeverTrumpers excuse every offense against this administration by saying Trump brought it on himself, just by being himself. That’s not how the rule of law works.
This anything-goes climate has to be shut down, and fast, before permanent damage to our national interest is inflicted, if that hasn’t happened already. A few words from top Democrats about acknowledging elections, honoring their oaths, and respecting the Oval Office even if you despise the current occupant (remember that?) would be very helpful.
A Coup by Any Other Name
May 24, 2017A Coup by Any Other Name, Power Line,
In the post “Trump agonistes” last week I noted what I saw in the news stories that have created the consuming controversies of the past few weeks: hostile officials inside the executive branch of the government seeking the removal of Donald Trump from office. They are powerful. They lack any qualms about abusing their positions. They are determined. And they have the invaluable assistance of the Democrats’ mainstream media adjunct.
With malicious intent, “current officials” inside the intelligence agencies with access to top secret information, for example, have passed it on under the cloak of anonymity to their friends in the mainstream media. Even “former officials” — i.e., former Obama administration officials — have gotten in on the act. (The source of their information is neither revealed nor apparent.)
The subversion of an incumbent Republican president by the intelligence community in the permanent government is an old story, as is the role of the mainstream media. President Trump’s death struggle with his invisible opponents, however, has arrived early in his first term in office.
Victor Davis Hanson amplifies and elaborates on the contribution of the mainstream media angle in his long, indispensable NRO column “A coup by any other name?” We are thinking along the same lines; one section of Dr. Hanson’s column is headed “Trump agonistes.”
Here is the salient point regarding the media: “The effort to remove the president is conducted by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the wire services, and the major networks. And we have seen nothing like it in our time. In the last six months, Americans have been told quite falsely so many untruths about the Trump administration by their news agencies that for all practical purposes, there is no such thing as a media as we once knew it.”
We wend our way inevitably to this destination: “We are now watching insidious regime change, aimed at removing the president of the United States not because of what he has done so far, but because of his personality and what he might do to the Obama agenda — and because for a variety of cultural reasons, our elite simply despises his very being.”
I would add as a footnote that Christopher Roach’s “Tales of a coup: What Trump can learn from Gorbachev” makes a good companion to the Hanson column.
A Coup Attempt, Not a Constitutional Crisis
May 19, 2017A Coup Attempt, Not a Constitutional Crisis, PJ Media, David P. Goldman, May 18, 2017
Trump won by calling attention to the errors of his opponents and by dominating the news cycle. He played continuous offense. At the White House, by contrast, Trump has appeared cautious in stating his foreign policy goals, and defensive in responding to attacks on his performance and propriety. The policy issues that stood out clear during the campaign and helped Trump outflank the Republican Establishment have become fuzzy, especially after the firing of Gen. Flynn.
With the policy issues out of focus, Trump has lost control of the news cycle, and risks letting the news cycle control him. His opponents won’t succeed in dislodging him. But they have succeeded in distracting Trump from his policy agenda.
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A ranking Republican statesman this week told an off-the-record gathering that a “coup” attempt was in progress against President Donald Trump, with collusion between the largely Democratic media and Trump’s numerous enemies in the Republican Party. The object of the coup, the Republican leader added, was not impeachment, but the recruitment of a critical mass of Republican senators and congressmen to the claim that Trump was “unfit” for office and to force his resignation.
It’s helpful to fan away the psychedelic fumes of allegation and innuendo and clarify just what Trump might have done wrong. Trump will not be impeached, and he will not be harried out of office. But he faces a formidable combination of media hostility—what the president today denounced as a “witch hunt”—and a divided White House staff prone to press leaks. The likely outcome will be a prolonged dirty war of words that will delay Trump’s domestic agenda and tie down his loyalists with the chores of fire-fighting.
One thinks of Gulliver tied down by the Lilliputians. Trump was elected by campaigning against the Republican Establishment as well as Obama, ridiculing their policy blunders in Iraq and Afghanistan and questioning their credibility. In the flurry of personal attacks, the underlying policy issues have faded into the background, and that gives the initiative to Trump’s enemies.
Nothing that has been alleged, much less proven, about President Trump comes close to the threshold for impeachment, as Prof. Jonathan Turley of George Washington University’s law school explained in a May 17 comment in The Hill. Even if Trump asked then FBI Director James Comey to go easy on Gen. Michael Flynn, Prof. Turley notes, “Encouraging leniency or advocating for an associate is improper but not necessarily” illegal. The charge of obstruction of justice presumes that there is an issue before the bar of justice, but as Turley adds, “There is no indication of a grand jury proceeding at the time of the Valentine’s Day meeting between Trump and Comey. Obstruction cases generally are built around judicial proceedings — not Oval Office meetings.”
The appointment of respected former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to look into allegations of Russian interference in the November 2016 election strongly suggests that the Trump team feels it has nothing to fear from a thorough review. In this case Trump’s detractors appear to be bluffing. Press reports of contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russian diplomats and businessmen appear to reflect the sort of conversations that every presidential campaign conducts with important foreign governments. It is not clear that Russia was responsible for the delivery of embarrassing Democratic National Committee emails to Wikileaks, moreover. Pro-Trump media report that DNC staffer Seth Rich was Wikileaks’ source. Rich was murdered on a Washington street in July 2016, and a counter-conspiracy theory is circulating about his death.
Then there is the alleged leak of highly classified intelligence on the laptop bomb threat to airliners, of which Wall Street Journal editors intoned, “Loose Lips Sink Presidencies.” Exactly what the president told the Russians is under dispute, but the salient fact in the case is that presidents and cabinet members frequently leak classified information without prompting the condemnations that piled up on Trump. Obama’s then Defense Secretary Leon Panetta leaked the role of Pakistani physician Shakil Afridi in locating Osama bin Laden’s lair, and President Obama himself revealed that Seal Team 6 had killed Osama, making the unit a subsequent target for terrorists. Apart from inadvertent leaks, the Obama administration deliberately leaked British nuclear secrets to Russia, over bitter protests from London.
Why did Obama get a pass while Trump got the bum’s rush? Apart from the antipathy of the major media to a candidate who campaigned against them, there is the hostility of the intelligence agencies. That, the Wall Street Journal editors said, is Trump’s own fault: “Mr. Trump’s strife and insults with the intelligence community were also bound to invite blowback,” their May 17 editorial scolded. “In that case the public leaks about Mr. Trump’s actions, if true, will do more damage than whatever he said in private.”
The Journal editors imply that disaffection in the intelligence community is the result of Trump’s obstreperousness, but the source of the dispute is policy and accountability. Trump’s first national security adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn, was fired by Obama as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency for claiming that U.S. intelligence agencies bore some responsibility for the emergence of ISIS. The CIA funded Sunni rebels against the Assad regime including many from a branch of al-Qaeda, the al-Nusra Front, in its campaign to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Trump has shifted America’s priority to stopping the bloodshed in Syria rather than forcing out al-Assad, and is willing to work with Russia to achieve this—provided that the result doesn’t give undue influence to Iran, a senior administration official explained.
A shift to peacemaking and the limited possibility of a regional deal with Russia away from the covert war operations of the CIA under the Obama administration represents a major policy change. It threatens the credibility of Sen. McCain, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and the Republican Establishment, not to mention the CIA officials who made their careers on collaboration with Syria’s Sunni rebels.
During the campaign, candidate Trump delivered an effective message that he would abandon the costly and unpopular nation-building campaigns of his predecessors and focus instead on America’s own security. He attacked not only Obama but the George W. Bush administration and the Republican Establishment which had fostered a failing policy in the region.
Trump won by calling attention to the errors of his opponents and by dominating the news cycle. He played continuous offense. At the White House, by contrast, Trump has appeared cautious in stating his foreign policy goals, and defensive in responding to attacks on his performance and propriety. The policy issues that stood out clear during the campaign and helped Trump outflank the Republican Establishment have become fuzzy, especially after the firing of Gen. Flynn.
With the policy issues out of focus, Trump has lost control of the news cycle, and risks letting the news cycle control him. His opponents won’t succeed in dislodging him. But they have succeeded in distracting Trump from his policy agenda.
McMaster’s Western Wall evasion
May 19, 2017McMaster’s Western Wall evasion, Israel Hayom, Ruthie Blum, May 19, 2017
(Please see also, Report: Top Trump Officials Behind Anti-Trump Leaks to Media.
McMaster was brought into the White House following the firing of Michael Flynn. McMaster and Dina Powell are not Trump loyalists, and had no affiliation to the president prior to his election.
Given this important fact, it is not inconceivable to think that career government employees, even though they work for the president, would be behind the anti-Trump leaks that continue to flow out of this White House.
According to another article at Israel Hayom, Trump says hasn’t ruled out visiting Western Wall with Netanyahu. — DM)
McMaster’s ideological differences with Trump became apparent from the minute he accepted the offer to replace Gen. Michael Flynn in the role of national security adviser. In fact, the first piece of advice he gave to the president was to delete the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” from his February 28 address to a joint session of Congress. Thankfully, Trump did not take the advice.
Behind closed doors, Trump recently referred to McMaster as “a pain.” He certainly is turning out to be one.
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In a press briefing at the White House on Tuesday — ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia, Israel and Europe — National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster stammered when asked by a journalist if his boss believes that the Western Wall in Jerusalem is “part of Israel.”
“Part of what? I’m sorry,” McMaster replied, leaning forward, as if he had not heard the question. He did, however, answer the first half of the query: about whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be accompanying Trump on his visit to the Jewish holy site in the Israeli capital.
“No … I don’t … no Israel leaders will join President Trump to the Western Wall. He’s going to the Western Wall mainly in connection with the theme to connect with three of the world’s great religions. And to advance, to pay homage to these religious sites that he’s visiting, but also to highlight the theme that we all have to be united against what are really the enemies of all civilized people. And that we have to be joined together in a … in a … with an agenda of, of tolerance and moderation.”
This was his first evasion. His second came a few minutes later, when a different reporter pressed him to answer the original question about whether the U.S. administration considers the Western Wall part of Israel.
“Oh, that sounds like a policy decision, for, for … and you know, uh,” he said, laughing uncomfortably. “And that’s the president’s intention. … The president’s intention is to visit these sites to highlight the need for unity amongst three of the world’s great religions.”
McMaster’s refusal to state that the Western Wall is Israeli was highly significant, as it came in the wake of a scandal surrounding the issue. A day earlier, two officials from the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem — later named as Obama administration leftovers David Berns and Jonathan Shrier — snapped at the Israeli team assisting in the preparations for Trump’s visit for asking about the possibility of Netanyahu and/or local film crews accompanying the president to the holy site, saying: “It’s none of your business. It’s not even part of your responsibility. It’s not your territory. It’s part of the West Bank.”
The outcry from Netanyahu’s office was quick to follow, as was a swift denial from the White House. “The comments about the Western Wall were not authorized communication and they do not represent the position of the United States and certainly not of the president,” a senior administration official told The Times of Israel.
This reaction from Washington could have been expected. Shortly before the spat erupted, the first thing that incoming U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman did upon landing in the Holy Land was to pray at the very place that the consular officials deemed “none of Israel’s business.”
In a video released by the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, Friedman said of his family, “We’re a bit tired, but we wanted to come straight to the holiest place in the entire Jewish world, the ‘Kotel Hamaaravi,’ the Western Wall.”
This was not the only clue that McMaster’s dodging reflected his own political unease about Israeli sovereignty, rather than instructions from Trump. Another was the wording of the prepared statement he read at the briefing before fielding questions from members of the media: “The president will then continue on to Jerusalem, where he will meet with President Rivlin and lay a wreath at Yad Vashem. The president will then deliver remarks at the Israel Museum, and celebrate the unique history of Israel and of the Jewish people, while reaffirming America’s unshakable bond with our closest ally in the Middle East.” And, after “urg[ing] Palestinian leaders to take steps that will help lead to peace … [Trump] will visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and he will say a prayer at the Western Wall.”
McMaster’s ideological differences with Trump became apparent from the minute he accepted the offer to replace Gen. Michael Flynn in the role of national security adviser. In fact, the first piece of advice he gave to the president was to delete the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” from his February 28 address to a joint session of Congress. Thankfully, Trump did not take the advice.
In his 1997 book, “Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies That Led to Vietnam” — written as a doctoral thesis — McMaster examined the failure of the White House and Joint Chiefs of Staff to provide a successful plan to defeat the North Vietnamese army.
“The war in Vietnam was not lost in the field, nor was it lost on the front pages of The New York Times, or on the college campuses. It was lost in Washington, D.C., even before Americans assumed sole responsibility for the fighting in 1965 and before they realized the country was at war,” McMaster wrote.
It was precisely this kind of intellectual courage, coupled with battlefield prowess, which earned the brilliant military man bipartisan support as Flynn’s replacement. Sadly, these traits have not been on display where Israel and its radical Islamic terrorist enemies are concerned.
Behind closed doors, Trump recently referred to McMaster as “a pain.” He certainly is turning out to be one.
In Clear Attempt to Sabotage U.S. Relations, Intel-Leakers Tell Media What Trump Did NOT Tell the Russians
May 18, 2017In Clear Attempt to Sabotage U.S. Relations, Intel-Leakers Tell Media What Trump Did NOT Tell the Russians, The Jewish Press, J. E. Dyer, May 18, 2017
The way to get ahead of this severe problem for the rule of law and the proper functioning of government is for Trump to have the leakers identified, and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. It’s obvious that Congress is paralyzed by sheer sclerosis, starting with terror of the media. It’s also obvious that there are so many Obama holdovers left in the federal bureaucracy, it will be hard for the Trump administration to find people who can be trusted.
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{Originally posted to the author’s website, Liberty Unyielding}
It’s time to call a halt to the leak problem from the U.S. intelligence community. This is beyond a “leak problem.” It is spilling over into outright sabotage of America’s national interests, all in the quest to bring President Trump down.
After yesterday’s story by the Washington Post was repudiated by H.R. McMaster, Rex Tillerson, and Dina Powell, McMaster made additional comments Tuesday morning to clarify exactly how false the story was.
The gist of the original story was that President Trump, in speaking to the visiting Russians last week about an ISIS “laptop plot,” revealed highly classified details that would have allowed the Russians to determine what the source of some of the intelligence was. The WaPo article made reference to the sensitive intelligence of a foreign ally, and to Trump disclosing the city in which the intel was gained. (N.B. — WaPo could only have gained this impression from people who weren’t there, but who are bound by oath to not reveal exactly the sort of intelligence they allege Trump revealed.)
This morning, McMaster stated in no uncertain terms that not only did Trump not make these disclosures — Trump didn’t even know the source of the intelligence, or the city it was obtained in. Thus, the president could not possibly have exposed the information as alleged in the WaPo piece.
National security adviser H.R. McMaster on Tuesday said President Trump did not jeopardize intelligence assets by revealing highly sensitive information to Russian officials, adding that Trump did not know where the intel came from. …
McMaster said Trump could not have endangered national security because he did not even know the source of the information he discussed.
“The president wasn’t even aware of where this information came from,” he said. “He wasn’t briefed on the source.”
There is nothing unusual about this latter point. Presidents are selective about when and why the source of intelligence matters to them. Most of the time, they have too many other things to think about to probe the matter. They understand the scope and general nature of national capabilities, but it’s only in very specific cases that they care about sources — or that their officials highlight sources to them, for some reason.
In this case, General McMaster made clear that Trump didn’t know the details WaPo‘s source alleges he exposed, and therefore, he couldn’t have exposed them.
This is good news. Bottom line: Trump didn’t expose sensitive information about intelligence sources and methods. (Keep that in mind. Trump has not exposed anything.)
But the leakers who ply the mainstream media with sensitive national intelligence in order to defame Trump have now come out to expose that information themselves.
In the New York Times this morning, an article alleged that Israeli intelligence was the source, citing “a current and a former American official familiar with how the United States obtained the information.” The NYT article then went on to blithely speculate about how that disclosure could damage U.S. relations with Israel — and, my goodness, just before Trump’s first visit there as president, to boot.
Hard on the heels of the NYT piece, the Wall Street Journal came out with one stating even more categorically that the source was Israel. Just so you won’t miss it, apparently, the authors made “Israel” the very first word of the story:
Israel provided the U.S. with the classified information that President Donald Trump shared last week with Russian officials, according to officials with direct knowledge of the matter.
The intelligence came from a particularly valuable source of information about the Islamic State terrorist group’s ability to build sophisticated explosives that could evade aviation-security measures and be placed on aircraft, these officials said. The source of the information was developed before Mr. Trump’s election in November, they said.
And, of course, the WSJ piece goes on to speculate about how this will damage U.S.-Israeli relations. Both pieces (NYT and WSJ) also allude to the damage it will do to America’s intelligence partnerships with all our allies.
Apparently, the news choreographers behind this orchestrated leak campaign think we’re stupid. Trump didn’t cause this damage.
They did.
If you don’t think at this point that there’s a “deep state” or “shadow government” trying to sabotage Trump, well, bless your heart. The actors in the deep state — if it’s actually true that Israel is the source of the intelligence about the “laptop plot,” and that they had direct knowledge of that — have just committed an indisputable felony by telling that to the media.
If America’s relations with Israel, and with our intelligence partners in general, are damaged out of this, it’s the leakers who are at fault. That could not be established more clearly.
I don’t want you to forget that it’s the responsible officials in the government who are at fault here. The media complicity is disgusting, but the clear felony is what the government officials did.
It’s the same felony they committed, in fact, by revealing national intelligence information about monitoring the Russian ambassador’s phone calls, and unmasking Michael Flynn. But in this case, the sanctimonious chatter about “damage to national interests” is on a larger scale. And the potential for such damage is indeed great. The leakers have created that potential.
The way to get ahead of this severe problem for the rule of law and the proper functioning of government is for Trump to have the leakers identified, and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. It’s obvious that Congress is paralyzed by sheer sclerosis, starting with terror of the media. It’s also obvious that there are so many Obama holdovers left in the federal bureaucracy, it will be hard for the Trump administration to find people who can be trusted.
Adam Kredo had a must-read post on that at the Washington Free Beacon on Monday.
Trump administration insiders likened the problem to a game of whack-a-mole, a children’s game in which players must hit a group of moles as they pop out of their holes.
“The problem is that the Obama administration left holdovers all over the government, so you get rid of one Obama loyalist and the replacement is another Obama loyalist,” said one national security insider close to the Trump administration.
But there appear to be trustworthy officials still in DOJ and the FBI. Fear of how the media and Democratic leaders will spin it must not stop Trump from identifying the leakers and prosecuting them. I think Trump will have to reach past the major MSM outlets to make his case to the people. But there is a legitimate, law-based case to be made, and a path of law to follow. Revealing national secrets and imperiling national interests is what the leakers have done — not the president.
Pretending that going after those leakers might be illegitimate, as Trump’s opponents are likely to do, would be a supreme exercise in self-deceit, at best. At worst, it would clearly be the argument of a faction with only evil intentions, determined to destroy the rule of law and thwart the legitimate operation of government.
Trump’s Russia leak: The real scandal behind the Washington Post story
May 17, 2017Trump’s Russia leak: The real scandal behind the Washington Post story, Center for Security Policy, Fred Fleitz, May 16, 2017
The Post claims it did not reveal all the details of the disclosures from its sources because U.S. officials said this would “jeopardize important intelligence capabilities.”
Yes, there’s a scandal here. It concerns former and current U.S. officials leaking classified information to the press to undermine a U.S. president.
Did President Trump slip and accidently tell the Russians something classified? Other U.S. participants in the meeting denied this. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster told the press Monday evening: “I was in the room. It didn’t happen.”
But keep in mind U.S. officials unfamiliar with intelligence sometimes make such mistakes. For example, in 2014, the Obama White House accidently revealed the name of the CIA Station Chief in Afghanistan to the press. The Obama White House also reportedly revealed sensitive intelligence to the media concerning the Stuxnet virus to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program and details of the Usama bin Laden raid. Where was the outrage by the mainstream media and Congressional Democrats over these leaks?
Senator Dianne Feinstein accidently leaked classified sensitive information on drone strikes in 2009 during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. Nothing happened to her.
And of course there is Senator Patrick Leahy who deliberately leaked classified information to hurt President Reagan in 1987. As a result, he was thrown off the Senate Intelligence Committee and earned the nickname “Leaky Leahy.”
Furthermore, under U.S. law, the President of the United States is our nation’s ultimate classification authority. He can declassify information as he sees fit to conduct his national security policy.
The real scandal here concerns the current and former U.S. officials who spoke to the Washington Post to generate this story. We don’t know if these sources lied, misrepresented what went on in the Trump meeting with the Russians, or were second-guessing what Trump told them.
We do know that current U.S. officials — possibly with the NSC and intelligence agencies — originated this story and revealed highly classified intelligence to the Post as part of their leaks. They were joined by former U.S government officials who I assume worked for the CIA and the Obama NSC. These people committed felonies. They must be identified and prosecuted.
The leaks also are another indication of the serious problem the Trump administration continues to face with leakers. Major house cleanings at the NSC, CIA, ODNI and the State Department to address this serious security threat are long overdue. It is urgent that the Trump administration bring in new blood to replace hundreds of Obama loyalists placed in key positions throughout the government by the last administration.
Just as serious is how partisan cowards entrusted with national security information are anonymously leaking U.S. intelligence to ruin an American president and our democratic system. It’s about time the mainstream media and congressional Democrats start focusing on the dangers of such leaks to our security and system of government instead of just using them to advance their political agenda against President Trump.
Judicial Watch Sues Justice Department for Sally Yates’ Emails While She Served as Trump Acting Attorney General
May 9, 2017“Between her involvement in the Russian surveillance scandal and her lawless effort to thwart President Trump’s immigration executive order, Sally Yates’ short tenure as the acting Attorney General was remarkably troubling,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Her email traffic might provide a window into how the anti-Trump ‘deep state’ abused the Justice Department.”
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(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for emails of former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates from her government account. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:17-cv-00832)).
The suit was filed after the Justice Department failed to respond to a February 1, 2017, FOIA request seeking access to her emails between January 21, 2017, and January 31, 2017.
Yates was appointed by President Obama as U.S. Attorney in northern Georgia and was later confirmed as Deputy Attorney General. In January 2017 she became acting Attorney General for President Trump.
Ms. Yates was involved in the controversy concerning Gen. Michael Flynn, allegedly warning the Trump White House in early January about General Flynn’s contacts with the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak. (Judicial Watch is separately suing for records concerning the surveillance and subsequent leaks regarding General Flynn.)
On January 30, Yates ordered the Justice Department not to defend President Trump’s January 27 executive order seeking a travel ban from seven Middle Eastern countries. That same day, President Trump fired her for refusing to defend the action.
“Between her involvement in the Russian surveillance scandal and her lawless effort to thwart President Trump’s immigration executive order, Sally Yates’ short tenure as the acting Attorney General was remarkably troubling,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Her email traffic might provide a window into how the anti-Trump ‘deep state’ abused the Justice Department.”
Congress blames State Department after draft sanctions bill leaked to pro-Hezbollah media
May 2, 2017
People walk outside Lebanon’s Central Bank in Beirut November 6, 2014. REUTERS/Jamal Saidi/File Photo – RTSEJDF
Congress is blaming the State Department and the US Embassy in Lebanon after draft sanctions legislation was leaked to the Lebanese media, setting off a political and diplomatic firestorm.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., began devising a new bill targeting Hezbollah last year amid concerns that the Barack Obama administration was slow-walking implementation of a previous effort that was signed into law in December 2015. Royce shared an early draft with State Department experts for their input, sources on and off Capitol Hill told Al-Monitor, but got burned when a media outlet close to Hezbollah got wind of it.
The State Department has not officially acknowledged or denied being involved. Royce declined to comment.
As a result of the leak, numerous newspaper articles in Lebanon over the past month have picked apart — and possibly distorted — an unfinalized draft that only a handful of people in Washington have heard about and fewer still have seen. Even House Foreign Affairs ranking member Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., a natural ally on sanctions legislation, has yet to see the proposed draft, according to a Democratic aide. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is working on a similar effort in the Senate.
Lebanese officials say destabilizing sanctions would be ill-advised while tiny Lebanon is struggling to absorb more than a million refugees from Syria.
“We are surprised by all the leaks about new sanctions,” Lebanese member of parliament Yassine Jaber, a former economy minister who met with administration officials during the congressional recess two weeks ago, told Al-Monitor in an email. “We don’t see a need for further legislation, we feel that all these leaks about further legislation to come, only hurts Lebanon, its economy and banking sector, at a moment of very high weakness and vulnerability.”
According to Lebanese media accounts, the 20-page draft bill has also caused a panic in Lebanon because of its potential political impact. While the 2015 bill unnerved a banking sector that is one of the pillars of the country’s economy, the new draft has government leaders fretful that Congress is now coming after them.
The Royce draft, Lebanese President Michel Aoun said last week during a meeting with the Washington-based American Task Force for Lebanon, “would harm Lebanon and its people greatly.” Critics are worried that the draft bill paves the way for sanctioning Lebanese allies and political parties that are close to Hezbollah, including Aoun, the Christian Free Patriotic Movement headed by his son-in-law and Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, and the Shiite Amal Movement of parliament Speaker Nabih Berri.
In response, the Lebanese government is planning to send a delegation to Washington later this month of government officials, lawmakers and other dignitaries, possibly including Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh. The government hopes to have representatives of the private banking sector tag along to play up any potential threat to the financial sector, a Lebanese source told Al-Monitor, but the main concern appears to be with the bill’s political ramifications.
“This is more about the political groups of the speaker, etc., being nervous rather than the issues of the banks,” the source said. “Politicians — and the government, actually — are trying to get the private banks involved in their effort. I can tell you the private banks do not like that: They do not want to come with politicians here.”
The Association of Banks in Lebanon spent $200,000 in the first three months of this year to discreetly lobby Congress about the bill and other matters, according to lobbying records. The banks would prefer to wait until President Donald Trump fills in top spots at the Treasury Department before organizing their annual visit to Washington, the source said.
Hezbollah claims to get all its funding from Iran. US experts, however, have long suspected that much more comes from Lebanese expatriates, illegal activities and other sources, fueling Congress’ desire to crack down on as many funding streams as possible.
The Lebanese source, who has seen a draft of the bill, said it does not designate Hezbollah’s allies as terror groups. Rather, it would require the Trump administration to publicly report on their financial links to the Shiite militia, including estimates of the net worth of some top Lebanese officials.
“Obviously they don’t want their net worth to be mentioned,” the source said. “I totally see how Nabih Berri could be panicking even if his own party knows how much money he has.”
White House Clearance Process Increasingly Politicized
May 2, 2017White House Clearance Process Increasingly Politicized, Washington Free Beacon,
Ben Rhodes, Michael Flynn / Getty Images
“The CIA did not want to deal with him,” Codevilla stated. “Hence, it used the power to grant security clearances to tell the president to choose someone acceptable to the agency, though not so much to him.”
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Security clearances granting access to state secrets have become increasingly politicized in a bid by opponents to block senior advisers to President Trump from joining the closed White House community of those with access secret intelligence.
In February, intelligence agencies denied a high-level security clearance to Robin Townley, an African affairs specialist and close aide to then-White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
The denial of the Top Secret, Sensitive Compartmented Information clearance, the high-level security clearance known as TS/SCI, was widely viewed as a bureaucratic power play by opponents of both Flynn and Townley inside intelligence agencies.
Angelo Codevilla, an intelligence expert, said the denial of clearances was engineered by the CIA and came despite Townley’s holding of the high level clearance for many years when he worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency.
The clearance denial drove Townley out of the White House National Security Council staff.
The apparent motivation was political, as Townley was known inside government as a critic of the current intelligence structure. Townley, like Flynn, advocated for intelligence reforms designed to improve what many critics regard as an outdated system of intelligence agencies.
“The CIA did not want to deal with him,” Codevilla stated. “Hence, it used the power to grant security clearances to tell the president to choose someone acceptable to the agency, though not so much to him.”
Flynn also is under scrutiny from the Pentagon inspector general over foreign payments he received after retiring as an Army three-star general and whether they were reported on security clearance forms.
Several months before Townley’s clearance denial, Democrats on Capitol Hill complained about plans to give high-level security clearances to Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner. Both were granted interim TS/SCI clearances and currently are presidential advisers.
The blocking of security clearances under Trump contrasts with the handling of clearances during the Obama administration when a key liberal adviser with a questionable security background was given a high-level clearance.
Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security adviser for strategic communications under Obama, was denied an interim TS/SCI clearance by the FBI in October 2008, according to an email obtained from John Podesta last year.
The email stated that Rhodes was the only White House official out of 187 prospective White House aides to be denied the interim TS/SCI clearance.
Yet, despite the denial, Rhodes would later be granted access to some of the most secret U.S. intelligence information and emerge as one Obama’s closest aides who boasted of a “mind-meld” with the president on various issues.
Rhodes became one of the most active originators and shapers of key American foreign and national security policies under Obama.
He engineered what he dubbed the “echo chamber” of pliable news reporters and think tank experts who could be relied on to spread White House propaganda, including false and misleading information, to the American public on the Iran nuclear deal in a bid to win congressional backing for the accord.
Two House Republicans asked the FBI in January to investigate how Rhodes was granted access to secrets for eight years after the initial denial of an interim clearance in 2008.
Regarding Ivanka Trump and Kushner, two House Democrats, Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.) and Rep. Bennie Thompson (Miss.) complained on Twitter in November that granting clearances to the couple would be improper and a conflict of interest because they were in business and lacked government experience.
High-level security clearances are granted to White House officials so they can participate in various activities, including policy development work, meetings with the president and senior advisers, working groups, and intelligence briefings.
Most internal meetings are classified and thus a security clearance is required for access. Denying a clearance to an official can be tantamount to firing.
In the White House complex, junior clerical staff members often are granted TS/SCI clearance.
Most jobs inside the White House complex, which includes the executive mansion and the adjacent Eisenhower executive office building, where the National Security Council and other key posts are located, require the TS/SCI clearance. Other clearance levels include Secret and Confidential.
The process for gaining a clearance includes filling out Form SF-86 that requires disclosing details of past employment and finances.
Chinese hackers were able to gain access to millions of the secret and highly sensitive forms during the hack disclosed last year of the Office of Personnel Management. The stolen SF-86s were among some 22 million documents on federal employees stolen and could greatly assist Chinese intelligence agent recruitment and cyber espionage operations.
Ground for clearance denial can include illegal drug use, contacts with foreign governments, or a history of bankruptcy.
The TS/SCI clearance grants a holder access to special intelligence, such as information obtained from foreign recruited agents and electronic communications intelligence.
The clearance also can include signing extensive non-disclosure agreements.
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