The White Rabbit News

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Were Trump’s revelations to the Russians criminal or just stupid? We can’t rule out either

After blurting secrets to the Russians, Trump faces a NATO meeting dumbed down for his benefit. Can it get worse?

Back in January there was a little-noticed story among all the hubbub surrounding reports of Russian interference in the election and possible ties with the Trump campaign. YnetNews reported the following:

Donald Trump’s upcoming inauguration as the next president of the United States is causing Israeli intelligence officials to lose sleep as well. Discussions held in closed forums recently raised fears of a leakage of Israeli intelligence top-classified information, clandestine modus operandi and sources, which have been exposed to the American intelligence community over the past 15 years, to Russia — and from there to Iran.

The following month the Wall Street Journal reported this:

US intelligence officials have withheld sensitive intelligence from President Donald Trump because they are concerned it could be leaked or compromised, according to current and former officials familiar with the matter . . .

These reports were received in right-wing circles as evidence of ongoing treason by the intelligence community. I recall coming across them and thinking that it seemed paranoid. It was hard to imagine that even Trump could be so dumb or craven as to give secret information to anyone, particularly to the Russian government. Sure, he had a thing for Putin and was precipitously tilting toward Russia for shallow and nonstrategic reasons, but the presidency would have to sober him up and require him to operate in a more serious manner.

Nobody in their right mind could have ever believed that within four months Trump would unceremoniously fire the FBI director over what he admitted were concerns about the Russian investigation and then the next morning meet with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the Oval Office. The meeting had been previously scheduled, but it looked terrible. It looked even worse when the American press was kept out of the meeting while representatives of Russian government media were allowed in. They posted pictures of President Trump at the meeting grinning like a jack-o’-lantern with Lavrov and a surprise guest, Ambassador Sergey Kislyak — the man at the very center of the Russia probes.

This was all so unbelievable that you had to wonder whether Trump had cooked up an elaborate trolling exercise designed to let investigators know that he was going to do whatever he wanted and there was nothing anyone could do to stop him. As it turned out, receiving Lavrov was a favor to President Vladimir Putin, the man to whom Trump just couldn’t say no, as Trump told CBS’ John Dickerson.

None of that could have prepared us for what The Washington Post reported yesterday: Not only did Trump do all those things listed above; he also gave the Russian ambassador classified “code-word-protected” intelligence, putting some vital resources at risk and scaring the hell out of anyone who ever shared information with the U.S. government. If it were anyone but Donald Trump and his Keystone Kop White House, one would be forced to conclude that the president of the United States is an agent of the Russian government.

But this is Donald Trump, a man in so far over his head that it’s amazing he’s still breathing. The most likely explanation is that he’s just too ignorant to know what he was saying. By all accounts, he refuses to sit still for briefings and demands that all reports be reduced to single-page bullet points. He has shown absolutely no willingness to bone up on necessary knowledge; he lies and exaggerates constantly. and all you have to do is look at his Twitter feed to see that he is as impulsive and combative as a tween bully.

So it’s entirely predictable that he shot off his mouth to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador as a boast. According to the Post he said, “I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day” and proceeded to blurt some out to prove it. His warm feelings toward Russia may have been the motivation:

Those Russian officials were undoubtedly very pleased. They certainly were all smiles in the pictures. American allies and others who have cooperated with the U.S. in sharing intelligence probably weren’t quite so happy about it.

This bombshell couldn’t have come at a worse time. Trump is about to embark on his first international tour and it was already looking like it would be yet another humiliation for the United States. Foreign Policy reported on Monday the following about the upcoming NATO meeting:

NATO is scrambling to tailor its upcoming meeting to avoid taxing President Donald Trump’s notoriously short attention span. The alliance is telling heads of state to limit talks to two to four minutes at a time during the discussion, several sources inside NATO and former senior U.S. officials tell Foreign Policy. And the alliance scrapped plans to publish the traditional full post-meeting statement meant to crystallize NATO’s latest strategic stance.

The heads of 28 NATO member states will be there and they’re all anticipating a meeting tailored to a petulant child who needs to be entertained:

“Even a brief NATO summit is way too stiff, too formal, and too policy heavy for Trump. Trump is not going to like that,” said Jorge Benitez, a NATO expert with the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank.

Organizers are scrapping the normal declaration that accompanies such meetings because they think Trump won’t be happy. You see, one of the primary reasons for NATO’s existence is its adversarial relationship to Russia and we all know how Trump feels about that.

After Trump’s shenanigans this past week, let’s just say that it’s unlikely anyone at the meeting will feel all that comfortable sharing anything but small talk with President Loose Lips. According to Foreign Policy:

“People are scared of his unpredictability, intimidated by how he might react knowing the president might speak his mind — or tweet his mind,” the former official said. Or, as another current senior NATO official put it before the meeting: “We’re bracing for impact.”

It’s best to keep your seat belt fastened at all times. The turbulence grows worse every day.

What Happens When Intelligence Agencies Lose Faith in the President?

If bureaucrats restrict the information they share with political leaders, the damage could prove deep and lasting.

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By DAVID FRUM

American military and intelligence agencies must assume from now on that the president of the United States is a security risk. He cannot be trusted to protect state secrets.

In a parliamentary system, a head of government who did what Donald Trump has done would already have resigned. There is no sign of that from the 45th president. Instead, the remainder of the U.S. government must cope with a president who has proven himself unable to understand the significance of the secrets shown him—proven himself a compulsive blurter and blabber—and added new urgency to the fear that he is somehow under the thrall of Russia.

Would the president have so abjectly tried to impress representatives of any other country? He blabbed because he bragged, and he bragged because he values Russia’s and Putin’s goodwill so bizarrely much. As the economist Justin Wolfers noted, if officials had not revealed the truth to the media, the Russians would now genuinely have damaging kompromat on Trump: the secret of a dereliction of duty that would have gotten anybody else in government fired, if not indicted.

So what happens now?

When officials at one agency of government become convinced that another cannot be trusted to preserve secrets, they slow the flow of information to that agency. Can they do that when the distrusted agency is the White House; the distrusted person, the president of the United States?

The president can never be cut out of the information loop altogether. But consider how little information Trump wants in the first place. He is satisfied with single pagers dotted by colorful bullet points. If that is all he uses, maybe it’s better for everybody to hold back information he could possibly misuse?

Or maybe the sterilization will happen inside the White House itself. The National Security Council staff, formerly tasked to integrate the presidency and the government, could find a new rule: quarantining the president from the government.

If so, they’ll be averting one immediate danger by creating another for the longer term: They will be rerouting the government of the United States around its constitutional head. Unelected staff will decide what the elected president can safely be allowed to know.

It’s understandable why conscientious professionals would take such measures. Yet consider the troubling consequence of that decision. The security aspects of government would slip away from political control—for reasons that might seem necessary in the short run, but could be hard to reverse in the longer term. Donald Trump promised to shake up Washington. And what is being shaken is the trust of those who must carry out his orders. Someone has to be ultimately in charge of the national-security portions of the U.S. government. After this week, it may become a lot harder to identify precisely who that someone is.

Thoughts And Prayers For All The GOP Lawmakers Concerned About Trump’s Behavior

But will all these members of Congress actually do anything to check Trump?

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By Amanda Terkel

After The Washington Post published its explosive report that President Donald Trumprecently disclosed “highly classified” information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador, politicians in Washington did what they usually do in reacting to serious matters: They said they were troubled and concerned and then went about their way.

Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.) said the news was “deeply concerning,” and he will raise it when the House Intelligence Committee meets.

“I would be concerned anytime we’re discussing sensitive subjects with the Russians,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.).

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) similarly said the revelations were “deeply disturbing,” while Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told the White House to get its act together: “The White House has got to do something soon to bring itself under control and in order. It’s got to happen.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said he wants a “full explanation” from the administration of what Trump disclosed, while Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) would simply like “a little less drama from the White House on a lot of things so that we can focus on our agenda.”

None of them offered ways in which they’ll be a check and balance against Trump.

Lawmakers in Trump’s party largely reacted the same way when Trump fired FBI Director James Comey.

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said he was “troubled” by the timing of the firing, which came as the FBI is investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 elections ― and whether there was any collusion with Trump’s campaign. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) went a step further and called Comey’s dismissal “very troubling.” Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) called for “a transparent explanation as to how this decision was reached and why it was executed at this time.”

Those lawmakers were some of the most critical of what Trump did; others defended his decision. Most Republican lawmakers ― even those who don’t like that Comey was fired ― still don’t think it’s necessary to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Russia and the 2016 election.

On Tuesday, when The New York Times reported that Trump pressed Comey to end the FBI’s investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn and his contacts with Russian officials, Burr ― who is chair of the Intelligence Committee and has subpoena power ― threw his hands up in the air and said it was the media’s job to hold Trump accountable.

Members of Congress have always been great at putting out strongly worded statements. They’re also quick to issue thoughts and prayers after a national tragedy. But they’ve never been as good at actually using their power to take action, especially when it means punitive action against a member of their own party.

The proper handling of classified information is something the Republicans have been deeply concerned about for quite some time. Some were, after all, willing to go so far as to say Hillary Clinton should be impeached if she became president because of the way she handled classified information by setting up a private email server as secretary of state. (The FBI cleared her of wrongdoing.)

In July, Ryan called on the director of national intelligence to refrain from giving Clinton classified briefings during the campaign.

In October 2015, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) said Clinton ― who had not yet even won the Democratic nomination ― would be a “unique president...because the day she’s sworn in is the day that she’s subject to impeachment because she has committed high crimes and misdemeanors.” He questioned “how many lives she put at risk by violating all rules of law that are designed to protect America’s top-secret and classified information from falling into the hands of our geopolitical foes.”

Brooks, however, was less gung-ho about going after Trump Tuesday, saying that it didn’t appear the president violated any laws.

“That’s a distinction” between the Clinton and Trump situations, he told HuffPost. “If that changes, then let me see what the change is.”

He eventually acknowledged it could be “worrisome” if Trump shared highly classified information with the Russians that could reveal sensitive sources critical in the fight against terrorists.

“If it’s true [it’s worrisome]. If it’s not true, it’s not worrisome,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s true or not.”

And in the end, if nothing else works, there are always thoughts and prayers.

“I have put more time in prayer than perhaps I had before,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said Monday. “There is nothing about how [Trump] conducted the campaign or his actions in the first few months that would give me hope, but that is what faith after all is, is the triumph of hope over experience.”

Why the Comey memo could be so explosive for Trump

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By James Queally

A memo in which former FBI Director James B. Comey says President Trump asked him to shut down a criminal investigation of former national security advisor Michael Flynn is likely to emerge as a key piece of evidence in the case, legal experts say.

During a Feb. 14 meeting in the Oval Office, the president urged Comey to “let this go,” according to a memo Comey wrote afterward. An associate of Comey who had read the memo described its contents to the Los Angeles Times. News of the memo was first reported by the New York Times.

Flynn had been fired one day before the purported conversation between Trump and Comey for misleading White House officials about the nature and extent of his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the United States. Last week, Trump fired Comey.

Why the memo is important

If Comey were called to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has launched one of several investigations into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, the existence of the memo could lend credence to any testimony he gave, said Richard Drooyan, a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles.

“That memo is significant because it predates him being fired and it basically precludes anybody from making the claim that he’s testifying about that situation because he was fired,” Drooyan said.

The White House denied that Trump asked Comey to end the Flynn investigation.

Why Comey would write the memo

Drooyan said it was not unusual for FBI officials to document meetings with people connected to high-profile investigations.

“It’s not surprising to me at all that Comey would have memorialized a conversation like that if he felt that the president was potentially trying to influence him in the conducting of that investigation,” Drooyan said.

The Senate Intelligence Committee could subpoena the memo, according to Drooyan, who said the document might be exempt from rules governing hearsay if it was found to be a “public record” that detailed FBI activities.

“It’s arguably a memo that sets out the office’s activities, namely what Comey was doing having a conversation with the president,” Drooyan said.

Members of the House Intelligence and Oversight committees suggested on Tuesday they would seek to subpoena the memo.

How could Trump try to blunt the memo

Trump could claim executive privilege to block a subpoena of the memo, but he would be unlikely to succeed, Drooyan said.

“The only issue is sometimes presidents do claim executive privilege of communications with their subordinates,” Drooyan said. “In U.S. vs. Nixon, a court clearly ordered the president to turn over tape recordings that he had with his closer aides…. I don’t see any reason why this would not be subpoenaed by the Senate Intelligence Committee.”

The veracity of Comey’s recollection of the meeting could be called into question, according to Eugene O’Donnell, a former New York prosecutor who is now a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

“Then you get into an issue like how precise his documentation was. Did he exactly write word for word what the president said?” O’Donnell asked.

Do Trump’s alleged actions amount to a crime?

Determining whether or not Trump’s comments constitute an effort to obstruct or impede an FBI investigation is complicated. The federal criminal statute for obstruction of justice requires prosecutors to prove someone “acted with a corrupt intent to influence, intimidate or impede an investigation,” according to Drooyan.

That conduct must happen in conjunction with “some type of criminal proceeding,” such as a grand jury investigation or the issuing of subpoenas. A federal grand jury in Virginia issued subpoenas for records related to Flynn in recent weeks, but the conversation between Trump and Comey took place before those subpoenas were issued.

“That’s a tricky statute,” O’Donnell said. “Was it intentional? Was it his conscious objective to thwart the investigation? Could you prove that beyond a reasonable doubt?”