A resource for journalists and for shutting down your crazy uncle.
On Monday, President Donald Trump retweeted a ‘hit list’ from Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, a conservative self-styled watchdog group.
Fitton tweeted a list out with Democrats name who believed have abused President Donald Trump.
People on the list included Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton.
President Donald Trump is considering stripping a half-dozen former national security officials of their security clearances, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Monday, calling their public commentary about the ongoing Russia probe inappropriate.
The list of former officials under consideration includes former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former FBI Director James Comey, former national security adviser Susan Rice, former deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe and former National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden, according to Sanders.
“They’ve politicized and in some cases monetized their public service,” Sanders said during a press briefing. “Making baseless accusations of an improper relationship with Russia is inappropriate.”
Sanders would not say when the President would make the decision; she said only that the White House would provide updates when it had them.
The announcement came after Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, tweeted that he planned to speak with Trump about removing Brennan’s security clearance. Brennan declared last week that Trump’s performance following a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki was “nothing short of treasonous.”
A decision to strip a former official of a security clearance would prove a striking use of presidential power. Even Michael Flynn, Trump’s onetime national security adviser who was fired during the Obama administration, maintained his clearance when he was acting as a campaign surrogate for Trump, often leading “lock her up” chants at political rallies.
Sanders did little to mask the political nature of Trump’s threat, indicating the President was frustrated by the former officials’ criticism of him.
“When you have the highest level of security clearance, when you’re the person that holds the nation’s deepest, most sacred secrets at your hands and you go out and you make false accusations against the President on the United States, he says that’s something to be concerned with,” Sanders said.
“We’re exploring what those options are and what that looks like,” she said of the process for removing the officials clearances.
When they leave government, national security officials routinely maintain their security clearances, partly to consult with those who replace them about ongoing situations or issues.
Officials also use their clearances to obtain high-paying consulting positions in the private sector.
“I think this is just a very, very petty thing to do. And that’s about all I’ll say about it,” Clapper said on CNN in the immediate wake of Sanders’ announcement.
“There is a formal process for doing this,” he added. “But, you know, legally the President has that prerogative and he can suspend and revoke clearances as he sees fit. If he chooses to do it for political reasons, I think that’s a terrible precedent and it’s a really sad commentary and its an abuse of the system.”
Hayden indicated being stripped of his clearance would be of little consequence to his commentary.
“I don’t go back for classified briefings. Won’t have any effect on what I say or write,” he tweeted.
It is the President’s prerogative to revoke security clearances, a former senior intelligence official said on Monday, who added that instances of such an occurrence were rare.
Usually former senior officials retain clearances so their successors can consult with theem on a pro bono basis, the former official said.
[CNN]
Senate intelligence committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) on Friday told CNN claims that Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, improperly unmasked individuals within Donald Trump’s campaign were “created by Devin Nunes,” the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
“The unmasking thing was all created by Devin Nunes, and I’ll wait to go through our full evaluation to see if there was anything improper that happened,” Burr said. ”But clearly there were individuals unmasked. Some of that became public which it’s not supposed to, and our business is to understand that, and explain it.”
Burr’s comments come as Rice met privately with the committee on Friday in their investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Rice was roped into the probe after Nunes held a hastily-organized press conference in March alleging the names of Trump officials were illegally unmasked by Obama’s national security adviser.
Nunes’ press conference seemed to give credence to Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that Obama “wiretapped” Trump Tower during the campaign. The News Yorker’s Ryan Lizza reports the White House put out an “all-points bulletin” to “find something” that would substantiate the president’s charge. Rice has maintained she did not do anything improper involving “unmasking” Trump officials.
“Ambassador Rice met voluntarily with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence today as part of the committee’s bipartisan investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 US presidential election,” Erin Pelton, a spokesperson for Rice, said. “Ambassador Rice appreciates the Committee’s efforts to examine Russia’s efforts to interfere, which violated one of the core foundations of American democracy.”
Burr told CNN the committee intends to interview officials in both the Trump and Obama administrations.
“I think we’re interested in any folks that were in the last administration that had some hand in what we did or did not do in response to Russian meddling in our elections,” Burr said. “I won’t get into when they’re coming or what the extent of the list is, but I think it’s safe to say that we’ve had everybody that was involved in decision-making at the last administration on our list, and they’re periodically coming. Some have been in. Some still have yet to come in.”
President Trump on Thursday turned his attention to “unmasking and surveillance” in the Obama administration, calling it the “big story.”
“The big story is the ‘unmasking and surveillance’ of people that took place during the Obama Administration,” Trump tweeted Thursday.
The big story is the "unmasking and surveillance" of people that took place during the Obama Administration.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 1, 2017
Trump’s comments come after the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday issued seven new subpoenas in its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Three of the subpoenas focus on allegations of improper “unmasking” of Trump campaign officials, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Those three subpoenas went to the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency and are related to questions — primarily from Republicans — about how the names of Trump associates were un-redacted and distributed in classified Obama administration reports during the transition period.
Republicans have signaled they see unmasking as the key to investigating the source of media leaks damaging to the Trump administration.
Trump and his aides have often railed against the leaking of information to the media and Trump has blasted the Russia probe as a “witch hunt.”
[The Hill]
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn pushed to delay a plan to retake Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) stronghold Raqqa that Turkey opposed, according to a new report.
McClatchy reports that former President Barack Obama and his national security adviser, Susan Rice, informed then President-elect Trump of a Pentagon plan to retake the city of Raqqa, an ISIS stronghold, with the help of Syrian Kurdish forces. Obama’s team informed Trump because while the plan would be approved under Obama, it would likely be executed after Trump took office.
Flynn told Rice to delay approving the mission. His explanation for the delay was not recorded, according to McClatchy, but the decision to delay approval lined up with Turkey’s interests in the region. Turkey has been a staunch opponent of the United States partnering with Kurdish forces in the region.
The recommendation to delay the mission approval took place during the Trump team’s transition period, ahead of Trump’s inauguration.
Flynn was under investigation for lobbying for Turkey during the presidential campaign without declaring it. He admitted earlier this year he lobbied on behalf of the Turkish government — and received payment of more than $500,000.
The report follows the revelation that Trump knew about Flynn being under investigation weeks before his inauguration, but appointed him at national security adviser anyway.
Flynn resigned from his post after it was revealed he discussed U.S. sanctions with the Russian ambassador before Trump took office and misled top administration officials, including Vice President Pence, about the nature of the talks.
[The Hill]
After a review of the same intelligence reports brought to light by House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers and aides have so far found no evidence that Obama administration officials did anything unusual or illegal, multiple sources in both parties tell CNN.
Their private assessment contradicts President Donald Trump’s allegations that former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice broke the law by requesting the “unmasking” of US individuals’ identities. Trump had claimed the matter was a “massive story.”
However, over the last week, several members and staff of the House and Senate intelligence committees have reviewed intelligence reports related to those requests at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.
One congressional intelligence source described the requests made by Rice as “normal and appropriate” for officials who serve in that role to the president.
And another source said there’s “absolutely” no smoking gun in the reports, urging the White House to declassify them to make clear there was nothing alarming in the documents.
Still, some members of Congress continue to have concerns about the justification given for the unmasking requests and the standards for the intelligence community to grant such requests, which reveal the private data of US persons mentioned in intelligence reports based on routine intelligence collection aimed at foreign nationals.
Such collection regularly targets officials and nationals from Russia, Taiwan, Israel and other countries.
The lawmakers’ assessment comes after Trump, in a New York Times interview last week, accused Rice of breaking the law.
Trump has not revealed which intelligence reports he is relying on to make his charge that Rice may have acted illegally.
“I think it’s going to be the biggest story,” Trump said. “It’s such an important story for our country and the world.” He also called it “truly one of the big stories of our time.”
Asked by the Times if he believed Rice’s actions were criminal Trump responded, “Do I think? Yes, I think.”
Sebastian Gorka, a Trump foreign policy aide, cast Rice’s actions as worse than the Watergate scandal that felled President Richard Nixon in an interview with pro-Trump Fox News host Sean Hannity.
“Losing 14 minutes of audiotape in comparison to this is a little spat in the sandbox in the kindergarten,” Gorka said.
Rice defended her actions last week on MSNBC, saying her requests were “absolutely not for any political purposes, to spy, or anything.”
“There were occasions when I would receive a report in which a US person was referred to — name not provided, just a US person — and sometimes in that context, in order to understand the importance of the report, and assess its significance, it was necessary to find out, or request the information as to who the US official was,” Rice said.
“The notion that some people are trying to suggest, is that by asking for the identity of a person is leaking it, is unequivocally false,” she said. “There is no connection between unmasking and leaking.”
Rice is among the list of witnesses that House and Senate Intelligence officials want to interview as part of its probe into Russian attempts to meddle with the US elections.
House Democrats and Republicans on the Intelligence Committee are near agreement on the list of witnesses to interview, with the GOP mostly focusing on people who may have leaked classified information and the Democrats hoping to question Trump associates who may have ties to Russia.
But the House review has been thrown into turmoil after Nunes last month expressed alarm about the unmasking of US persons, including Trump advisors, caught up in incidental collection. He reviewed the documents on White House grounds with the help of White House officials, despite House Speaker Paul Ryan saying Nunes informed him that the information came from a “whistleblower.”
Critics said Nunes appeared to be giving political cover to Trump in the aftermath of the president’s unsubstantiated tweet last month that Obama ordered wiretaps of Trump Tower to spy on him during the campaign.
Nunes’ office has not responded to CNN’s request for comment.
Nunes last week abruptly recused himself temporarily from the Russia investigation as the House Ethics Committee announced it is investigating whether he revealed classified materials, but he is still serving as chairman of the panel.
(h/t CNN)
President Trump said on Wednesday that he thought that the former national security adviser Susan E. Rice may have committed a crime by seeking the identities of Trump associates who were swept up in the surveillance of foreign officials by American spy agencies and that other Obama administration officials may also have been involved.
The president provided no evidence to back his claim. Current and former intelligence officials from both Republican and Democratic administrations have said that nothing they have seen led them to believe that Ms. Rice’s actions were unusual or unlawful. When Americans are swept up in surveillance of foreign officials by intelligence agencies, their identities are supposed to be obscured, but they can be revealed for national security reasons, and intelligence officials say it is a regular occurrence.
“I think it’s going to be the biggest story,” Mr. Trump said in an interview in the Oval Office. “It’s such an important story for our country and the world. It is one of the big stories of our time.”
He declined to say if he had personally reviewed new intelligence to bolster his claim but pledged to explain himself “at the right time.”
When asked if Ms. Rice, who has denied leaking the names of Trump associates under surveillance by United States intelligence agencies, had committed a crime, the president said, “Do I think? Yes, I think.”
Ms. Rice has denied any impropriety. In an interview on Tuesday with MSNBC, she said: “The allegation is that somehow the Obama administration officials utilized intelligence for political purposes. That’s absolutely false.”
Mr. Trump’s comment broke with normal presidential conventions. Presidents traditionally refrain from suggesting that anyone is guilty or innocent of a crime out of concern for prejudicing any potential prosecution or legal proceedings. When they have violated that unwritten rule, defense lawyers have sometimes used a president’s comments to undercut prosecutions.
Mr. Trump did not make clear what crime he was accusing Ms. Rice of committing. It is legal for a national security adviser to request the identities of Americans mentioned in intelligence reports provided to them, and former national security officials said any request Ms. Rice may have made would have been subject to approval by the intelligence agencies responsible for the report.
Leaking classified information could be a crime but no evidence has surfaced publicly indicating that Ms. Rice did that and she flatly denied doing so in the interview with MSNBC. “I leaked nothing to nobody, and never have and never would,” she said.
Mr. Trump criticized media outlets, including The New York Times, for failing to adequately cover the Rice controversy — while singling out Fox News and the host Bill O’Reilly for praise, despite a Times report of several women who have accused Mr. O’Reilly of harassment. The president then went on to defend Mr. O’Reilly, who has hosted him frequently over the years.
“I think he’s a person I know well — he is a good person,” said Mr. Trump, who during the interview was surrounded at his desk by a half-dozen of his highest-ranking aides, including the economic adviser Gary Cohn and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, along with Vice President Mike Pence.
“I think he shouldn’t have settled; personally I think he shouldn’t have settled,” said Mr. Trump. “Because you should have taken it all the way. I don’t think Bill did anything wrong.”
Mr. Trump described the chemical attack in Syria as a “horrible thing” and “a disgrace.”
“I think it’s an affront to humanity,” he said, adding it was “inconceivable that somebody could do that, those kids were so beautiful, to look at those, the scenes of those beautiful children being carried out.”
Asked about what it meant for Russia’s role in terms of Syria, Mr. Trump said, “I think it’s a very sad day for Russia because they’re aligned, and in this case, all information points to Syria that they did this. Why they did this, who knows? That’s a level first of all they weren’t supposed to have this.”
Mr. Trump again pointed to President Barack Obama for drawing “the red line in the sand, and it was immediately violated, and it did nothing,” and he suggested reporters won’t focus on it.
The president declined to say whether he would speak personally to President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
(h/t New York Times)