Trump Administration Declassifies Full Susan Rice Email – But Is It Incriminating?

The Trump Administration has declassified an email that Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice sent to herself on January 20, 2017, the day that President Trump was inaugurated. The email memorializes a January 5, 2017 meeting in the Oval Office in which leaders of the intelligence community along with President Obama, Vice President Biden, and then-Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, discussed Michael Flynn.

Excerpts of the email were previously available but the full text has now been released to Politico and can be viewed here.

While some Republicans have viewed the email as a smoking gun in what they term “Obamagate,” it is not clear that the email is evidence of any wrongdoing by the Obama Administration. The second paragraph notes that “President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities ‘by the book.’”

“The president stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective,” Rice said in the email. “He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.”

The president then asked if there was any reason that information could not be shared fully with the incoming Trump team “as it relates to Russia.”

Then FBI-Director James Comey answered the question. His reply is newly declassified.

“Director Comey affirmed that he is proceeding ‘by the book’ as it relates to law enforcement,” Rice wrote. “From a national security perspective, Comey said he does have some concerns that incoming NSA Flynn is speaking frequently with Russian Ambassador Kislyak. Comey said that could be an issue as it relates to sharing sensitive information. President Obama asked if Comey was saying that the NSC should not pass sensitive information related to Russia to Flynn. Comey replied ‘potentially.’ He added that he has no indication thus far that Flynn has passed classified information to Kislyak, but he noted that ‘the level of communication is unusual.’”

The one-page email concludes with the paragraph, “The President asked Comey to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share classified information with the incoming team. Comey said that he would.”

The declassified email comes on the heels of another document released by Richard Grenell, the acting Director of National Intelligence, last week. The earlier document names Joe Biden’s office as the source of a request for the unmasking of Flynn’s name in intelligence reports.

The documents certainly mention Biden and Flynn and a host of others, but what do they mean? The answer is less than what the Trump Administration is implying.

Rice’s memo does show that the FBI was aware of Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak, the Russian ambassador, but it does not prove that the FBI had the Trump campaign under surveillance, but it is not evidence of wrongdoing.

The Rice email undercuts the Obamagate conspiracy theory by bringing the meeting into the open rather than trying to deny it or hide the details. Rice openly acknowledges the meeting took place and says the investigation was “by the book.” Is there evidence to the contrary? If so, the Trump Administration has not provided it.

Likewise, the fact that a number of Obama Administration officials requested unmasking is not sinister in and of itself. In fact, the requests for unmasking undercut the claims that the Trump campaign was being surveilled.

When an official sees a FISA intelligence report, the names of US citizens who were detected because they were communicating with a foreign person who was the target of the surveillance are “masked” to US intelligence officials. For example, an American might be anonymized as “US Person 1.” Unmasking requests are not uncommon. Politifact reports that there were approximately 27,000 such requests in the first two years of the Trump Administration.

The fact that Obama officials were requesting that Flynn’s name be unmasked is an indication that they did not know who he was. This would not have been the case if they were intentionally eavesdropping on the Trump campaign. Further, the large number of requests for unmasking is evidence that the Obama Administration officials were not gossiping about Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak. If they had known beforehand that it was Flynn, they would not have needed to create a paper trail with unmasking requests.

Reaching back a few weeks further, the FBI notes released by Flynn’s lawyers also fall short of proving wrongdoing on the part of investigators. The documents, which Flynn’s advocates claim prove that Flynn plead guilty to protect his son and that the FBI tricked Flynn into lying, do not show anything outside the “range of normal prosecutorial hardball” per Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare Blog.

In reality, Flynn plead guilty not once but twice. His proponents overlook a December 2018 sentencing hearing in which Flynn himself blows their theories out of the water. In that hearing (transcript here), Flynn acknowledged his guilt, acknowledged that he was aware that lying to the FBI was a crime, and declined to challenge the circumstances under which he was interviewed by the FBI.

In the end, we are left with a man who was not targeted by the FBI but was swept up in surveillance of foreign diplomats. Flynn then lied about his conversations with Kisylak when he knew that doing so was a federal crime. Flynn’s phone calls to Kislyak were not illegal but lying about them was. The FBI did not force Flynn to lie but rather gave him the rope to hang himself.

Based upon current evidence, to make the Obamagate allegations a crime, we would have to assume that any surveillance of a presidential campaign staffer is illegal or unethical. In reality, it is not a bad thing if surveillance of foreign agents nets campaign staffers. Being a member of a political campaign does not confer immunity from investigation or prosecution even though it does make such matters politically sensitive.

Nevertheless, the Trump Administration is proceeding full steam ahead with the claim that the Obama Administration acted illegally, even to the point of threatening to subpoena former officials in the case. This is true even though last week President Trump was unable to cite a specific crime that was supposedly committed by the Obama Administration. Instead, Republicans make the generic claim that Obama tried to “weaponize” the FBI and intelligence agencies for political purposes, which sounds a lot like what the Trump Administration is doing.

Republicans may want to think twice about that. In about eight months, Donald Trump may be a private citizen once again and Democrats might very well control both houses of Congress. If the GOP sets a precedent of hauling former Administration officials before Congress for trumped-up political investigations, Mr. Trump and his subordinates may find that they have a lot to answer for.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Team Trump Rehabilitates Mike Flynn As Unlikely Campaign ‘Rock Star’

The Trump campaign is in need of a focal point now that the Coronavirus pandemic has tanked the economy. Some campaign advisors think they might have found that focus in Michael Flynn.

Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI last year and was awaiting sentencing when the DOJ dropped the charges yesterday. Amid allegations of improper actions by federal agents, the former army general has become a cause celebre among Republicans, but his favorability among Republicans may not translate into a more general election advantage.

The party line is that Flynn is both innocent and was wrongfully prosecuted. While there may have been problems with the former general’s investigation and prosecution, it is highly questionable whether those problems would have resulted in his exoneration as both Erick Erickson and David French have recently pointed out.

Instead, we are left with a lot of evidence that Flynn is dirty but escaping punishment for his crimes. The general’s legal problems go much deeper than his charge of lying to the FBI, but many on the right overlook Flynn’s other issues.

In addition to the investigation of his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, Flynn was accused of illegally lobbying for Turkey and two of his former business associates were indicted on charges of illegally running a disinformation campaign for the Turkish government against a dissident cleric in the United States. The three men apparently plotted to kidnap the dissident, Fethullah Gulen, and but never carried out the operation. Gulen was to be returned to Turkey’s authoritarian ruler, Recip Tayyip Erdogan, in exchange for $15 million.

Flynn was never formally charged for these acts, leading David French to speculate, based on court documents that reference a plea deal, that Flynn agreed to provide evidence against his business partners in exchange for pleading guilty to the charge of lying to the FBI and cooperating with Mueller investigation. ABC News reporting seems to confirm this suspicion.

Adam Goldman

✔@adamgoldmanNYT

Prosecutor tells judge that Flynn could have been indicted in secret Turkey lobbying effort. Two of Mr. Flynn's former business associates were just charged in that scheme.

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8:02 PM - Dec 18, 2018

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Despite the revisionist history of some right-wing pundits, Flynn did not lose his job as national security advisor because he lied to the FBI. Flynn was fired because he lied to Vice President Pence, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, and Press Secretary Sean Spicer. Flynn misled the three about his conversations with Ambassador Kislyak and did not admit the truth until he was outed by the Washington Post. Flynn’s lies led these other officials to make false statements.

The decision to drop the charges against Gen. Flynn does not represent an exoneration. In contrast, it may well be the opposite. Flynn is a proven and habitual liar who pleaded guilty. Dropping the charges against an admitted and unrepentant felon because he is a friend of the president represents one of the swampiest aspects of government.

Now, there are reports that the Trump campaign wants to make Flynn into a campaign surrogate. The Daily Beast reports that no less than nine Trump officials have said that they would like to give Flynn a prominent role in the campaign.

“Years ago when Nelson Mandela came to America after years of political persecution he was treated like a rock star by Americans,” John McLaughlin, one of President Trump’s chief pollsters, said. “Now after over three years of political persecution General Flynn is our rock star. A big difference is that he was persecuted in America.”

But Flynn was not persecuted.

The problem with the theory that Flynn was caught in a perjury trap is that perjury traps are easy to avoid. All you have to do to evade them is to not lie. Flynn did not meet that low bar and was caught red-handed in multiple lies at multiple times.

The Trump campaign may try to twist the circumstances of Flynn’s case into a myth of harassment by Deep State agents, but, for those of us outside the Republican Party, there is more to the story. The real story here is the White House intervention in a criminal case on behalf of one of the president’s cronies.

Propping Flynn up on the campaign stage between now and November will serve as a reminder to voters that the rule of law does not necessarily apply if you have the right connections in Trump World. Putting evidence of cronyism and favoritism on display at front and center during a presidential campaign may not be the best strategy for Republicans, but Trump is going to be Trump.

Originally published on The Resurgent

What the Surveillance of Paul Manafort Means

The big story these days is the breaking news that Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was under FBI surveillance. This has brought forth a flurry of claims that Trump was right about his charges of wiretapping, that the FBI only tracked Manafort to find out what Trump was doing and that Manafort was only guilty of talking to Russian diplomats.

The real story is that this news isn’t breaking news at all. The story broke during the campaign that there was an active FISA warrant for surveillance of members of the Trump campaign staff. A November 2016 article by Heat Street (which has since been acquired by MarketWatch) reported that a broad FISA warrant request in June 2016 included Donald Trump as a target. This request was denied, but a subsequent, more narrow request was granted in October.

This was confirmed by the BBC in a January 2017 article which described how the warrant was issued to investigate two Russian banks. The investigation stemmed from intelligence passed to the US by an unnamed Baltic nation in April 2016. The intelligence allegedly included a recorded conversation “about money from the Kremlin going into the US presidential campaign.” The BBC article mentioned, but did not name, “three of Mr. Trump's associates were the subject of the inquiry.”

One of the three was Michael Flynn. Flynn was Trump’s first national security advisor. Flynn was fired early in the Trump Administration after it was revealed through leaked surveillance information that he had lied about conversations with the Russian ambassador. Flynn’s contacts with the Russians were apparently uncovered as an incidental target as the intelligence community monitored Russian diplomats. Flynn is still under investigation by both the Pentagon and Mueller’s task force.

In April 2017, the New York Times named a second target of the investigation. The report stated explicitly that Carter Page had been the target of a FISA warrant after he left the Trump campaign. “The Justice Department considered direct surveillance of anyone tied to a political campaign as a line it did not want to cross,” the report said, citing an unnamed official.

Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, was the third target of the investigation. Manafort had long had ties to the Putin government. He had worked as a consultant for the pro-Russian political party that controlled the Ukraine until it was toppled by a revolution in 2014. Manafort’s name was listed in the so-called “Black Ledger” that detailed secret payments by the Ukrainian ruling party. The ledger, which was discovered after the revolution, showed that Manafort received at least $1.2 million from the pro-Putin ruler of Ukraine per AP reports. Manafort was fired by Trump in August 2016 after the story of the Ukrainian payments broke.

The new story by CNN detailing Manafort’s surveillance says that Manafort was the subject of two FISA warrants. The first, centered on his work in the Ukraine, began in 2014 and “was discontinued at some point last year [2016] for lack of evidence, according to one of the sources.”

The dates for the second warrant are not known but it apparently began after “FBI interest deepened last fall because of intercepted communications between Manafort and suspected Russian operatives, and among the Russians themselves.” The warrant reportedly continued until early 2017. The dates suggest that Manafort was not monitored while he was an official part of the Trump campaign, although they do cover a period when he had discussions with President Trump. “It's unclear whether Trump himself was picked up on the surveillance,” CNN notes.

Another report by the New York Times says that federal agents raided Manafort’s home in July 2017. Again, this was after his official role as a member of Donald Trump’s campaign staff was long over.

So was Donald Trump right when he claimed that Obama was “tapping” his phones? So far there is still no evidence of this. Surveillance of Trump’s associates is not the same as surveillance of Trump himself. This is especially true if the surveillance did not occur during the period when Trump’s associates were working on his campaign. This would also indicate that the surveillance was not to find out what the Trump campaign was up to.

Further, the surveillance of Paul Manafort was not the result of business-as-usual contacts with Russian diplomats. A FISA warrant was issued for Manafort because he was communicating with Russian agents. A FISA warrant is not proof of guilt, but it does require probable cause. The denial of the June 2016 warrant request is proof that warrants are not issued on a frivolous basis.

The investigation into Paul Manafort and the Russian interference in the 2016 campaign is not yet complete. In the weeks and months to come, we may learn exactly why Manafort was talking to the Russians and what was said. At this point, there is no smoking gun, but there are indications, such as the decision to threaten Manafort with indictment, that Special Counsel Mueller is building a strong case. Part of that case may be on incriminating evidence that resulted from surveillance under the FISA warrant.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Trump Claims 'Vindication' For Something Comey Never Said

In the days since the Senate testimony by former FBI Director James Comey, the Trump camp has claimed that the testimony vindicated the president. Beginning with a tweet by the president the following day, Trump supporters claim “total and complete vindication” from Comey’s statements under oath. However, the claim focuses on only one part of Comey’s testimony and the claim of vindication is for something that Comey never said.

The focus of the Trump Administration since last Thursday when Comey testified was Comey’s statement under oath that President Trump was not under investigation by the FBI. The problem with this claim is that Comey had never claimed that the president was personally under investigation.

It is likely that many people may have assumed after Comey’s Senate testimony in March that President Trump was being investigated, but a look back shows that Comey never made that claim. Comey’s testimony a month before he was fired contained the bombshell revelation that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign for its links to Russia, but he never said that the president was under direct scrutiny.

Here is a look back at what then-FBI Director James Comey said before Congress on March 20, 2017 (video available here):

I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. That includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts. As with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment as to whether any crimes were committed.

Comey told Congress that the FBI was investigating “individuals associated with the Trump campaign,” not the president. The individuals were left unnamed, but FBI inquiries about Mike Flynn, Carter Page, Roger Stone and Paul Manafort had been known for months. Carter Page was the target of a FISA warrant obtained by the FBI prior to the election last year.

At some point after the March testimony, President Trump apparently became obsessed with the idea of proving that he was not under investigation. Comey testified that he privately assured the president that he was not under investigation on several occasions. Comey also said that the president asked him to publicly announce that he was not under investigation, a request Comey resisted because “because it would create a duty to correct, should that change.” In his letter firing Comey, Trump awkwardly thanks Comey for “informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation.”

Trump supporters seem to believe that, since the president was not under investigation, that Comey’s firing could not be an obstruction of justice. To the contrary, Trump was alleged to have interfered with the investigation of Michael Flynn, not an investigation into his own ties with Russia. Even though the FBI probe was targeted at Flynn, Page and the others instead of Trump, firing the FBI director to interfere with the investigation could still represent obstruction of justice.

A second trope by Trump supporters is that since Trump was not under investigation, the inquiries by the Congress and the Special Counsel should be halted. This represents a misunderstanding of what the investigations are about. These investigations were also not targeting Trump personally. The purpose of the congressional investigations is to determine exactly what Russia did to interfere in the 2016 elections. The investigation by Special Counsel Bob Mueller focuses on whether any members of the Trump campaign worked with Russian operatives and whether any crimes were committed.

Despite the Trump Administration spin, James Comey’s testimony did not clear the president. In fact, the most damaging part of Comey’s June 8 testimony may be a statement that has scarcely been mentioned. When asked why he thought Trump fired him, Comey answered, “Again, I take the president's words. I know I was fired because of something about the way I was conducting the Russia investigation was in some way putting pressure on him, in some way irritating him, and he decided to fire me because of that.”

The investigations will continue and President Trump is not in the clear. 

Originally published on The Resurgent

Mike Flynn Is the Key To the Trump-Comey Dispute

As the furor rages unabated after the testimony of James Comey, both sides are coming to the realization that it settled nothing. Comey said just enough to allow both sides to reinforce their preconceived notions and declare a victory. Comey’s testimony is not the end, but is more like pulling a thread that causes other threads to unravel. Even though Comey did not present irrefutable evidence of criminal activity by the president, he did make a blatant accusation that the president is corrupt. The investigations will continue and, at this point, it seems that the trails all point toward Michael Flynn.

The investigation of Michael Flynn is at the center of the dispute between James Comey and President Trump. In Comey’s opening statement, the former director claimed that it was the investigation of Flynn that prompted Trump’s alleged request that, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy.”

Who is Michael Flynn? Flynn is a retired US Army general who rose to command the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Obama. He served honorably in both the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters of the War on Terror. Flynn abruptly retired a year early from his position at the DIA, apparently under pressure from the Obama Administration. Sean Spicer confirmed in May that Barack Obama had warned the Trump camp about getting too close to Flynn.

In fact, Flynn became an early advisor to the Trump campaign and was considered as a vice presidential candidate. Flynn eventually was appointed as President Trump’s National Security Advisor after delivering a fiery speech to the Republican National Convention.

As National Security Advisor, Flynn lasted just over three weeks. The issue was false statements that Flynn had made to Vice President Pence, Press Secretary Spicer and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. Before the election and during the transition, Flynn had secret communications with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak in which he discussed sanctions that the Obama Administration had imposed on Russia in response their interference in the election. Flynn denied discussing the sanctions until the Washington Post reported that leaks revealed that there was evidence from surveillance that Flynn was not being truthful.

Even after Flynn’s duplicity was revealed, Trump waited 18 days before finally deciding to fire him. Shortly after the Flynn’s dismissal on the basis of loss of trust, The Hill reported that Trump called him “a wonderful man” and said that the media had treated him “badly.” The is in sharp contrast to the firing of Comey, who was attacked by Trump on Twitter in the days after his dismissal.

Since leaving the White House, Flynn’s troubles have only gotten worse. Flynn is under investigation for failing to disclose a $33,000 payment from the Russian state-owned propaganda network, RT, after leaving the DIA. The New York Times reported in April that Flynn initially failed to disclose other payments from “companies linked to Russia.”

Flynn also may have broken the law by doing consulting work that benefitted the government of Turkey without the permission of the US government. After being fired by Trump, Flynn registered with the US government as a paid foreign agent for work done the year before that could have aided the Turkish government. Flynn may have also failed to fully disclose his contracts and payments from the Turkish consulting work.

Further, the Wall Street Journal reported that Flynn met with Turkish government contacts last summer, while he was still working for the Trump campaign, and discussed the possibility of returning Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric that Turkey blames for last summer’s failed military coup, without going through legal US extradition procedures. Former CIA Director James Woolsey said the discussion involved “a covert step in the dead of night to whisk this guy away.” Woolsey said he did not hear a specific plan and would have objected if he had.

Even before Donald Trump was nominated as the Republican candidate, Flynn drew criticism for his ties to Russia. In December 2015, Flynn was paid $45,000 by RT to speak at the network’s 10^th anniversary gala. The network also paid airfare for the trip and hosted Flynn at a luxury hotel in Moscow according to NBC News. Flynn sat at the same table as Russian President Vladimir Putin at the event.

In 2013, as head of the DIA, Flynn arranged a controversial trip to Russia for a group of US intelligence officers with the goal of building a working relationship with the GRU, Russian military intelligence. Flynn planned to host GRU officers in the US, but the Russian invasion of Crimea led to chilled relations between the two countries.

There are many questions about Mike Flynn that are unanswered. There is not even a definitive answer on how Flynn and Trump came to know each other. In an interview with the New Yorker, Flynn claimed he hit it off immediately with Trump in an August 2015 meeting in New York. In his interview with NBC News in May 2017, Trump denied knowing Flynn in 2015 In any case, Flynn was identified as an advisor to Trump by February 2016.

Trump’s relationship with Michael Flynn is central to the question of whether the president tried to interfere in the investigation of Flynn and whether he abused his authority in firing Director Comey. Trump is also alleged to have asked other intelligence officials to back off from the Flynn investigation. When asked by senators, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and National Security Advisor Mike Rogers said that they have never been “pressured” to interfere in an investigation. Neither would answer the question of whether Trump had ever broached the subject, however.

Right now, even after James Comey’s testimony, there are far more questions than answers. At this point, it is unknown whether a crime has been committed by either Mike Flynn or Donald Trump, but if there has been no crime then what has the White House cover-up been about? Did President Trump act illegally to protect Flynn? If so, why? Why did Trump really fire Comey? And why fire him when he did, months after taking office and seemingly out of the blue? The timing of the firing endangered the Republican legislative agenda at a time when the Republican health care reform had just passed the House and the party was looking towards tax reform.

Mike Flynn seems to hold many of the answers, but he isn’t talking. The retired general is invoking his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination and refusing to comply with a subpoena to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee.  Flynn also initially refused to comply with a subpoena for personal documents relating to his businesses. Eventually Flynn agreed to provide some documents after senators issued subpoenas his businesses as well.

With Special Counsel Bob Mueller likely investigating Flynn alongside the Senate Intelligence Committee, the probe into the Russian interference in the election and possible collaboration by members of the Trump campaign isn’t over yet. It’s just getting started and the relationship between President Trump and Gen. Flynn is likely to generate many more headlines before it’s over. 

Originally published on The Resurgent

Why Does Russia Keep Popping Up in the Trump Administration?

There is an old saying that says where there is smoke, there is fire. These days, if Russia was smoke, the Trump Administration would be a four-alarm blaze. The question is why Russia is a recurring subject within the Trump Administration.

The rumors of Russian influence within the Trump Administration go back as far as Trump’s announcement of his candidacy. Rumors surfaced quickly about Trump’s longstanding business ties to Russia and The Hill noted that the Kremlin had funded nationalist opposition groups in several countries, such as Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France, which recently came close to winning the presidency.

Several of Trump’s former advisors were linked to Russia and Vladimir Putin. First to go was Paul Manafort, Trump’s first campaign manager. Manafort was a political consultant for Ukrainian dictator and Putin ally, Viktor Yanukovych, for 10 years until he was toppled by a revolution in 2014. Trump fired Manafort in August 2016.

Carter Page was a foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign. Page was forced to take a leave of absence from the Trump campaign after allegations that he met with Russian officials on a trip to Moscow. Page was apparently the target of FBI surveillance for his links to Russia.

Roger Stone, another Trump campaign aide, claimed to have communicated with WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, and may have had foreknowledge of the WikiLeaks dump of Podesta emails in October 2016. WikiLeaks is widely believed to be a Russian front organization. Stone claims that he resigned from the Trump campaign, while Trump says he was fired.

Michael Flynn survived the campaign to become National Security Advisor. Unfortunately, shortly after Trump took office, Flynn was forced to resign for lying about contacts that he had with the Russian ambassador.

Amid the rumors of Trump campaign officials’ links to Russia, candidate Trump called upon Russia to “find the 30,000 emails that are missing” from Hillary Clinton’s server. When Trump made the statement, it was common knowledge that Russian fingerprints were all over the first hack of the Democratic National Committee a month earlier. The hack of John Podesta’s email account has also been traced to Russia.

After the election, when briefed on the evidence for Russian interference in the election, President-elect Trump finally admitted that “Russian entities” were responsible for the hacking in January, a conclusion that most other observers had long since reached. Even then, he denied that the interference was aimed at helping his campaign.  

While there is so far no smoking gun that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russians on the hacking and election tampering, Lawfare Blog notes that “cooperation [between the Trump campaign and Russian hackers] was an open and public feature of the campaign. It included open encouragement of the Russians to hack Democratic targets; denial that they had done so; encouragement of WikiLeaks, which was publicly known to be effectively a publishing arm of the Russian operation, in publishing the fruits of the hacks; and publicly trumpeting the contents of stolen emails.”

Writing for Just Security, Julian Sanchez argues that secret contacts between the campaign and the Putin government were not needed. “Russia’s efforts on Trump’s behalf were, for the most part, pretty open, even if Trump affected not to notice them,” he says. “Trump’s praise of Vladimir Putin—grounded in an affection that long predates his political career—was public, as was his gleeful exploitation of the fruits of hacks against his opponents and encouragement of more of the same, as was his attempt to exculpate Russia long after the intelligence community had reached consensus about their responsibility, as was his use on the campaign trail of stories pushed out by Russian state media.  Trump could see they were helping him, they could see he appreciated it and was reciprocating. What, exactly, would have been the marginal benefit of some further secret communication making this happy symbiosis a matter of explicit agreement?  Collusion would have been redundant.”

At this point, it is Trump himself keeping the Russia scandal alive. After the firing of FBI Director James Comey, Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt, “And in fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said 'you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won'.” This shocking statement confirmed charges by the critics that the firing was at least partly due to Comey’s handling of the investigation of Russia’s election interference and contacts with the Trump campaign.

When President Trump defended rather than denied his sharing of classified material with the Russian ambassador and foreign minister, it was simply the latest in a long line of contacts between the two organizations. Like many of the other contacts, Trump’s sharing of classified material was probably legal, but ethically questionable and almost certainly unwise.

Why does Russia keep popping up in the Trump Administration? Because Donald Trump encouraged the Russian interference in the campaign and – knowingly or unknowingly – hired a plethora of pro-Putin advisors. The president’s clumsy attempts to deflect the investigation into the campaign’s Russia ties and ensure that the subject won’t go away anytime soon.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Spies Don’t Trust Trump with Intelligence

In what may be an unprecedented move, America’s intelligence community is reportedly keeping the country’s most sensitive intelligence information from its president. A Wall Street Journal report cited both current and former intelligence officials who said that concerns that the information might be leaked or compromised had prompted the agencies to withhold certain information.

Even before the forced resignation of Gen. Flynn due to his lack of forthrightness about his contacts with Russia, the Trump Administration was at odds with the intelligence community. President Trump was one of the few to deny the findings of the FBI and the CIA that Russia interfered in the presidential election. In January, Trump hinted at a restructuring of the intelligence community in what some thought was retribution for the investigation into Russia’s role in the election. Also in January, Russia was rumored to have compromising information on Donald Trump himself.

Flynn was also not the only member of the Trump camp to have suspicious ties to Russia. Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, was fired during the campaign for his connections to Russia. CNN reported that “high-level advisors” to the Trump camp were in “constant communication during the election with Russians known to US intelligence” according to “multiple current and former intelligence, law enforcement and administration officials.” Manafort was named by CNN in the article, but it may also refer to Carter Page, Roger Stone and others.

Manafort denied the accusation. “I have knowingly never talked to any intelligence official or anyone in Russia regarding anything of what's under investigation," he said. "I have never had any connection to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin or the Russian government before, during or after the campaign.”

According to the Journal, intelligence information is sometimes sanitized to protect sources before it is given to government officials, but there is no known precedent for restricting the president’s access due to fears about “trustworthiness and discretion.” The report said that there was no known instance in which vital information relating to security threats or plots had been restricted.

The Journal’s sources cited two specific reasons for restricting Mr. Trump’s access. The first is the general statements of admiration that Trump made for Vladimir Putin at numerous times. The second is the specific request that Mr. Trump made for Russia to find Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails.

Officially, the intelligence community denies the Journal report. ““Any suggestion that the U.S. intelligence community is withholding information and not providing the best possible intelligence to the president and his national security team is not true,” said a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Likewise, the White House also disputes the account. “There is nothing that leads us to believe that this is an accurate account of what is actually happening.”

Regardless of whether information is being withheld, there is clearly a strained relationship between the Trump Administration and the intelligence community. “It’s probably unprecedented to have this difficult a relationship between a president and the intelligence agencies,” said Mark Lowenthal, a retired senior intelligence official. “I can’t recall ever seeing this level of friction. And it’s just not good for the country.”

Originally published on The Resurgent