The official story is that Michael Flynn had to resign as President Trump’s National Security Advisor because he lied to Vice-President Pence about what he discussed with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. In truth, however, the FBI all but insisted on his removal because they assessed that he was subject to Russian blackmail.
I’ve written repeatedly that Flynn was subject to blackmail for a lot more than what he might have told Mike Pence. He had taken tens of thousands of dollars from the Kremlin and not disclosed it, for example, and he’d done work as an agent of a foreign power (Turkey) without disclosing it. Russia knew these things and could have let the world know about them at any time.
Flynn was compromised at a minimum and perhaps actively working for the Kremlin either voluntarily or in more of a coerced manner.
But how is any of this different from the situation we have with Jared Kushner?
How many foreign contacts does someone have to omit from their SF-86 forms to lose their security clearance immediately? Because Jared Kushner managed to forget more foreign contacts than he listed, since he listed exactly zero. Who could’ve known that meeting with Russian Ambassador Surgey Kislyak about setting up a secret back channel with Moscow or scrounging for dirt on Hillary Clinton from a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer were noteworthy? Or how about that meeting with the head of a U.S.-sanctioned Russian state-run bank?
As far as I am concerned, it’s not even debatable that Kushner’s security clearance should be yanked. The question is why he hasn’t been fired. The Russians could have, at any time, revealed or threatened to reveal Kushner’s contacts with them.
As for the president, the Russians could have revealed or threatened to reveal at any time that his son, his son-in-law, and his campaign manager met with one of their agents and colluded on how to damage Hillary Clinton. Knowing this, perhaps the president has been scared to say or do anything that is upsetting to Vladimir Putin.
It sure looks that way, doesn’t it.
The president needs to resign. It may take some convincing to get him to realize this. But he needs to resign. And while he’s considering his fate, he needs to let the FBI do a thorough counterintelligence investigation to make sure that folks like Flynn and Kushner haven’t been sharing classified material with Russian handlers.
Spycraft isn’t that complicated when you get right down to it, and the Trump campaign allowed themselves to be compromised and subject to blackmail. For the same reason that Flynn had to go, the whole lot of them need to go.
you mean if they’re patriots right?
because they’re all not leaving anytime soon
You don’t need to blackmail your own agents and willing accomplices.
You do, to prevent them from taking better offers.
Marcy Wheeler now conclude there is evidence of collusion and more importantly that the Obama administration did not wiretap Trump Towers as Trump had tweeted and the GOP used for cover.
The glacier is beginning to slip down the slope.
Has the NSA retroactively collected this email? Can they with Trump as Commander-in-Chief? Can Mueller subpoena it?
So now I think that following the path of collusion will lead back to clarity on how the information about Hillary Clinton got leaked. I would suggest watching what is found out about Roger Stone’s doings for the Trump campaign as this investigation is made public.
The President really needs to be impeached and removed from office. The first President impeached and convicted in US history.
When does the GOP in Congress get spooked like they did in Watergate? (Maybe that’s a poor choice of words, but I mean “really scared of their future”),
Resignation is an easy out unless it comes with a Peter Whimsey whisper for Trump to “do the right thing”.
Spycraft apparently isn’t complicated and the Russians have cultivated human intelligence over technological gimmicks for quite some time. It seems that quid pro quos for US international wheeler-dealers who’ve already crossed a certain line works quite well.
Flynn is a different case that a full airing of his actions with clarify. A turned DIA director. And then a lobbyist for hire.
Maybe its time for a good look at the very large general staff of the US military and a little bit of housecleaning. I don’t know who would bell that cat. A strong opposition party might; the GOP sure scared the hell out of Harry Truman in 1946. It is also good to be careful about not creating collateral damage to oneself in clearing out the rot.
Don’t forget about the money. Just how much money do the Trumps and Kushners owe the Russians? How much money did they launder? Those numbers may chase him out of the WH.
Don’t forget about the wanted real estate deals in Russia.
Are you trying to tell me that this hasn’t all a programmatic attempt on the part of the Deep State-cum-Permagov to wreck better US-Russian relations, and destroy any chance for peace and friendship between our two great peoples?
Because if that’s what you’re trying to tell me, I’m going to be very upset, and very disappointed.
Damn, I got so much snark on me now that I’m going to have to go and take a shower.
You are surprised?
AG
Oh.
iIforgot.
You are snark.
Sorry.
My bad.
Yours, too.
AG
AG, ladies and gentleman.
Snark is weak.
Weakness personified.
AG
I have a song for you, AG.
You forgot to mention the neo-centrists, to use the parlance of our times. Keep up with the narrative already!
I think now its RADICAL neo-centrists, thats what i hear the neo-confused and retro-liberals talk about these days.
Now this was worth reading with my morning cup of covfefe.
My mood on this changes weekly, even daily (and I don’t pretend it’s anything more than “mood”)
Right now I’m pessimistically thinking, they won’t impeach him and he won’t resign, full stop.
I don’t think Trump will ever resign. He will have to be impeached. So on that front, I share your pessimism. Today’s GOP simply will not do it, ever.
Right.
When I’m thinking the other way, however, I come up with scenarios where the right people approach him in the correct super-flattering, fawning fashion…and offer him enough goodies…he’d be happy to shrug and move on to the next thing. He’s been doing it his entire life.
I surely hope you’re right about this, and he goes quietly. But if he resigns, he will forever have an asterisk next to his presidency in the history books, and he will be compared to Nixon. That will mean he’s a “loser,” and we know how he feels about that.
Unless Republicans in Congress suddenly grow a conscience, I think our best hope is that he quits after one term. That allows him to claim “I came, I saw, I conquered, it was fantastic, I’m the greatest one term president since Abe Lincoln, or maybe ever.” He could excuse it by age, or desire to play golf and grab… whatever, or to “spend more time with his family.”
I struggle to think of a way any group of sycophants could convince him to resign. If there were a possibility of real jail time, perhaps a promise of a Pence pardon. But I suspect he’s well enough insulated that he won’t be in personal legal jeopardy. He’ll let everyone around him go to jail, and he’ll just keep tweeting from the White House commode in the wee hours every morning.
He’ll never resign. It would be admitting he is a traitor, and he will NEVER admit that. It’s why he will never admit Flynn is a traitor, because he, and his whole traitorous family did the same thing Flynn did.
These fucking people, including those that make excuses for them.
.
What gets interesting is a Republican Primary. You would need someone with clean hands and clear conservative credentials. A record of service in the military would also help.
No sitting President has won after being seriously opposed in the primaries since the modern primary process has began.
It’s my impression that primary challenges to sittings presidents is a very rare thing these days. Or perhaps the media just doesn’t elevate them to “serious” status anymore.
When was the last time it happened?
The threat of a primary challenge ( from Bobby Kennedy among others) is one of the reasons Johnson decided not to run for a second term in 1968.
and, if I remember my lived history correctly, it was Teddy’s challenges of Carter in 1980 that helped to weaken his bid for re-election. Not unlike the damage that Sanders supporters did to Clinton’s candidacy after his withdrawal, by not wholeheartedly rallying around her. The GOP is far better at “rallying around” than Dems are.
I give you this morning’s Congressional FBI Director nominee’s hearing as readily available proof as well as the full-throated defense of Trump by his fellow Presidential candidates after he insulted and demeaned them in 2016. The Force is strong among the GOP. Independence and political courage seem not to be their strong suit.
The last serious primary challenge of a sitting President was Ted Kennedy’s run against President Carter in the 1980 Democratic Party primary.
In 1992, President George H.W. Bush didn’t come close to losing the Republican Party primary, but Pat Buchanan’s campaign challenge and divisive speech at the Party Convention was seen to have hurt Bush’s unsuccessful re-election campaign.
Maybe Pence is planning to primary Trump. (Not that he has clean hands.)
The opposition is coming from inside the house.
No. If Ryan and McConnell forced it (and practically they are the ones who would do so) Trump would want to take them down with him. Hes always campaigned against them as much as anyone.
Based on the questioning of FBI nominee Wray this morning, I agree. The GOP’s sole mission seems to be to get assurances from Wray that he would investigate Democrats and Hillary, since her email server was the great crime of the last election season. Not unlike the President’s twitter remarks this morning. They are still carrying water for Trump. I am depressed. I don’t know what will get us through all this. I guess the President has to be shown to have committed full-blown treason to change the minds of elected GOP’ers.
This will all change when the indictments come down.
Which indictments, you might ask?
The indictments of Obama, and Clinton, and Clapper, and Rice, and Brennan.
For illegal surveillance, and leaking classified information.
Oh hey, look at this:
Julian Assange
@JulianAssange
Contacted Trump Jr this morning on why he should publish his emails (i.e with us). Two hours later, does it himself:
…
12:14 PM – 11 Jul 2017
No, Julian Assange is not an explicit supporter of white supremacist politicians who take direct actions to undermine democratic institutions, create police states, and install policies which increase the power of oligarchs and drive up economic inequality. No, not at all. He’s just got Donny Jr. on speed dial, that’s all.
Assange’s subsequent tweets this morning have remained very informative. This post is particularly interesting:
Julian Assange
@JulianAssange
(1/3) I argued that his enemies have it–so why not the public? His enemies will just milk isolated phrases for weeks or months…
Does this not perfectly describe what WikiLeaks did with the stolen DNC and Podesta emails?
What a horrible, duplicitous man.
“Spycraft isn’t that complicated when you get right down to it, and the Trump campaign allowed themselves to be compromised and subject to blackmail. For the same reason that Flynn had to go, the whole lot of them need to go.”
General Flynn certainly should have known better. His role in all of this is puzzling to me. He knew enough about U.S. intelligence capabilities to know that this sort of stuff would be discovered.
It was said by colleagues that Flynn’s psychological state deteriorated in the last year he served before President Obama fired him. Perhaps that explains it, that his mental state blended with the general hubris of the Trump team to lead his actions in the wrong direction.
I don’t have a better explanation.
More than a whiff of Gen. Jack D. Ripper about him.
Curiosity piqued, now would seem a good time to revisit the reporting done on the Trump Tower server that reportedly had the singular use of communicating with a Russian bank (and maybe a 2nd to a pharma connected to Kushner). Many dangling threads from the past
Hope someone on Mueller’s investigation has the time to chase that down.
Also the Tweet that Reince was in the building at the same time.
The president is a Russian spy. Why does he need to resign? Who’s going to make him?
It’s hard to believe how stupid these people are.
They actually created a record of their meeting with the Russians.
It defies common sense to argue Trump didn’t know about the meeting.
I still think the odds are higher that Trump dies of natural causes in office than he resigns or impeaches.
The number to watch is Trump’s support among Republicans: which hasn’t moved. Nor have the generic ballot numbers collapsed as much as you would think.
That fact, the fact the GOP won GA-6, is enough to keep any potential Brutus at bay within the GOP.
What drove Nixon out was his numbers. What kept Clinton in office were his numbers. Trump’s need to change for this to come close to resignation territory.
And take the Republican party down with him in 2018 & 2020.
Assuming a strong opposition party not yet in evidence.
Also assumes what extreme lefties also assumed after he took down the Democratic Party. Not to mention that this is not yet in evidence.
Finally it asssumes that the Congressional and legislative Republicans will be tarred with association and support of Trump. Again…not yet in evidence.
And the 2018 election is only 16 months away. 2020 is 40 months away. Anyone have timed plans yet on exactly how this unfolds?
By Watergate time standards, Trump resigns (or is impeached) in the late summer of 2018. There is a Democratic primary free-for-all much like the 2016 GOP free-for-all. Hopefully it won’t be a clown car.
The 1976 Democratic primary was not characterized as anything other than a primary.
The 1988 Democratic primary was characterized as the Seven Dwarfs.
The 1992 primary was a multiple-way fight that ended as other primary candidates dropped out. That fight defined the direction of the party for a quarter century.
The 1992 election hinged on George H. W. Bush’s failure to understand grocery store scanning machines.
Just picked up some seats in Oklahoma in red districts.
Have a positive attitude.
Thank you. I tried on Twitter last night to raise this point with a couple of well read writers (Josh Marshall being one) but couldn’t get any traction with them to comment on it.
This to me is the most dangerous aspect about our current situation. The CIC of the armed forces is almost certainly compromised by Moscow. This one of those rare things which really is as frightening as it sounds.
The most dangerous aspect about our current situation is more specific.
If the Commander in Chief is compromised by Moscow, how much authority does he carry with the military and the national security organizations in deciding actions?
If he carries enough authority to turn the US military posture around quickly without careful thought, that is very dangerous.
If he carries no authority and the military and national security organizations have built a box of resistance and non-compliance around him for the nation’s safety, that is also very dangerous to Constitutional rule and the context of military policy and actions.
The failure of the GOP caucus in Congress to actually do honest oversight has placed us in a doubly dangerous position.
I could not agree more. The GOP is such a lily-livered, power mad, ideologically impaired political party that they represent the clear and present danger to our democracy.
How long will it take the military to decide that doing without civilian oversight is going to work for them? And how long will it take for them to decide who gets to make the military decisions for everyone else? Dangerous indeed.
Credit where credit is due:
Garrett M. Graff
@vermontgmg
We’ve read tens of thousands of Hillary’s emails; FBI spent a year investigating too. Not a single speck as troubling as Don Jr’s one email.
9:31 AM – 11 Jul 2017
Hits one of the essential points on the nose.
Many more incredibly damaging emails and other communications to come.
The email is points to more danger than any leak of DNC and Clinton information.
One of the things I hope will come out of this is the provenance of all the leaked documents, including these emails.
The distinction among private citizen, political actor, and government official has been definitely blurred as has the procedural checks-and-balances on release of private information. The proper way all along has been warrants of probable cause; there now is clear probable cause for a grand jury or Mueller to ask for further information by warrant from the Trumps, the Trump Organization, the Trump Campaign Organization and its principals, and the Republican Party. I doubt if Congress will subpoena what is necessary but what might immunize Trump’s people. That corrupt.
We’ll see. It has become clear that the shoes to drop will become increasingly heavy.