US Spy Agencies Withhold Intelligence From Trump Whites Only House Due to Russian Compromise

It would seem that the intelligence agencies consider the White House so corrupted by Russian spies that they are refusing to share intelligence data with the Chump’s people. They believe anything given to the White House will be shared immediately with the Russians, putting our spies and other resources at risk. This is an unprecedented situation, where the NSA considers the President as an agent of a foreign government.

Republicans who are suppressing the investigation into Putin’s ownership of Trump are facilitating treason – and should be charged as accomplices.

The Spy Revolt Against Trump Begins

Intelligence Community pushes back against a White House it considers leaky, untruthful and penetrated by the Kremlin

In a recent column, I explained how the still-forming Trump administration is already doing serious harm to America’s longstanding global intelligence partnerships. In particular, fears that the White House is too friendly to Moscow are causing close allies to curtail some of their espionage relationships with Washington—a development with grave implications for international security, particularly in the all-important realm of counterterrorism.

Now those concerns are causing problems much closer to home—in fact, inside the Beltway itself. Our Intelligence Community is so worried by the unprecedented problems of the Trump administration—not only do senior officials possess troubling ties to the Kremlin, there are nagging questions about basic competence regarding Team Trump—that it is beginning to withhold intelligence from a White House which our spies do not trust.

That the IC has ample grounds for concern is demonstrated by almost daily revelations of major problems inside the White House, a mere three weeks after the inauguration. The president has repeatedly gone out of his way to antagonize our spies, mocking them and demeaning their work, and Trump’s personal national security guru can’t seem to keep his story straight on vital issues.

That’s Mike Flynn, the retired Army three-star general who now heads the National Security Council. Widely disliked in Washington for his brash personality and preference for conspiracy-theorizing over intelligence facts, Flynn was fired as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency for managerial incompetence and poor judgment—flaws he has brought to the far more powerful and political NSC.

Flynn’s problems with the truth have been laid bare by the growing scandal about his dealings with Moscow. Strange ties to the Kremlin, including Vladimir Putin himself, have dogged Flynn since he left DIA, and concerns about his judgment have risen considerably since it was revealed that after the November 8 election, Flynn repeatedly called the Russian embassy in Washington to discuss the transition. The White House has denied that anything substantive came up in conversations between Flynn and Sergei Kislyak, the Russian ambassador.

That was a lie, as confirmed by an extensively sourced bombshell report in TheWashington Post, which makes clear that Flynn grossly misrepresented his numerous conversations with Kislyak—which turn out to have happened before the election too, part of a regular dialogue with the Russian embassy. To call such an arrangement highly unusual in American politics would be very charitable.

In particular, Flynn and Kislyak discussed the possible lifting of the sanctions President Obama placed on Russia and its intelligence services late last year in retaliation for the Kremlin’s meddling in our 2016 election. In public, Flynn repeatedly denied that any talk of sanctions occurred during his conversations with Russia’s ambassador. Worse, he apparently lied in private too, including to Vice President Mike Pence, who when this scandal broke last month publicly denied that Flynn conducted any sanctions talk with Kislyak. Pence and his staff are reported to be very upset with the national security adviser, who played the vice president for a fool.

It’s debatable whether Flynn broke any laws by conducting unofficial diplomacy with Moscow, then lying about it, and he has now adopted the customary Beltway dodge about the affair, ditching his previous denials in favor of professing he has “no recollection of discussing sanctions,” adding that he “couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.” That’s not good enough anymore, since the IC knows exactly what Flynn and Kislyak discussed…

Prominent Democrats in Congress are already calling for Flynn to be relieved over this scandal, which at best shows him to be dishonest about important issues. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has bluntly askedfor the national security adviser’s ouster. Republicans on the Hill who would prefer that the White House stop lying to the public about its Kremlin links ought to get behind Schiff’s initiative before the scandal gets worse.

In truth, it may already be too late. A new report by CNN indicates that important parts of the infamous spy dossier that professed to shed light on President Trump’s shady Moscow ties have been corroborated by communications intercepts. In other words, SIGINT strikes again, providing key evidence that backs up some of the claims made in that 35-page report compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence official with extensive Russia experience….

How things are heating up between the White House and the spooks is evidenced by a new report that the CIA has denied a security clearance to one of Flynn’s acolytes. Rob Townley, a former Marine intelligence officer selected to head up the NSC’s Africa desk, was denied a clearance to see Sensitive Compartmented Information (which is required to have access to SIGINT in particular). Why Townley’s SCI was turned down isn’t clear—it could be over personal problems or foreign ties—but the CIA’s stand has been privately denounced by the White House, which views this as a vendetta against Flynn. That the Townley SCI denial was reportedly endorsed by Mike Pompeo, the new CIA director selected by Trump himself, only adds to the pain.

There is more consequential IC pushback happening, too. Our spies have never liked Trump’s lackadaisical attitude toward the President’s Daily Brief, the most sensitive of all IC documents, which the new commander-in-chief has received haphazardly. The president has frequently blown off the PDB altogether, tasking Flynn with condensing it into a one-page summary with no more than nine bullet-points. Some in the IC are relieved by this, but there are pervasive concerns that the president simply isn’t paying attention to intelligence.

In light of this, and out of worries about the White House’s ability to keep secrets, some of our spy agencies have begun withholding intelligence from the Oval Office. Why risk your most sensitive information if the president may ignore it anyway? A senior National Security Agency official explained that NSA was systematically holding back some of the “good stuff” from the White House, in an unprecedented move. For decades, NSA has prepared special reports for the president’s eyes only, containing enormously sensitive intelligence. In the last three weeks, however, NSA has ceased doing this, fearing Trump and his staff cannot keep their best SIGINT secrets…. More Here…

 

Inciting Riot – Should Trump Be Prosecuted?

When Trump encourages his supporters to attack protesters and the media at his rally’s…

That is criminal.

Donald Trump is a domestic terrorist: Why the demagogue’s violent provocations demand judicial action

Trump threatens riots if he’s not nominated. Let’s let the courts decide if this is politically protected speech

Donald Trump is a domestic terrorist. That assertion rests on two pillars: a definition and a pattern of facts.

In the definitions of terrorism, the common elements are the use of violence or the threat of violence to coerce or intimidate other people for political purposes.

It is widely recognized that Trump’s repeated incitements during campaign speeches are out of bounds.

He laments that his followers cannot follow the practice of older days when protesters were carried out of political meetings on stretchers. He expresses regret that he cannot punch protesters in the face. While he may not have engaged in violence himself, his inflammatory comments are virtual invitations for others to do so on his behalf — witness his campaign manager’s arrest for assault.

TIME TO INVOKE THE LAW?

Trump, of course, denies that he wishes to incite violence, exploiting the broad latitude for free speech under the first amendment. Yet, the context for assessing incitement has changed profoundly in recent years. There are ample grounds for seeking a fresh judicial review of what constitutes incitement in today’s circumstances.

The core principles on which the Supreme Court has relied stem from a distinction first made by then-Federal District Court Judge Learned Hand in 1917, namely that, to be prosecutable, language must be a “trigger to action” rather than “a key to persuasion”.

When Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes declared in 1919 that no one had the right to shout fire in a crowded theater, he added that the question was one of “proximity and degree”, that is, there must be a “clear and present danger” to public order.

In 1969, this precedent was tightened as the Supreme Court linked judgment about whether inflammatory statements tend to incite unlawful action to a verdict that such action is likely and imminent.

The court revised its earlier interpretations, now declaring that

…the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.

An admirable standard, but one open to reasonable refinement….More Here…