Tag Archives: national security advisor

The Way Forward On De-classification

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Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article detailing the way forward on declassification of all documents related to the Russia hoax. It is amazing that we have not yet seen these documents.

The author of the article is somewhat cynical as to why the documents remain classified:

CTH has a rather unique perspective on the declassification angle. This conversation has traveled with me for over two years as I have talked to people inside the machinery. Ultimately the discussion ends around something like this:

Is the DC political surveillance state, and all of the ramifications within that reality, so fundamentally corrupt and against our nation’s interests, that no entity dare expose the scope and depth of it?  And ultimately… is it the preservation of institutions that is causing so many disconnected outcomes from evidence intentionally downplayed?

If we assume the scale of unconstitutional conduct has become systemic, that likely answers the questions.  Personally, I believe this is the most likely scenario.

That is a scary thought.

The article suggests a plan to make all the related documents public:

President Trump informs the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, that he wishes to have a full intelligence briefing on the following documents (more may be added), all documents are to be presented without a single redaction:

  • All versions of the Carter Page FISA applications (DOJ) (FBI) (ODNI).
  • All of the Bruce Ohr 302’s filled out by the FBI. (FBI) (ODNI)
  • All of Bruce Ohr’s emails (FBI) (DOJ) (CIA) (ODNI)
  • All relevant documents pertaining to the supportive material within the FISA application. (FBI) (DOJ-NSD ) (DoS) (CIA) (DNI) (NSA) (ODNI);
  • All supportive documents and material provided by Bruce Ohr to the FBI. (FBI)
  • All intelligence documents that were presented to the Gang of Eight in 2016 that pertain to the FISA application used against U.S. person Carter Page; including all intelligence documents that may not have been presented to the FISA Court. (CIA) (FBI) (DOJ) (ODNI) (DoS) (NSA)
  • All unredacted text messages and email content between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok on all devices. (FBI) (DOJ) (DOJ-NSD) (ODNI)
  • The originating CIA “EC” or two-page electronic communication from former FBI Agent Peter Strzok: and all communication between former CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey that started Operation Crossfire Hurricane in July 2016. (CIA) (FBI) (ODNI)
  • The full and unredacted April 2017 FISA court 99-page opinion written by Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer outlining the compliance audit conducted by the NSA in 2016. (NSA) (ODNI) (DOJ) (FBI) (DOJ-NSD)
  • ADD TO THIS – Everything and Anything related to contracts, vendors, services and the intelligence apparatus connected to the 2020 United States election.

The President selects a date for this briefing and through direct orders to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, informs the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, to advise and coordinate with all executive branch lead intelligence officials, who were/are stakeholders in the compartmented intelligence products as described above, of their request be present for the briefing.

The White House counsel’s office is not to be informed of the intent or purpose of the meeting; however the Presidents’ White House counsel is requested to attend. Further, all of the compartmented intelligence is to be collectively assembled by the ODNI (Ratcliffe) into one volume of a singular Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB). There are to be eighteen printed copies of the PDB assembled and secured for the briefing, post haste.

Additionally, the office of the president personally informs the ODNI (Ratcliffe) of the executives’ request to invite for the briefing each member of the legislative branch Intelligence Community oversight known as the Gang-of-Eight.

Immediately after the briefing by the executive level (cabinet) department officials, while remaining in a closed and classified session, the full and comprehensive content of this collective intelligence product will be discussed with the full assembly of the U.S. Legislative Branch Intelligence Oversight known as the Gang of Eight.

Therefore, National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien is instructed to coordinate with the ODNI (Ratcliffe) for the attendance of the Gang of Eight: Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Minority leader Kevin McCarthy, HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff, HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, SSCI Chairman Richard Burr and SSCI Vice-Chair Mark Warner. [Topic “TBD”]

In order to facilitate the briefing. Each member of the participating group will be provided with one full printed copy of the material assembled by the ODNI during the briefing.

[Each of the participants carries the prerequisite clearances, legal and constitutional authority to engage with the classified document according to their position and status. Only the executive can assemble the product for Go8 review and feedback]

At the conclusion of the briefing; and after hearing from, and engagement with, each of the participating members of the executive intelligence offices and duly authorized legislative oversight representatives; and after listening to their opinion as to the subject material discussed; the president announces to the fully assembled leadership of both the Executive branch (cabinet) and Legislative branch (Go8), it is his opinion the National Interests of the United States can best be served with the American people having a full, transparent and honest review of the material assembled and discussed.

The President, no-one else, only the President, then collects the printed portfolios as they were distributed to the participants, exits the briefing, and walks directly into the James Brady press briefing room within the White House; handing each of the awaiting twelve members of the national media a copy of the briefing material to be published on behalf of the American people.

At exactly the same time as President Trump enters the briefing room, one copy of the assembled portfolio is hand delivered, by President Trump only, to White House communications director Alyssa Farah with instructions to scan and release the content to the public through the White House website.

Done.

The American people are aware…

The system will now turn immediately to destroy Donald J Trump….

…..while we show up en-masse to support him.

Works for me.

The Truth Has A Way Of Coming Out

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John Bolton’s book is out today. He will probably make a lot of money by trashing President Trump after President Trump was nice enough to give him a job in the administration. John Bolton is probably a very smart man, but his ideas about when to go to war did not fit in with President Trump’s ideas about when to go to war. Those who dislike the President will praise the book. Those who were there seem to have a different opinion.

Yesterday The Western Journal posted an article by Sarah Sanders. She obviously has a different perspective on events involving John Bolton.

The article reports:

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton might have won a battle or two in publishing his “tell-all” memoir of his time in the Trump White House.

But he’s losing a war when it comes to preserving his reputation in the wake of his betrayal of President Donald Trump and his administration.

And when former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders used a lengthy Twitter thread Monday to lay into Bolton by publishing an excerpt of her own memoir, it was clear another front had opened.

In the excerpt, Bolton comes off as almost embarrassingly “arrogant and selfish”  — Sanders’ two words.

“Bolton was a classic case of a senior White House official drunk on power, who had forgotten that nobody elected him to anything,” she wrote.

By way of example, the excerpt in the Twitter thread recounted an incident during the 2019 presidential trip to London, where White House advisers — including then-acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin but without Bolton — traveled by a single bus from a hotel to the American ambassador’s residence, known as the Winfield House.

The group was supposed to be part of a motorcade United Kingdom security officials had arranged for White House staff because Trump would be traveling mainly by helicopter. Bolton, who traveled to the U.K. in a separate plane, was supposed to meet the rest of the staff with the motorcade at their hotel, Sanders wrote, but he never showed.

While the bus was en route, according to Sanders, police directed the vehicle to pull over to make room for a motorcade coming through – the motorcade carrying Bolton.

“The discussion on the bus quickly moved from casual chit chat to how arrogant and selfish Bolton could be, not just in this moment but on a regular basis,” Sanders wrote. “If anyone on the team should have merited a motorcade it was Mnuchin, but he was a team player.”

When the bus arrived at the Winfield House, Sanders wrote, Mulvaney (who’s now the U.S. special envoy to Northern Ireland) lit into Bolton.

“Mick made clear he was the chief of staff and Bolton’s total disregard for his colleagues and common decency was unacceptable and would no longer be tolerated,” Sanders wrote. “‘Let’s face it John,’ Mick said. ‘You’re a f—— self-righteous, self-centered son of a b——!’”

For an outsider reading that, the whole issue might sound a little petty – even funny.

But Sanders made it clear it was just an example that came from “months of Bolton thinking he was more important and could play by a different set of rules than the rest of the team.”

In a column for Fox News K.T. McFarland noted:

Bolton, McFarland wrote, “was so convinced of his superior intelligence that he was condescending to everyone, including the president. He was increasingly isolated within the West Wing; cabinet officers ignored him and went behind his back directly to the president. He even avoided contact with his own National Security Council staff.”

That behavior might not have been a surprise in light of the anecdote McFarland opened her column with. She wrote that she ran into Bolton in the green room at Fox News on Election Day 2016 and asked if he’d voted yet.

Bolton replied, according to McFarland: “Yes, for Trump. He’s an idiot, but anybody is better than Hillary Clinton.”

Obviously, a national security advisor who thinks the president he serves is an “idiot” is not going to make an ideal counselor.

McFarland’s time at the White House did not overlap with Bolton’s, but she wrote that she was aware of his performance through her acquaintances who were still part of the National Security Council.

“I heard from several of my former NSC colleagues who remained at the White House after I left that Bolton spent most of his time – when he wasn’t in the Oval Office – sitting in his office behind closed doors,” she wrote. “His staff wasn’t sure what he did for those hours on end. Now we know – he was, in all likelihood, turning his copious notes into a manuscript, presumably in anticipation of getting a lucrative book deal, and rushing it into print quickly when the inevitable happened and he was fired.”

Bolton, McFarland wrote, was also a chronic leaker, playing the Washington game of talking to reporters when he didn’t get his way in the White House.

I am sure we will hear more stories like this as the book begins to circulate. Bolton has set a very bad precedent by writing a tell-all book about an administration still in office during a re-election campaign. That is just tacky.

If What You Are Doing Is Honest, Why Are You Hiding It?

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On May 11, The Federalist posted an article with the following headline, “Why Did Obama Tell The FBI To Hide Its Activities From The Trump Administration?”

That is a very interesting question. President Obama was leaving office–his authority was over. Why would the FBI listen to him?

The article reports:

The FBI maintained that it opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, rather than providing Trump a defensive briefing on the report from a “friendly foreign government” that Russia had reached out to a member of his campaign to release damaging information on Hillary Clinton, because agents “had no indication as to which person in the Trump campaign allegedly received the offer from the Russians.” According to Counterintelligence Division Assistant Director E.W. “Bill” Priestap, “had we provided a defensive briefing to someone on the Trump campaign, we would have alerted the campaign to what we were looking into, and, if someone on the campaign was engaged with the Russians, he/she would very likely change his/her tactics and/or otherwise seek to cover-up his/her activities, thereby preventing us from finding the truth.”

Former deputy director of the FBI Andy McCabe likewise told Inspector General Michael Horowitz “that he did not consider a defensive briefing as an alternative to opening a counterintelligence case” because, “based on the [Friendly Foreign Government] information, the FBI did not know if any member of the campaign was coordinating with Russia and that the FBI did not brief people who ‘could potentially be the subjects that you are investigating or looking for.’”

McCabe further explained that “in a sensitive counterintelligence matter, it was essential to have a better understanding of what was occurring before taking an overt step such as providing a defensive briefing.”

While “there are plenty of problems with Priestap and McCabe’s rationale, as well as the entire predicate for Crossfire Hurricane,” a bigger problem arises if you take them at their word, because by the time Americans elected Trump president on November 8, 2016, the FBI had “a better understanding of what was occurring,” and had identified four individuals of concern. But still the FBI did not provide president-elect Trump a defensive briefing.

The article details what happened after the January 5th meeting in President Obama’s office:

While Comey found it important to tell the incoming commander-in-chief of the ridiculous “pee tape” “intel,” following Obama’s guidance the then-FBI director did not tell Trump that the FBI had an active investigation into Trump’s incoming national security advisor predicated on the idea that Flynn was potentially a Russian agent.

Even after Obama had left office and Comey had a new commander-in-chief to report to, Comey continued to follow Obama’s prompt by withholding intel from Trump. Recently released documents included as exhibits to the Department of Justice’s motion to dismiss the criminal charges against Flynn reveal this reality.

During that same January 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting in which Obama counseled Comey to be cautious in sharing information about Russia with the Trump administration, Obama and Comey discussed Flynn’s late-December telephone calls with the Russian ambassador.

The article concludes:

The FBI, however, is not solely to blame for keeping this “important” information from Trump: They were only following the counsel of former President Barack Obama.

While a young Amy Carter can be forgiven for her juvenile vision of departing the White House “content with the picture of Nancy Reagan struggling to clean out the oven,” there is no excuse for an outgoing president to withhold “intel” on supposed Russian agents from the president-elect. And there is no excuse for an outgoing president to advise hold-over high-ranking officials to do likewise once the new president has taken office.

Or, rather, the only excuse is an equally scandalous one: Obama knew the Russia investigation was a hoax from the get-go.

So much for President Obama participating in the smooth transition of power in our republic.

Comments On John Bolton And Robert O’Brien

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I haven’t said anything about John Bolton’s leaving the White House. I think John Bolton is an honorable man who has served his country well. I also think some of his ideas were not in harmony with the ideas of President Trump. John Bolton sees traditional war as an option is almost all cases. I think the time has come to put the idea of traditional war on the back burner. We now live in the era of cyber wars, trade wars, ‘Nintendo wars’ and wars that involve the theft of intellectual property. Because of the great political divide in America, America is not capable right now of fighting a war until we win. The politics in Washington are such that war is used as an opportunity to bash the other party rather than to advance the cause of peace, freedom, or our national security.

Robert O’Brien has been appointed to replace John Bolton as National Security Advisor.

According to a post today at The Conservative Treehouse:

Robert C O’Brien … is currently the State Department’s special presidential envoy for hostage affairs.  A founding partner of the Los Angeles-based law firm Larson O’Brien.

NYT – Mr. O’Brien served with Mr. Bolton when he was President George W. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations and has advised Republican candidates like Mitt Romney, Scott Walker and Ted Cruz. In both the Bush and Obama administrations, Mr. O’Brien worked on an initiative to train lawyers and judges in Afghanistan.  (link)

People describe O’Brien as similar to his friend John Bolton without the virulent twitchy trigger finger. In his capacity as special envoy for hostage affairs, O’Brien wrote a letter to Swedish prosecutors urging them to release A$AP Rocky.  According to CBS O’Brien’s work “on Rocky’s case endeared him to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and one of his top advisers.”

I believe Mr. O’Brien is the right person for this job. His links to some mainstream Republicans may help heal some of the divisions in the party. It also seems that he has some very strong diplomatic skills.

We need to understand that there is an effort to draw America into another war in the Middle East. The effort is underwritten by the globalist community that seeks to weaken America. America is one of the last obstacles to global governance. Americans like our freedom. We like our inexpensive energy. We like our prosperity and our growing economy. We like our economic mobility–the ability to move from poverty to the middle class to wealth. Note that these are the things that the radicals in our country are attacking. As long as America is strong and its people have hope, we will remain free and continue to be an obstacle to those who seek global power.

Slowly The Truth Comes To Light

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On Tuesday, Sara Carter posted an article about a recent court hearing for General Flynn. It seems that in an effort to destroy General Flynn because of his association with President Trump, the Justice Department broke many of the laws put in place to protect American citizens from overzealous prosecutors.

The article reports:

A bombshell revelation was barely noticed at National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s hearing Tuesday, when his counsel revealed in court the existence of a Justice Department memo from Jan. 30, 2017 exonerating Flynn of any collusion with Russia. The memo, which has still not been made available to Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell, is part of a litany of Brady material she is demanding from prosecutors. The memo is currently under protective order and Powell is working with prosecutors to get it disclosed, SaraACarter.com has learned.

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan presided over the hearing Tuesday  and set a tentative Dec. 18 sentencing date. He told the prosecution and defense that the sentencing date could be moved depending on the outcome of requests for Brady material requested by Powell and how the case will unfold in the upcoming months. Sullivan also noted during the hearing that the Brady order takes precedence over the plea agreement.

The article continues:

Powell noted the extraordinary misconduct of the government during the hearing. She also said that Flynn would have never pleaded guilty if the government had disclosed the Brady materials before the original trial that she is now demanding. There would not have been a plea if the prosecutors had met their Brady obligations, Powell argued before the court.

Powell’s discovery of the memo shatters not only the narrative that was pushed by former Obama Administration officials regarding Flynn but also the ongoing narrative that President Donald Trump’s concern over Flynn’s prosecution amounted to alleged obstruction.

The January, 2017 timeline of the DOJ memo is extremely significant. Former FBI Director James Comey said in previous interviews that he leaked his memos through a friend to be published in the New York Times with the hope of getting a special counsel appointed to investigate Trump for obstruction. In late August, Inspector General Michael Horowitz released his much anticipated report on Comey. It was scathing and revealed that he violated FBI policy when he leaked his memos that described his private conversations with  Trump. However, the DOJ declined to prosecute Comey on Horowitz’s referral.

The article concludes:

According to Comey’s memo Trump said: “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

Comey suggested that Trump’s request was inappropriate, accusing him of obstructing justice by asking him to drop Flynn’s case. He used this as a pretense to leak his memos and put the nation through more than two years of Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel, which in the end found no evidence of a conspiracy with Russia. As for obstruction, Attorney General William Barr and then Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded that there was no obstruction based on the evidence gathered by Mueller’s team.

However, if Comey would have advised Trump of the Jan. 30 memo it would have cleared up any unfounded lies that Flynn had in any way colluded or conspired with Russia.

Even if the charges against Flynn are dropped, is the government going to buy him a house to replace the one he had to sell to pay the lawyers to defend him? The bill for a new house should be presented to James Comey, Robert Mueller, Andrew Weissmann, and Rod Rosenstein, and it should be a mansion.

Glossing Over The Actual Crime

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This week we watched the Mueller investigation recommend that Michael Flynn not be incarcerated because of his extensive cooperation with the investigation. This creates more questions than it answers. Why was there any kind of continuing investigation of Michael Flynn? Notes released from the investigation show that no one who interviewed him thought he was lying. So why wasn’t the investigation dropped? But wait–there’s more!

Kimberley Strassel posted an article at The Wall Street Journal yesterday with the following title, “Mueller’s Gift to Obama.” The article reminds us that the charges against Michael Flynn were based on his telephone calls and interactions with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. As incoming National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn would have been expected to have those conversations. It is also expected that those conversations would be wiretapped because they involved a Russian Ambassador. What is not protocol is the unmasking of General Flynn’s identity.

The article reports:

But what about the potential crimes that put Mr. Flynn in Mr. Mueller’s crosshairs to begin with? On Jan. 2, 2017, the Obama White House learned about Mr. Flynn’s conversations with Mr. Kislyak. The U.S. monitors phone calls of foreign officials, but under law they are supposed to “minimize” the names of any Americans caught up in such eavesdropping. In the Flynn case, someone in the prior administration either failed to minimize or purposely “unmasked” Mr. Flynn. The latter could itself be a felony.

Ten days later someone in that administration leaked to the Washington Post that Mr. Flynn had called Mr. Kislyak on Dec. 29, 2016. On Feb. 9, 2017, someone leaked to the Post and the New York Times highly detailed and classified information about the Flynn-Kislyak conversation.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has called this leak the most destructive to national security that he seen in his time in Washington. Disclosing classified information is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in federal prison. The Post has bragged that its story was sourced by nine separate officials.

The Mueller team has justified its legal wanderings into money laundering (Paul Manafort) and campaign contributions (Michael Cohen) on grounds that it has an obligation to follow up on any evidence of crimes, no matter how disconnected from its Russia mandate. Mr. Flynn’s being caught up in the probe is related to a glaring potential crime of disclosing classified material, yet Mr. Mueller appears to have undertaken no investigation of that. Is this selective justice, or something worse? Don’t forget Mr. Mueller stacked his team with Democrats, some of whom worked at the highest levels of the Obama administration, including at the time of the possible Flynn unmasking and the first leak.

It is becoming very obvious that Robert Mueller’s investigation is wearing blinders. Their prosecution of Michael Flynn while ignoring the crime of leaking classified material and unmasking Americans on foreign phone calls  (not to mention ignoring the Clinton campaign’s relationship with Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele, and the dossier) is a glaring example of the politicization of our Justice Department. The Congressional hysteria over the idea that Mueller could be fired or limited in any way is a glaring example of the ignorance on the part of some Congressmen of our Constitution. For the past two years we have had a taste of what it would be like to live in a country where justice is political. If we do not successfully deal with this, we will have taken a pretty big step toward becoming a banana republic.

 

 

An Interesting Choice

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The Washington Times is reporting today that Donald Trump has asked Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn to be his national security advisor. General Flynn is an interesting character who speaks very bluntly and has the background for the position.

The article reports:

Flynn, who turns 58 in December, is a native of Middletown, Rhode Island. He graduated from the University of Rhode Island in 1981 with a degree in management science and was commissioned a second lieutenant in military intelligence. He held various positions in military intelligence throughout his career, including director of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the top intelligence officer for the commander of the U.S.-led international military coalition in Afghanistan in 2009-10.

According to a biography published by the DIA during his time as its director, Flynn’s academic credentials include three graduate degrees: a master’s in telecommunications from Golden Gate University; a master’s in military arts and sciences from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; and a master’s in national security and strategic studies from the U.S. Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island.

He drew public attention in January 2010, during his time in Afghanistan, for his unorthodox decision to have a Washington think tank, the Center for a New American Security, publish his critique of the U.S. intelligence system in Afghanistan.

The report said: “Having focused the overwhelming majority of its collection efforts and analytical brainpower on insurgent groups, the vast intelligence apparatus is unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which U.S. and allied forces operate.”

I disagree with General Flynn on Turkey. The article states:

Flynn’s dark warnings about Islam have not extended to the Islamist-leaning authoritarian Turkish government headed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In an op-ed for the Washington newspaper The Hill just before the election, Flynn wrote that “our ally Turkey” needs support and echoed Erdogan’s warnings that a “shady” Turkish leader now exiled in Pennsylvania should not be given safe harbor in the U.S. Erdogan has called for the extradition of the exile, Fethullah Gullen, but the Obama administration has made no move to comply.

Under President Erdogan, Turkey is moving toward becoming an Islamic state. The only advantage in supporting the current government of Turkey is that a change of government through a revolution might result in a civil war and failed state similar to what we have seen in Syria.

Overall, I think General Flynn is a very good choice as national security advisor. He will oppose the spread of radical Islam in ways that the Obama Administration did not. He is also someone who is going to be honest as to what we are up against and the current risk of terrorism.