Tag Archives: President’s Daily Brief

Is It Treason?

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Is it treason to hold back national security information in the President’s daily briefing? I don’t know, but I would love to see a court of law sort that out.

On Friday, Just The News reported:

President Donald Trump on Thursday released a trove of declassified intelligence documents that his administration says expose long-suspected vulnerabilities in U.S. election infrastructure, in addition to alarming intelligence pointing to prior administrations’ and officials’ knowledge of such issues that were kept from the president, Congress and the American people. 

“The intelligence community withheld information from his president’s daily brief. That’s a big deal. That’s where the intelligence community gives him the absolute most classified data, what he needs to know for that day, and frankly, during his first term, they withheld it. That is a black mark on the intelligence community,” Rep. Keith Self, R-Tex., told Just The News.

Self continued, “They should be charged because they hold positions of great responsibility, and they have violated our trust. They have violated the actual agreements that they sign when they get that level of classified data, so this is very, very easily charged and indicted.”

The materials, posted on the White House website following a prime-time address, include assessments indicating that intelligence officials were aware of risks such as outdated software and potential compromises by adversaries like China — which the documents claim acquired data on millions of American voters — but did not fully disclose them to the president, Congress or the public. 

What would be the consequences in the private sector of not sharing vital information you were tasked with gathering with the head of the company?

The article concludes:

“We all can agree that bureaucrats who manipulate or conceal intelligence from the people’s elected leaders to push their preferred policies or end states cannot keep their jobs in the American people’s Intelligence Community,” he wrote on X. “Those involved, and any who knew and remained silent, must be immediately removed from their positions of trust. 

Mike Davis, founder and president of the Article III Project and a former Senate lawyer, told Just The News he believes prosecutions are warranted. 

Intelligence analysts “obstructed and they conspired to provide doctored evidence to the President of the United States about a foreign invasion of our elections, and they must be held accountable. They must be arrested. They must be charged. They must be held accountable,” he said.

There should be firings and jail time!

It’s Those Pesky Emails Again

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The problem is those pesky emails again–only they are not Hillary’s. Catherine Herridge at Fox News is reporting today that at least two emails were sent to analysts at U.S. Central Command requesting that they ease off negative assessments about the Islamic State threat.

The article reports:

Those emails, among others, are now in the possession of the Pentagon inspector general. The IG’s probe is expanding into whether intelligence assessments were changed to give a more positive picture of the anti-ISIS campaign.

The former Pentagon official said there were “multiple assessments” from military intelligence and the CIA regarding the “rapid rise” of ISIS in Iraq and North Africa in the year leading up to the group’s territory grab in 2014.

Similar intelligence was included in the President’s Daily Brief, or PDB – the intelligence community’s most authoritative product — during the same time period. Yet the official, who was part of the White House discussions, said the administration kept “kicking the can down the road.” The official said there was no discussion of the military involvement needed to make a difference.

The IG probe started earlier this year amid complaints that information was changed to make ISIS look more degraded than it really was.

National security is not a game–nor is it a political issue–it is an issue that impacts all Americans. I would be somewhat sympathetic if I thought information was sanitized to prevent creating a panic, but I am not sympathetic at all to information being sanitized for political purposes. The investigation needs to proceed without being compromised by interference by the White House or those in the Obama Administration.