Category: Documents case

DEFCON 1 – Trump to Receive Intel Briefings on Campaign Trail!

Michael Matheron1 Comment

“[N]o one inside the intelligence community is thrilled about briefing a person who is under indictment for mishandling classified information.”
Ken Dilanian, MSNBC, Chris Jansing Reports, March 8, 2024

And That’s an Understatement for the Ages, Mr. Dilanian

Since 1952, presidential candidates have received intel briefings and Trump’s are about to begin. Among the charges against the presumptive GOP-MAGA candidate in the so-called documents case is violating, not only the Presidential Records Act, but the Espionage Act. These intel briefings have never been provided to a candidate of either party who has been so clearly unworthy, and despite the tradition, Trump ought not be anywhere close to classified information.* At the least, if at all, he should be barred from intel briefings until he is the official GOP-MAGA candidate following the nomination convention when he will be the official party candidate, and that privilege I would only grudgingly allow.

* In fact, President Biden, in February 2021, barred Trump from receiving the intelligence briefings traditionally permitted for former presidents.

Trump will not be barred because of the established tradition, not for any statutory command to deliver these briefings. Tradition, though, has its limitations. In the case of the galactically irresponsible Trump. this tradition is unrelated to the danger involved in regard Trump who has his own tradition, that of oten revealing, at his pleasure, significant national security secrets. He has no compunctions whatever and appears to enjoy spilling the classified intelligence beans to anyone he hopes to impress. One of his obvious mega-flaws is a need to be both liked and to be viewed as a person in the know, a dangerous person in any position of importance.

Here are some of the known instances where he offered up secret intel during his presidency and after like M&Ms on Halloween night:

  1. Early in his term, he divulged to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador, intel about an Islamic State plot. “A Middle Eastern ally that closely guards its own secrets provided the information, which was considered so sensitive that American officials did not share it widely within the United States government or pass it on to other allies.”
  2. During Christmas season 2018, Trump visited Iraq’s Al Asad Airbase where he posted video on Twitter of several members of Seal Team Five in their camouflage and night-vision goggles, which, however, revealed their location and un-blurred faces.
  3. In August 2019, he learned in a classified briefing about an explosion at a space launch facility in Iran. He insisted on posting it on Twitter, but was strongly urged to not do so for national security reasons. He did so anyway, telling reporters “We had a photo and I released it, which I have the absolute right to do.” This incident also led to one of Trump’s more infamous and uninformed quotes, to intel staff, “I have declassification authority. I can do anything I want.”
  4. In 2023, then as citizen Trump, revealed to an Australian billionaire, Anthony Pratt, classified intel about American submarines, including nuclear warhead inventory and how closely they could maneuver to Russian submarines.

And these, serious enough, are just the national security failures that are known. It’s not hard to imagine what else he revealed in office, or out. Proving criminal responsibility is now Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s job, yet the consistent Trump-caused delays in the documents case, often enabled by presiding Judge Aileen Cannon, may prevent a trial prior to the election. In fact, it’s becoming almost inevitable that voters will be denied knowing whether Trump has violated, with apparent impunity, many provisions of the Presidential Records Act and the Espionage Act.

So, Here’s an Idea! Let’s Freeze Him Out of National Security Briefings

Fortunately, presidential candidate briefings are not as complete and informative as briefings that President Biden receives. An ABC News article point out, candidate Trump would “receive an initial briefing from the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and . . . can ask for a follow-up briefing on any topic. . . In the past, candidates have received no more than three briefings. This election season, [Trump] is expected to have two or three. The briefings become much more frequent and detailed once a candidate becomes the president-elect.” Nevertheless, Trump’s record does not qualify him to receive a single briefing.

As noted, he’s consistently revealed sensitive and top secret information. It’s a certainty that citizen Trump could not now obtain a security clearance. He’s a known national security threat. His financial needs for legal fees make him a candidate for any foreign power to manipulate in order to access, on the sly, national security information. Furthermore, he has not indicated that he even understands the need for secrecy in these matters or that he intends to act differently in the future. Psychologically, he has no compunctions about asserting himself, and does not think that the office of the presidency places any limits on his personal powers. He has a mind for espionage and would be an easy mark. A security clearance would be out of the question even though the candidate briefing tradition does not require one, a practice that needs to be modified.

Moreover, he held this classified information in secret at his Mar A Lago and Westminster New Jersey homes in violation of the Presidential Records Act (PRA). Shockingly, he’s spoken of the PRA as having allowed him to take anything he wants. In plain words, the PRA forbids what Trump believes it permits. Attorney Joyce Vance recently wrote, “Trump insists he designated the documents as personal records under the PRA so his possession of them was authorised and he can’t be prosecuted for it. But he’s never been able to explain how the PRA trumps laws about handling classified and national defence [information]. It doesn’t.” In other words, the PRA does allow certain personal records to be retained by an outgoing president, like note for a memoir. As the National Archives explains:

“In 1978, Congress passed the Presidential Records Act (PRA), which states that any records created or received by the President as part of his constitutional, statutory, or ceremonial duties are the property of the United States government and will be managed by NARA at the end of the administration. The Presidential Records Act (PRA) changed the legal status of Presidential and Vice Presidential materials. Under the PRA, the official records of the President and his staff are owned by the United States, not by the President.” Emphasis in original.

Trump’s admitted openly to taking highly secret documents from the White House. He also has a track record of sharing national security information with others. The tradition allowing national security briefings for candidates must bow before a person so manifestly unreliable, dishonest, and irresponsible as Donald Trump. He must be denied intelligence briefings until, God forbid, he’s President-Elect. Perhaps President Biden will make it so as he did in the matter of briefings for former presidents.

Donald’s Nightmare Visualized

Michael MatheronLeave a comment

J6 investigation is pitching….and Georgia’s warming up in the bullpen…..and where is Melania….and you’re behind in the count…..and hitting .122

Virtuoso Trump Lies About Telling The Truth About Lying

Michael Matheron1 Comment
A nod’s as good as a wink to a blind horse.

What documents?

We’re living in an era as yet formally unnamed, but as history marches on Donald Trump is the odds on favorite to dominate it. Among his attributes we already know, lying will be front and center in any telling. Lying in all its forms, from white lies to blue lies to preposterous lies, to lies about microscopic things (the COVID virus Clorox cure) to bold universe embracing whoppers (“I alone can do it.”). Lies that stun like a charge of electricity, and lies that cause you to question your sanity, sometimes simultaneously. In short, he’s a savant of prevarication, a creative lying machine fueled by . . . what, we do not know. That’s a task for some seven year old child, today wondering how egrets fly, who will eventually unravel the Gordian knot of Donald Trump, perhaps, thereby to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the past few days Trump’s falsehoods have thrown confusion to his enemies, notably all those involved in preparing the government’s case against him in the documents case (Documentgate?), particularly Special Counsel Jack Smith and his courtroom team. The question reminds one of the board game Clue: “What actually happened in the ex president’s office at his Bedminster, New Jersey cottage, sometime in July 2021?” And – Clue aficionados – did the butler hide the tape recorder with a screwdriver in the office near the garden?

Except it is, like, highly confidential. Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this. This was done by the military and given to me.

Audio, Trump Westminster meeting

At that time Trump was in a meeting with a publisher and a writer working on a Mark Meadows memoir. During the meeting he casually displayed what he termed as military plans that were “highly confidential, [and] this is secret information,” and he disclosed that he had not declassified them while president, neither formally nor telepathically. He encouraged them to look at the documents. One could hear them shuffling around seemingly having wings.

They laughed and laughed, one said, “Now we’ve got a problem” as Trump bemoaned that he could not now as an ex-president declassify the document. Declassify a newspaper article? Why, for example, did Trump say this about the document he was discussing, “Except it is, like, highly confidential. Secret. . . .This was done by the military and given to me.” Like a ten year old, at the end of this sequence Trumps says “It’s so cool.” This scene of excitement and hilarity was kindred to a group of ten year olds looking through their buddy’s stolen baseball cards.

I told you I wanted a par 70 course!! Resume your duties.

Next, by stretching his big lie into a new shape like a balloon aficionado, Trump told FOX news that he was referring to “plans of a golf course” and “building plans.” So, the documents supposedly viewed so excitedly by his Bedminster guests were golf course plans? Apparently the golf plans were in the bailiwick of the Department of Defense. General Milley had a second assignment: golf course architect. That’s another classification in Trump’s taxonomy of lies, the stupid lie that is effective when fed to his supporters who, context challenged, will gobble it up. True context, however, suggests “preposterous.” More was quickly to come.

Bravado

Few bought his preposterous lie that he had no classified documents (except the usual suspects). Never daunted, after the initial lies were nearly unanimously panned, our virtuoso liar came up with a new idea produced in his laboratory of falsehoods, and a splendid one it was. Counter intuitively, a form of bravado. He’s bragging about all this? Yes, but with a purpose.

I would say it’s bravado,” Trump said, according to reports from both [FOX’s] Scott and Talcott. “If you want to know the truth. It was bravado. I was talking and just holding up papers and talking about them, but I had no documents. I didn’t have any documents.

Newsweek, June 27, 2023

“If you want to know the truth.” Starting a sentence with “if you want the truth” does nothing but prove his previous excuses as lies. Yet, he’s still lying, he’s lying about his claim of bravado, which he advances as defense number three. It was not bravado at all, it was another lie which he called the truth. He’s lying about telling the truth, explicitly.

This is where it gets interesting, and in a Dr. Evil sense, brilliant. “If you want to know the truth” sets up empathic, sympathetic folks (widows, orphans, liberals) to think, “Ahh, now he’s going to tell us everything even if it embarrasses him. Good. We all boast sometimes, don’t we?” In sum, he purports, explicitly, to tell the truth, when in fact he’s lying about telling the truth about what he also presented as truth in his previous pair of whoppers. Taken together, these consecutive and contradictory excuses provide a prima facie case that the was displaying classified defense-related materials. He strives here to do two things: elicit sympathy by implying “I’m only human” even at some embarrassment to himself, and with some evil savvy, to distract, distract, distract by throwing confusion at the enemy. This is called, in his lexicon, the bravado ploy.

Recall that all of this started with his blatant and ridiculous initial lies that he was not displaying classified documents, or that they were golf course plans, or it was all bravado. We now have three nonsensical lies to deal with (as of June 30, 2023). For a confused media the ratings game afoot may be to argue away valuable time about whether or not Trump displayed classified documents, but to parse each of his three tall tales. For what reason? Ask Donald Trump, Grand Master, Lying.

[This will be updated as perhaps more lies emerge.]