Impeachment Inquiry

[fraurosena]

"This is a cover-up," says Nancy Pelosi.

 

[fraurosena]

What's in Trump's Super Classified Server and Why Is He Hiding Things There

Quote

A detail in the whistleblower report released Thursday morning by the House Intelligence Committee suggests a White House coverup intended to hide details of Donald Trump's call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump asked Zelensky to investigate Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden.

The report notes that officials within the White House moved all official records of the call from a standard electronic document storage system to one intended to store only the most classified U.S. national security secrets.

"The transcript [of the call] was loaded into a separate electronic system that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature," the complaint notes.

Steven Aftergood, director of the Project Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, told Motherboard that putting these records on this system "signifies an awareness in the White House that this was not a 'normal' conversation."

"What was the nature of that sensitivity? The clear implication is that the White House understood that the president's remarks could be legally and politically problematic," he said. "There was no other classified 'factual' material in the transcript that would justify a move to a more secure server."

Specifically, the transcript was placed into a computer system managed directly by the National Security Council (NSC) Directorate for Intelligence Programs, which is reserved for so-called "codeword-level" intelligence. Motherboard spoke to four former members of the NSC for previous presidential administrations to learn more about what the system is, what it's used for, and who can access it. Each of them was shocked that the Trump administration used the codeword system for a presidential phone call.

This system is used for the highest-level of classified intelligence, a level beyond "top secret" that is accessible only on a need-to-know basis to specific members of the NSC and intelligence community. And that fact has raised questions as to why the Trump administration would use such a highly-secure, secretive server to store what Trump has called an entirely appropriate conversation.

To be clear, the existence of this sensitive server in and of itself is not unusual. The sensitive server is typically used to store details on covert action and other highly sensitive information with a high degree of access limitation. But multiple experts who have used the system in previous presidential administrations said that it's troubling for the administration to use a highly-classified server to store embarrassing information.

"You don't have hundreds of people getting access to presidential calls. They're tightly controlled, so, it's not as if this would have been floating around with lots of people getting access to the first place. To take the added step of telling the White House lawyers to put this on that system is beyond bizarre to me," Kelly Magsamen, vice president of national security and international policy at thinktank Center for American Progress, and who served in the NSC for two presidents, told Motherboard. "It suggests they know it was extremely damaging."

Motherboard spoke to four former members of the NSC who had direct knowledge of the system in question under previous presidential administrations. Three of them—two of whom were granted anonymity to discuss the specifics of highly sensitive and potentially classified filing systems—said that they are unaware of even a single instance in which details of a presidential call with a foreign head of state was stored in the codeword-level system.

When the president makes a phone call to a foreign leader, one or more White House officials listen and transcribe the contents of the call.

"Basically the situation room would route the call from wherever, like the outgoing number to let's say the country is Ukraine, through the Sit Room, up to the Oval or wherever the president was to take it," Tommy Vietor, who worked on the NSC under President Obama, explained on the podcast Pod Save the World. "So the Sit Room could listen to the call or type out a transcript."

From there, the director who handles the transcript and other notes creates a "packet number" that can be used to track it in the future (notes are required to be saved as part of the Presidential Records Act). The director who prepares the packet decides what parts of it should be classified, according to two former NSC members. There are four general systems where it can go, they said. Each of these must be accessed using a different computer:

A privileged, unclassified system accessible to many White House employees (this is used for general email, etc.).

A "Secret" classified system that is connected to a global network and is accessible by people with the correct security clearance in, for example, the military or State Department.

A "Top Secret" classified system accessible to people with that security clearance (more often limited to people in the NSA, CIA, and other intelligence agencies, as well as White House employees with the correct clearance).

The codeword-classified system that is not connected to the internet.

"Basically, unless the conversation is about codeword-level stuff, it wouldn't be generated and transmitted on that system," Nate Jones, the founder of Culper Partners and the former director of counterterrorism at the NSC told Motherboard. "It's cumbersome not just to get things on there, but nobody can look at it and access it without going through a very involved process. You are effectively limiting people's ability to disseminate that information."

Jones said it is impossible to access the codeword-level system outside of the White House, and that any "president wouldn't have the first idea of how to get into it."

"He has the right to manage people to do things with it within reason, but he wouldn't on his own accord have the ability to even get into the room it's located on his own. He'd need help," he said. "The same is true of the National Security Advisor and people like that, but they could direct people who have access to it to provide them information. Once it's in the system, they have maximum control over who sees it."

Jones added that because of the compartmentalization, it could be classified in such a way so that essentially no one had access to it.

There are very few computers that are capable of even accessing the codeword-classified system. The NSC officials Motherboard spoke to were unsure, for example, what network it's on and who outside of the NSC and the highest levels of the White House could even access it. Some speculated that high-level NSA officials, for example, might be able to access it on a need-to-know basis. One of the former NSC officials described using the system as a cumbersome process—this person was only able to access it on a computer in a single room, and they were unable to bring any other documents with them when they accessed it.

All four NSC officials made clear that putting anything into this system would severely limit who was able to access it. Almost everyone who uses the codeword-classified system (save for, say, the president) is only given access to specific projects on the system; there isn't blanket access to everything classified in this way.

"No, they do not have access to everything," Magsamen said.

"It's the highest classification we have, and it's stored on a separate system that very few people have access to and is highly controlled within the NSC staff," Magsamen added. "We're talking maybe a handful of people. The effort to over-classify this and move it from a system with controlled access to code-word is very troubling to me."

Chris Lu, who managed President Obama's first cabinet, told Motherboard that the "potential White House coverup" is "already the biggest scandal of the Trump administration, and that's saying a lot."

And this allegedly wasn't an isolated incident, according to the whistleblower.

"According to White House officials I spoke with, this was 'not the first time' under this Administration that a Presidential transcript was placed into this codeword-level system solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive—rather than national security sensitive—information," the whistleblower complaint adds.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"With Trump under threat, his allies are seizing on various defenses. Most aren’t great."

Spoiler

If the goal posts you use to evaluate the significance of a presidential scandal are his inevitable removal from office then, no, the still-ballooning allegations surrounding President Trump are not yet a significant scandal. If your goal posts are pretty much anywhere else, however, what Trump currently faces may be the most significant scandal of his presidency.

For Trump’s experienced defenders, the president’s solicitation of electoral aid from a foreign country, the possibility that he leveraged government resources to solicit that aid and his administration’s alleged effort to hide that solicitation poses a new and evolving challenge. Over the past week, they’ve had to follow Trump’s shifting explanations as information came out. (Remember when Trump claimed that he was just looking to combat corruption?) With the past two days’ document releases — the rough transcript of a call with Ukraine’s president and a complaint from an intelligence community whistleblower — his defenders have been operating on quickly shifting terrain.

With that in mind, we decided to evaluate those arguments. How effective have Trump’s team and his defenders been at repelling the looming allegations?

The answer, in short, is: not terribly.

Joe Biden did it, too.

While the rest of this article focuses on recently emerging defenses, it’s worth lifting up one of the central ongoing claims made by Trump and his team: Former vice president Joe Biden was the one who acted inappropriately.

The assertion here is that Biden pushed for the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor in December 2015 because the prosecutor was investigating a company who had hired Biden’s son Hunter as a board member. Biden even bragged about withholding aid to Ukraine in early 2018 at an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations.

By now, though, this has been shown to be an inaccurate depiction of what happened. The prosecutor at the time, Viktor Shokin, was broadly and publicly criticized for not acting on corruption cases — including criticism from other members of the U.S. government. It’s not clear there was an investigation at that point into the company for which Hunter Biden worked, much less one targeting Hunter Biden. There’s been no evidence to emerge tying Joe Biden’s request to a defense of Hunter.

Trump first made this argument in an interview with Fox News on May 19. Interestingly, that was apparently before his administration decided to withhold aid intended for Ukraine that was still on track to be delivered as of May 23. By July, the aid was on hold, and it was still on hold when Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke on July 25.

What’s interesting here is that Trump is accusing Biden of doing what he himself stands accused of doing: withholding aid or perhaps an in-person meeting until Zelensky signed on to an investigation of Biden. What Biden did, by all accounts, is what Trump claims he himself did: took an action to push back on corruption.

Democratic senators did it, too.

A Washington Post opinion piece by columnist Marc Thiessen pointed to a letter sent by three Democratic senators last year which, Thiessen suggested, demonstrated the sort of attempted arm-twisting of which Trump stood accused.

“n May, CNN reported that Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) wrote a letter to Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, expressing concern at the closing of four investigations they said were critical to the Mueller probe. In the letter, they implied that their support for U.S. assistance to Ukraine was at stake,” he wrote. “… So, it’s okay for Democratic senators to encourage Ukraine to investigate Trump, but it’s not okay for the president to allegedly encourage Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden?”

Thiessen’s argument was quickly lifted up as an example of Democratic hypocrisy. There are a few large differences between the two situations, though.

The first is that the threat Thiessen’s column (and subsequent defensive tweets) identifies the Democrats making is at best indirect. What’s more, there’s a big difference between three senators in the minority party threatening to curtail aid and the president of the United States doing it. Zelensky and Ukrainian officials are almost certainly aware that Trump has a lot more leverage over their fates than do three senators.

What’s more, the intent of the purported threats is quite different. It’s not investigate Trump vs. investigate Hunter Biden, as Thiessen has it. The Democrats were responding to a report in the New York Times suggesting that Ukraine was curtailing its assistance in former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe to avoid offending the Trump administration. In other words, it’s senators pushing Ukraine not to stonewall an ongoing investigation being conducted by the Justice Department.

What Trump wanted was more basic. He wanted dirt on Biden. The beneficiary of tearing down Biden — Trump — is quite different than the beneficiaries of a robust Mueller probe. The senators weren’t asking for a probe of Trump; they were asking that a probe of Trump and his team not be hindered. Trump was asking for a probe of the Bidens.

The media isn’t quoting the rough transcript properly.

The rough transcript of that July 25 call includes a number of tantalizing and suggestive passages. One that attracted a great deal of attention was Trump’s responding to Zelensky’s mention of possibly seeking military aid by saying, “I would like you to do us a favor though.” Another was his subsequent mention of Biden:

“The other thing, there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it ... It sounds horrible to me.”

Trump allies disparaged outlets that linked the two. After all, the specific favor Trump was mentioning wasn’t that probe of Biden. The favor was an investigation into Ukraine’s role in the hacking of Democratic National Committee’s server in 2016 (a role that doesn’t exist). Between the two were Zelensky’s reply (solicitous), Trump objecting to the firing of a prosecutor (presumably Shokin) and Trump praising his personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani.

It’s inaccurate to say that Trump directly asked Zelensky for the favor of investigating Biden. But it’s accurate to say that Trump asked for a favor and also asked for an investigation of Biden.

It’s a subtle distinction.

The whistleblower didn’t observe things firsthand.

Even before the release of the whistleblower’s complaint on Thursday, Trump allies were pointing to reports that the whistleblower hadn’t observed the July 25 call firsthand. After it was released, that argument became a primary point of objection.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, for example, was asked about the complaint on Thursday. He hadn’t had a chance to read the whole thing, he said, but “if I understand it right, it’s from someone who had secondhand knowledge.”

That’s largely true. The whistleblower notes that the information about the call is secondhand and in other places points to information shared with him or her or to public reporting to build out his case.

As a general rule, it’s worth considering secondhand sources with more skepticism. In this case, though, a primary focus of the whistleblower’s information — that call — has been made public. What the transcript of the call shows is that the whistleblower’s presentation in the complaint is largely accurate. It’s unfair, then, to dismiss the entire document out of hand for being indirectly sourced.

One effort to diminish the complaint tried to cast doubt on it by noting, among other things, that the whistleblower’s complaint referred to a mention of “servers,” plural, instead of the one server mentioned in the rough transcript. Such discrepancies are hardly disqualifying, of course — and may in fact reflect that the whistleblower was hearing from people listening to the call live, not reading the rough transcript.

The whistleblower and their lawyers are biased.

Allies of the president have alleged an apparent political bias on the part of the whistleblower (whose identity remains unknown). It was, in fact, one of the considerations taken into account by the inspector general for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in evaluating the complaint’s credibility.

That, after all, is the key question. If the complaint is credible, then bias doesn’t matter. If your sworn enemy robs a bank and you have proof, should the police dismiss your evidence simply because it’s your sworn enemy?

In the case of the whistleblower complaint, the inspector general specifically decided that the credibility of the complaint outweighed concerns of bias.

“Although the ICIG’s preliminary review found ‘some indicia of an arguable political bias on the part of the Complainant in favor of a rival political candidate,’ ” an Office of Legal Counsel evaluation states, “the ICIG concluded that the complaint’s allegations nonetheless appeared credible.”

Trump and his allies also targeted the whistleblower’s attorney.

As others have pointed out, Trump himself donated to Biden in 2001.

The whistleblower and their sources are equivalent to spies.

At an event on Thursday morning, Trump used remarkably aggressive language to disparage the whistleblower and the people who spoke with them.

“Basically, that person never saw the report, never saw the call, he never saw the call — heard something and decided that he or she or whoever the hell they saw — they’re almost a spy,” Trump said according to audio obtained by the Los Angeles Times’s Eli Stokols.

“I want to know who’s the person, who’s the person who gave the whistleblower the information?” Trump said. “Because that’s close to a spy. You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”

The whistleblower used the defined legal process to raise concerns about the president’s behavior. It was Trump himself who decided to release the rough transcript and the complaint after keeping them out of Congress’s hands for weeks. The whistleblower didn’t leak information, as far as is known; nor did that person share information with any foreign power. Those who spoke with the whistleblower were expressing concerns to a peer.

If those are the actions of spies, then in the opinion of the president anyone who legally shares any derogatory information about Trump is a spy deserving of the punishment once meted out to spies — death.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) is wary about Trump’s interactions with Ukraine because one of the 24 foreign policy advisers he had on his 2012 campaign joined the board of the company for which Hunter Biden was working six months after Biden left.

Donald Trump Jr. thinks this makes sense (per a tweet), and the Trump campaign’s rapid-response shop soon retweeted it.

This one we will allow you to evaluate yourself.

 

[fraurosena]

Good question. Needs answer.

 

[Dandruff]

Pesky eavesdroppers.  It may be getting bigly difficult to communicate one's personal needs. 

I wonder what Jared and Ivanka have been up to lately.

[nelliebelle1197]

45 minutes ago, Dandruff said:

Pesky eavesdroppers.  It may be getting bigly difficult to communicate one's personal needs. 

I wonder what Jared and Ivanka have been up to lately.

According to the Daily Beast, Ivanka has been busy wearing $3000 skirts and playing Serious Grownup.

[Howl]

The WTAF New York Fucking Times is trying to out the identity of the whistle blower.  

Whistle-Blower Is a C.I.A. Officer Who Was Detailed to the White House    His complaint suggested he was an analyst by training with an understanding of Ukrainian politics.

Quote

WASHINGTON — The whistle-blower who revealed that President Trump sought foreign help for his re-election and that the White House sought to cover it up is a C.I.A. officer who was detailed to work at the White House at one point, according to three people familiar with his identity.

I have to wonder if this guy volunteered to collate all the data and be The Official Whistleblower, in an "I volunteer as tribute" kind of way, if you're familiar with the Hunger Games.

However, to a certain extent, "The call is coming from inside the house!", i.e., there were people within the White House who were coming undone at the sheer illegality of what was going on and were talking about it. 

The Republican talking point is that Trump was asking the Ukrainians to investigate the corrupt Bidens, who were part of something something something Democrats trying to influence the 2016 election.  And so OF COURSE Trump would want to make sure they were doing something about corruption before giving them money, which they desperately need to fight the Russian hordes waging war on their border and INSIDE THEIR Own DAMN COUNTRY. 

This is like Uranium One, HillaryHillaryHillary, BENGHAZI ELEVENTY!  corrupt something something something.  Again, Republicans do this incredibly well.  They develop talking points, they agree on the talking points and they execute talking points, with savage intensity.  

And speaking of savage, there's a hair pulling, face scratching, ear biting, gut punching fight going on between a relatively decent Shep Smith and Uber Asshole Tucker Carlson at Fox. 

I think Shep Smith is being told to turn down the volume to preserve the sanctity of Cash Cow Tucker Carlson. 

[fraurosena]

Yeah, when the target of your shakedown still needs tour continued protection and is sitting right next to you,    anything they say is suspect.

Repeating your adequately disproven lies about Biden is indeed bad.

 

 

[fraurosena]

A very interesting thread by Seth Abramson on Trump-Ukraine meddling and the role Manafort played.

Sorry but I can’t seem to link the unrolled version on my phone. But it’s relatively short, not one of his mega-threads. 

[fraurosena]

Mark Zaid is one of the whistleblower’s attorneys. He points out another dangerous aspect of the NYT article.

 

[WiseGirl]

My Twitter is on fire right now. Chris Murphy is on top of it.

[SPHASH]

Mango Hitler made the cover of Time Magazine and not in a good way.

[fraurosena]

Oh my...

 

[fraurosena]

And here's the video:

He sounds scared.

[fraurosena]

"It's about patriotism."

 

[fraurosena]

The reward is being offered by those two whackadoodle con-men, Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl, so fat chance of anyone getting the reward even if the whistleblower is outed, but this hunt for the whistleblower puts them in great danger. I really hope that adequate measures are being taken to keep them safe.

$50K reward offered to out Trump whistleblower

Quote

Two Trump supporters are offering a $50,000 reward for information about the national security whistleblower at the center of the Ukraine phone affair.

Controversial conservatives Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl said they would pay the money for “information relating to the identity of the ‘Trump Whistleblower.’”

The New York Times on Thursday reported that the whistleblower works at the CIA and was stationed in the White House when the call was made.

The duo have said their goal is to provide full transparency on the issue in which the administration has already released the transcript of the July 25 call and the inspector general’s report on it.

“This individual is key to understanding exactly what happened and how we can move forward,” said Burkman in a statement. “We’ve put forth this reward in hopes of bringing more information to light and putting this dark chapter behind us,” he added.

The duo have a sketchy record and made headlines for past efforts to attack the Russia election claims against the president. The Washington Examiner dubbed them "right-wing smear merchants" in a recent story.

Below is what the two sent to Secrets:

Trump Whistleblower: Major reward offered for infamous whistleblower to come forward

Conservative activists Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl team up to offer $50,000 for information relating to the identity of the ‘Trump Whistleblower’

ARLINGTON, Va. - Jack Burkman, a D.C.-based lobbyist and lawyer, has partnered with conservative social media personality Jacob Wohl to announce a reward for information relating to the identity of the whistleblower at the center of the Trump-Ukraine phone scandal.

“This individual is key to understanding exactly what happened and how we can move forward,” says Burkman. “We’ve put forth this reward in hopes of bringing more information to light and putting this dark chapter behind us.”

Burkman and Wohl are offering $50,000 for the individual, or anyone with credible information corroborating the whistleblower’s identify, to come forward.

The nation has been embroiled in controversy since news broke last week that an anonymous intelligence official filed a whistleblower complaint in relation to a phone call between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Donald Trump.

Since then, tensions in the nation’s capital have escalated at a dramatic pace, ultimately leading to an impeachment inquiry from the House of Representatives.

“The situation in our nation’s capital is a national disgrace,” said Burkman. “Political grandstanding, partisan politics and anonymous sources have contributed to a level of toxicity we haven’t seen in decades. It’s imperative that the truth is brought to light so we can move past this disappointing time in our history.”

 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

Just my opinion, but outing a whistleblower should be illegal. And offering a reward for outing a whistleblower should be instigation to commit a crime and a crime by itself.

[fraurosena]

Is anyone surprised the Russians are involved? No? No one? Yeah, me either.

 

[fraurosena]

As expected, Trump is on the attack. Funnily enough (not really) he doesn't address the accusations themselves. 

But don't worry, he is also focussed on the really important things!

*whispers* 

It's an apostrophe.

Edited September 27, 2019 by fraurosena

[fraurosena]

Well, duh! ?

Kremlin says it hopes U.S. would not release Trump-Putin calls, like it did with Ukraine

Quote

Russia has voiced hope that the U.S. administration wouldn't publish private conversations between the two nations' presidents, like it did with Ukraine.

The rough transcript of Trump's call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy released by the White House Wednesday shows that Trump urged Ukraine to "look into" his Democratic political rival Joe Biden. The July 25 call is now the focus of a U.S. impeachment probe.

Asked Friday if Moscow is worried that the White House could similarly publish transcripts of Trump's calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that "we would like to hope that it wouldn't come to that in our relations, which are already troubled by a lot of problems."

He noted that the publication of the Trump-Zelenskiy call was "quite unusual."

 

Edited September 27, 2019 by fraurosena
stupid merged posts

[Howl]

I can't even imagine the chaos, flop sweat, desperation, banshee shrieking hysteria, sleep-deprived zombie-walking, post apocalyptic dystopian hellscape vibe going on in the White House right now.

What's that sound?  Is it the hum of overworked shredders or the cyber equivalent?  I promise you there are some dark nights of the soul going on right now among at least some people there, who have already broken or are being asked to break the law. 

The Republicans have rolled out their talking points yesterday, will maintain those talking points, and, being lying liars who lie, hammer those talking points into oblivion. 

CNN has a post today about Crowdstrike, the cyber security company that's been dragged into the conspiracy crazy, that I found clarifying. 

What is CrowdStrike and why is it part of the Trump whistleblower complaint?

Edited September 27, 2019 by Howl

[fraurosena]

As Pompeo too is heavily implicated in the Ukraine scandal, statements like these are meaningless. 

[fraurosena]

 

[fraurosena]

Giuliani is screwed.

[fraurosena]

This is all fine and dandy, but those Senators need to find their balls and admit they'd also vote to remove Trump from office publicly.