When I’m wrong, I say I’m wrong. I thought that Little Donnie Dipshit was stripping security clearances in a tantrum out of pure spite. But Rachel Maddow exposed the true strategy, and whoever conceived it could not be more devious. The Republican Reich is targeting witnesses to make it more difficult for them to testify against Trump.
When President Donald Trump broke with precedent and unilaterally revoked the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan, many observers criticized the move as petty and an assault on the freedom of speech of Trump’s critics. But MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow argued Thursday night that something much more sinister may be going on.
She noted that Brennan himself has said that he hasn’t used his security clearance since leaving government except to review his old notes when needing to testify before Congress or in other circumstances.
And Brennan, she noted, is one of the key figures involved in briefing then-President-elect Trump on the Russia investigation during the 2016-2017 transition. Since any potential obstruction of justice charges Trump may eventually face could relate to the information he received then, Brennan may eventually be called to testify about these events. This also applies to many of the other people the White House has said it is reviewing for the potential revocation of security clearances.
And that puts Trump’s new targeting of Brennan and the others in a much darker light.
"He said explicitly that he did it because these people had a role back in the day leading the Russia investigation — what he called the ‘rigged witch hunt,’" Maddow said. "He’s not after his critics — he’s after the witnesses!"… [emphasis added]
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Photo Credit: The Daily Beast
Rachel describes it in exquisite detail. Here’s the video (21 min.)
John Brennan had the perfect retort in an op-ed: "Mr. Trump’s claims of no collusion are, in a word, hogwash."
RESIST!!
VOTE BLUE!!
81 DAYS!!
9 Responses to “Targeting Witnesses!”
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No reason it couldn’t be both.
Hmmmm… You’re right.
Lordy…..this is at a new level now. imho. Sounds like a ‘mob’ job. Good grief!!! Let justice prevail.
Proof that tRump is not only totally incompetent, but downright cuckoo as a Swiss clock factory. On top of all that, he’s a few bison shy of a stampede.
I’m not totally convinced Orange Judas thought of that all by himself, but I’m sure it is correct, and I was even wronger than you. If I were Brennan, I would be locking myself up in my study reproducing as many of those notes pertaining to OJ as I could, starting yesterday. The longer the wait, the less fresh they are in one’s mind. And the others – i’d be doing whatever I could to get copies before the clearance is gone. If they aren’t already gone. I was away from news all day.
Of course there was collusion (perhaps there even is some now) and taking security clearances away from people crucial to the investigation in that collusion and the related obstruction of justice to prevent them from testifing properly, is yet another obvious obstruction of justice. Much will depend on how much of that classified material is already part of the case Mueller is construing and on how much revoking a clearance may prevent people of speaking behind closed doors about what they’ve read or heard previously.
The question is also whether Drumpf can just scrap any clearance on his own accord and without good reason. He couldn’t get clearance for his son-in-law Kushner for 18 months or so, and not without leaning heavily on the office which does the screening. It therefore seems unlikely to me, but what do I know, that Drumpf has the power to just throw anyone off that list single-handedly. What are the checks and balances in such a unique situation? Drumpf being able to take away the clearances of a group of of special investigators not under his control, seems even more ludicrous. I really like to hear what good lawyers (not Guliani or any other of Drumpf’s cronies) have to say about this.
We should all be very afraid!
Thanks and Amen to all.
I read John Brennan’s op-ed earlier and he has come back swinging hard. This from AlterNet:
There is no doubt in my mind that Diaper Don is trying to obstruct justice by targeting witnesses.