Trump isn’t trying to silence his critics. He’s stripping away security clearances from those who conspired against him

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The stripping of John Brennan of his security clearance has predictably caused a great deal of faux outrage on the part of the left. None of it makes sense. The ruckus has caused some democrats to prove themselves even more stupid than previously thought. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) asserted that there is a Constitutional right to security clearance.

Wednesday on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said President Donald Trump revoking former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance is an “illegal” violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution of United States of America.

Blumenthal said, “This is not only an abuse of power it is illegal.”

He continued, “To use this kind of punishment is a violation of the First Amendment. It is the reason we have the First Amendment. This kind of criticism is core protected speech. When the Founders of our great nation decided on the First Amendment, it was because the king of England would retaliate against critics by punishing them. So it is a clear violation in my view of the First Amendment.”

He added, “He has the authority to do a lot of things, but not in a way that violates the law.”

Blumenthal might have learned this during his imaginary tour in Vietnam .

It’s simply not true. A Pentagon analyst was stripped of his security clearance for coming upon the giant sums of money being paid to Stefan Halper, the CIA asset who was being used as an FBI informant.

A Trump-supporting Pentagon analyst was stripped of his security clearance by Obama-appointed officials after he complained of questionable government contracts to Stefan Halper, the FBI informant who spied on the Trump presidential campaign.

Adam Lovinger, a 12-year strategist in the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, complained to his bosses about Halper contracts in the fall of 2016, his attorney, Sean M. Bigley, told The Washington Times.

On May 1, 2017, his superiors yanked his security clearance and relegated him to clerical chores.

Bigley pointed out something really important

In an internal October 2016 email to higher-ups, Mr. Lovinger wrote of “the moral hazard associated with the Washington Headquarters Services contracting with Stefan Halper,” the complaint said. It said Mr. Baker hired Mr. Halper to “conduct foreign relations,” a job that should be confined to government officials.

“It was a topic of conversation within the office,” Mr. Bigley told The Times. “What is Halper doing, and why is he being paid astronomically more than others similarly situated?”

No one worried about his rights. He was definitely punished for a reason. Lovinger had found a fact democrats wanted buried and so they buried Lovinger.  Yet somehow Lovinger seems not to have had a Constitutional right to a security clearance. Former FBI counsel James Baker, who hired Halper, was found to be in contact with reporter David Corn in the fall of 2016. Halper was used to set up George Papadopoulos into a situation which the FBI was to bamboozle poor George into a perjury trap.

Brennan himself reacted by penning an editorial in the NY Times. In it, her presented all of the proof he had of Trump’s collusion with Russia.

The already challenging work of the American intelligence and law enforcement communities was made more difficult in late July 2016, however, when Mr. Trump, then a presidential candidate, publicly called upon Russia to find the missing emails of Mrs. Clinton. By issuing such a statement, Mr. Trump was not only encouraging a foreign nation to collect intelligence against a United States citizen, but also openly authorizing his followers to work with our primary global adversary against his political opponent.

It was obvious to anyone with half a brain that it was sarcasm. Scott Adams points out that Brennan was apparently unable to discern sarcasm when he heard it.

“So Brennan may have started one of the most important political witch hunts in history based on not recognizing a joke — and I’m not even making that up,” he said. “I feel fairly confident in saying that what I just said is literally true: that the head of the CIA has almost destroyed the United States because he didn’t understand that an obvious joke was a joke.”

Or perhaps he was desperate to find something to pin on Trump as he had nothing else.

Brennan then doubled down

Such a public clarion call certainly makes one wonder what Mr. Trump privately encouraged his advisers to do — and what they actually did — to win the election. While I had deep insight into Russian activities during the 2016 election, I now am aware — thanks to the reporting of an open and free press — of many more of the highly suspicious dalliances of some American citizens with people affiliated with the Russian intelligence services.

Mr. Trump’s claims of no collusion are, in a word, hogwash.

Innuendo. What he read in the press? That’s it? Brennan has nothing else.

Nothing.

And that means there is nothing.

It gets worse. Brennan has a long history of blatant dishonesty:

1) In 2011, Brennan, then the country’s chief counterterrorism adviser, had sworn to Congress that scores of drones strikes abroad had not killed a single noncombatant — at a time when both the president and the CIA were both receiving numerous reports of civilian collateral death.

2) In 2014, John Brennan, now as CIA director, lied emphatically that the CIA had not illegally accessed the computers of U.S. Senate staffers who were then exploring a CIA role in torturing detainees. Or as he told Andrea Mitchell: “As far as the allegations of the CIA hacking into Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth. . . . We wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s just beyond the, you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we do.” Brennan’s chronic deceptions drew the ire of a number of liberal senators, some of whom echoed the Washington Post’s call for his immediate resignation. After months of prevarications, but only upon release of the CIA inspector general’s report, Brennan apologized to the senators he had deceived.

3) Brennan, in May 2017, as an ex-CIA director, again almost certainly did not tell the truth to Congress when he testified in answer to Representative Trey Gowdy’s questions that he neither knew who had commissioned the Steele dossier nor had the CIA relied on its contents for any action. Yet both the retired National Security Agency director, Michael Rogers, and the former director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, have conceded that the Steele dossier — along with the knowledge that it was a Clinton-campaign-funded product — most certainly did help shape the Obama’s intelligence communality interagency assessments and actions, often under the urging of Brennan himself. There are also numerous reports that, despite his denials about knowledge of the dossier, Brennan served as a stealthy conduit to ensure that it was disseminated widely, at least in the sense of meeting in August 2016 with Senator Harry Reid to brief the senator about its unverified contents in hopes that he would pressure the FBI to further its investigations, which Reid did in a call two days later to James Comey.

Brennan himself makes clear Russia was making feeble efforts to interfere in the US election.

When I warned Mr. Bortnikov that Russian interference in our election was intolerable and would roil United States-Russia relations for many years, he denied Russian involvement in any election, in America or elsewhere, with a feigned sincerity that I had heard many times before.

And yet Brennan did nothing when Russian actions did not cease. He let it go on unchallenged. It wasn’t until after Hillary lost that obama even got woke. Then again, hillary wasn’t supposed to lose.

Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) kicked Brennan’s ass for grandstanding, explaining exactly why Brennan lost his security clearance:

Director Brennan’s recent statements purport to know, as fact, that the Trump campaign colluded with a foreign power,” Burr said Thursday, questioning why, if Brennan’s assertion is based on actual intelligence, it was not included in the unclassified intelligence assessment released in early 2017.

“If his statement is based on intelligence he has seen since leaving office, it constitutes an intelligence breach. If he has some other personal knowledge of or evidence of collusion, it should be disclosed to the Special Counsel, not The New York Times,” Burr said. Burr added that Trump has the “full authority” to revoke security clearance if the statements were “purely political and based on conjecture.”

Brennan’s editorial was purely political and based entirely on conjecture.

We’re not done yet.

Stefan Halper, who helped entrap George Papadopoulos and tried to ensnare Carter Page, was a CIA asset acting as an FBI informant. How that came to be is something John Brennan needs to explain. Adam Lovinger was demoted for discovering it. The contact between Page and Halper first occurred in July of 2016 and went forward. It wasn’t until July 31 that Peter Strzok launched his infamous counter-intelligence operation on Trump. That means Brennan was spying on the Trump campaign and using an FBI informant before an operation was in place.

Hillary Clinton, the DNC and Barack Obama began pouring millions into Perkins Coie (which was then laundered into Fusion GPS) about two minutes after Trump’s foreign advisory team was named.

Then the Mysterious Mr. Mifsud appears.

Mifsud is the missing link in all this.  Mifsud contacted Papadopoulos on April 26, 2016 and fed George information about Hillary.

A court document filed by the special counsel says Mifsud told Papadopoulos in April 2016 that Russia had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.”

And then he vanished. I will bet money that John Brennan is involved in all of this. There is no question now that Brennan sent Halper to set up Page and Papadopoulos as a means of crippling Trump. Mifsud is the unknown card.

There was a conspiracy against Donald Trump. I’ve said it over and over and over. If there was anything to the Russian collusion nonsense Schiff, obama or Brennan would have leaked it long ago. Brennan just shot his load, and both barrels were empty.

Let’s be clear. It is suggested that Trump is trying to silence his critics. That is false.

What Trump is doing is stripping security clearances from those who conspired against him. Brennan is the first domino. There will be more.

Now I am looking forward to this Trump-Brennan moment inspired by “A Few Good Men”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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@Greg: “Documented”? You mean, like written down? Like YOU just did? That doesn’t make them true. Neither does Mueller generating an indictment, either. Neither does CNN reporting it. In fact, that undercuts any possibility of credibility.

Sort of like one of your preeminent liberal idiots making claims she, at least, admits there is no proof of but, well, you know, cultivating sedition and stuff.

I’m not sure you liberals can ever get any credibility back. Lying is such a way of life.

Tuesday, January 29, 2019 — Testimony by intelligence chiefs on global threats highlights differences with president

That’s a bit of an understatement. Reality is at odds with the President. How are you missing this?

@Greg: You be sure to let me know when the Washington Post stops being a propaganda arm of the Democrat party and starts doing some honest reporting.

From The Hill, May 2, 2019 — Cummings: White House blocked ex-official from talking about Kushner, Ivanka clearances

House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) says the White House prevented a former official from answering questions about the security clearances of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump during a closed-door interview this week.

“They wouldn’t touch it,” Cummings told reporters on Thursday. “And that’s one of the reasons we were so concerned about having the White House counsel there. Whenever there was any mention of Ivanka or any mention of Mr. Kushner, he shut him down.”

The House Oversight and Reform Committee interviewed former White House personnel security director Carl Kline behind closed doors on Wednesday as part of the panel’s sweeping investigation into the Trump administration’s security clearance process.

Cummings’s panel subpoenaed Kline to testify after a whistleblower, Tricia Newbold, claimed Kline overruled her to issue clearances to White House officials despite career officials flagging disqualifying issues in the applicants’ backgrounds.

In total, Newbold told the committee that the Trump administration overruled career officials to issue clearances to 25 officials, including Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Trump, the president’s eldest daughter. *

Newbold also said Kline retaliated against her for raising national security concerns about the clearance process, which Cummings said Kline refuted during his closed-door testimony.

Reuters reported that Kline told the committee during his interview that he was never instructed to alter a security clearance determination by officials at the White House.

Cummings did not address that report Thursday but said Kline limited his testimony based on the advice of the White House, which demanded that it send a representative to the interview.

“He was very reluctant to go into two subjects that we were most concerned about. One of them was the retaliation against Ms. Newbold. He claims he didn’t do anything. We have evidence to the contrary,” Cummings said.

“The other thing, of course, that we wanted to know was about Kushner and Ivanka Trump and we wanted to know how these 25 people who were presented security clearances after Ms. Newbold said that they shouldn’t have,” Cummings continued. “The White House basically when it came to any kind of information about specific people, the White House counsel shut him down, said, you can’t answer that.”

Kline was scheduled to appear before the committee on April 23 but didn’t show up after the White House directed him to not appear because Cummings wouldn’t permit a White House lawyer to attend.

Cummings initially signaled he wanted to hold Kline in contempt for evading the interview but backed off over the weekend, scheduling Kline for the interview on Wednesday but insisting that the interview would not be limited in scope.

The Democratic chairman said Thursday that his next step will be to review “what he said and what he didn’t say.”

“We’re going to go back to the drawing board, because we can’t give up,” Cummings said.

He also signaled displeasure with the White House for refusing a request for a tranche of documents as part of the security clearance investigation.

White House counsel Pat Cipollone wrote in a letter to Cummings Wednesday that the committee’s request falls outside the realm of “legitimate Congressional requests.”

“Its self-described effort to ‘investigat[e]’ the background files of ‘specific individuals’ is improper, has no valid legislative purpose, and clearly is a mere pretext to harass and intimidate dedicated public servants,” Cipollone wrote.

Kline’s attorney Robert Driscoll declined to comment. The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.

* So, 25 people were given security clearance by order of the White House who were determined unqualified to hold them by those responsible for assessing their potential security risk.

This is another matter that Congress is not being allowed to investigate. If it doesn’t involve a legitimate national security question, I don’t know what would.

@Greg: Cummings is worried that the White House Counsel is there? Gee last time someone was questioned with out counsel no one thought they lied, but were bankrupted into a confession.
The President has the power to give or take away security, deal with it.
The President is at the top of the security clearance pyramid. That means he makes the policy, and he determines who should get access to America’s secrets – and who shouldn’t.

@kitt: Greg still believes Hillary Bleachbit 33,000 State Department emails because they were about yoga, so….

@kitt, #55:

Cummings is worried that 25 people were given security clearances who failed to pass the background checks required to hold them, and that the White House Counsel is blocking any investigation into that astonishing aberration at the order of the same person who made it happen in the first place.

The President is at the top of the security clearance pyramid. That means he makes the policy, and he determines who should get access to America’s secrets – and who shouldn’t.

Donald Trump himself would never in a million years have passed the most routine background check for a security clearance. By electing him, the entire system was perverted. Not only is he himself unqualified, nor does he only pass clearances out to the unqualified; he also misuses the power of office you speak of to revoke the clearances of qualified people as a weapon of retaliation against his political enemies. There’s a very good reason why people having experience, expertise, and the perspective that comes with inside knowledge of the affairs of state retain their security clearances despite changes of administration. They’re the ones who actually know what’s going on and who can put current developments and threats into a meaningful perspective. Which is more than can be said for the cronies and family members of a shady real estate developer.

@Greg: Cummings is worried that his degenerate party has no hope of defeating Trump in 2020 and is doing all he can to try and make Democrats appear less incompetent than they indeed are. Notice Cummings never worried about Hillary placing ALL her State Department emails, including classified material, available to China, Russia, N. Korea and Iran.

Neither did you.

@kitt:

The President is at the top of the security clearance pyramid. That means he makes the policy, and he determines who should get access to America’s secrets – and who shouldn’t.

It sounds as if you feel that there should be no check on that power. Is that the case?

Of course, Greggie Goebbels didn’t bother to include the fact that the boss of the “whistleblower” denies her claims. (She is also claiming he was biased against her for her disability. When one thing doesn’t work, claim another)

The former official who oversaw security clearances for the first two years of the Trump administration acknowledged to lawmakers behind closed doors that he had issued clearances over the objections of lower-level staffers in his office — but said he had never done so at the direction of anyone else in the White House.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/02/carl-kline-white-house-security-clearance-1297925

That’s our Greggie, our own resident Baghdad Bob, who only tells one side of the story to trash Trump.

@retire05: We have seen numerous examples of Obama administration hold-overs or even never-Trumper Republicans that have put their personal bias far in front of their duty to the citizens of the United States. Taking the word of disgruntled employees is impossible when we see an FBI Director tell such blatant lies simply because his candidate did not win.

When everything they say is a lie, it is not possible to trust anything they say. Every person like this should be removed from government. They are a liability.

@Michael:

It sounds as if you feel that there should be no check on that power. Is that the case?

We voted him to be top dog, head honcho. Not just have the power Mikey feels he should have or not have.

@retire05, #60:

Of course, Greggie Goebbels didn’t bother to include the fact that the boss of the “whistleblower” denies her claims.

So why did Trump order Newbold’s boss—Carl Kline—to ignore the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena to appear for an interview, and then to refuse to answer their questions at a later meeting? He could have explained all of this under oath. Why did the White House refuse to provide the the oversight committee with requested documents that were recorded in connection with the clearances?

White House withholds docs on clearances as ex-security chief testifies

Kline was brought into the Trump White House, overruled security clearance assessments that a Director of the White House Personnel Office would not normally overrule, and then left. Now they don’t want to answer any questions about it. As usual, they’re responding by attacking the reputation of the person who did do her job.

@kitt:

We voted him to be top dog, head honcho. Not just have the power Mikey feels he should have or not have.

Then do you believe Senate approval of his appointments to be an unnecessary infringement on his power?

@Michael: No I dont the senate is also elected, I would like to see repeal of the 17th amendment.

@Greg:

Why did the White House refuse to provide the the committee with requested documents that were recorded in connection with the clearances?

From the Politico article, Greggie, had you bothered to read it in its entirety:

“At the direction of the White House Counsel’s Office, Kline refused to answer any questions relating to individual cases, including those of Kushner and Ivanka Trump. In a letter to Oversight Committee chairman Elijah Cummings, White House counsel Pat Cipollone said the requests demonstrate “a total disregard for individual privacy.”

The Democrats requested the ENTIRE files on those who were given security clearances. Now, I realize you’re an idiot, but would you want the Dems to have access to your personal cell phone number, your bank account and charge account numbers, the names of your best friends or members of a club you belong to? I don’t think so. I realize that you don’t think Republicans should have 4th Amendment rights but they do.

You’re a real dumass, Greggie. Maybe that is why you are so easily brainwashed. What chapter of the Comintern do you belong to?

@kitt:

I would like to see repeal of the 17th amendment.

Why on Earth would you want that?

@Michael: Because it sucks.

@kitt:

Because it sucks.

Do you have any real reasons?

@retire05, #66:

The Democrats requested the ENTIRE files on those who were given security clearances. Now, I realize you’re an idiot, but would you want the Dems to have access to your personal cell phone number, your bank account and charge account numbers, the names of your best friends or members of a club you belong to?

Are they unaware of something called redaction? For some reason I was under the impression that they were aware of this procedure. And how, exactly, does concern for such matters keep Carl Kline from answering questions relating to national security?

You’re always telling me how stupid I am, or how brainwashed I am. I certainly don’t see much indication of independent thought inside the Trump cult. Much of what’s going on would have horrified an earlier era of republicans and traditional conservatives. Trump’s followers have been led so far down the garden path that they can’t even see there from where they’re now standing.

@Michael: Each state only gets 2 Senators the amendment let in big outside money, influences and lobbies. If appointed by the State legislature that eliminates most of that. They would have the states interests closer to the votes they cast. It was the way originally designed.
Thats why I think the 17th sucks.

@Greg:

Are they unaware of something called redaction?

Wow!!! Redactions? Isn’t that what Jerry Nadler has his oversized Hanes in a wad over?

And how, exactly, does concern for such matters keep Carl Kline from answering questions relating to national security?

What questions? His testimony was given in closed session. Did someone leak the questions on “national security?”

You’re always telling me how stupid I am, or how brainwashed I am.

I have been told I am honest to a fault.

@Greg:

Are they unaware of something called redaction?

Have you missed the Democrat reaction to redaction? They throw themselves on the floor, kick their feet, hold their breath and declare whoever will not violate the law to be in contempt. I fully understand not cooperating with these immature idiots; no matter what you do, it does not satisfy them because the FACTS do not supply the crimes they want to see.

@kitt:

If appointed by the State legislature that eliminates most of that.

I don’t see how that’s true at all. If anything, it would make lobbyists more powerful because they could focus on cajoling and bribing a much smaller group of people than before.

@retire05:

I have been told I am honest to a fault.

Well, you’re not honest to the rest of us, so I guess it’s nice that you’re using that quality somewhere.

@Michael:

Well, you’re not honest to the rest of us,

And you were given the authority to speak for everyone else who posts here when?

@Greg: I think we’ve had enough “probes” going over the same crap, finding nothing, then leading to another “probe”. What I want is illegal immigration stopped, the border secured and sanctuary cities eliminated. I want Democrats in Congress to do some work instead of trying to keep the hatred and divisiveness at the highest temperature. I want them to accept the 2016 election and stop being spoiled babies about EVERYTHING.

Of course, the longer these morons keep it up, the worse they will lose in 2020, so there is an upside.

@Michael: Bribing 2 people is harder than an entire States assembly? Its a good thing you are not a math teacher.

@kitt:

Bribing 2 people is harder than an entire States assembly?

Bribing a state legislature is cheaper and easier than convincing all the voters in a state.

Where does the bribing of “two people” come into this? The Seventeenth Amendment is about choosing the senators, which is the job of the people, but was previously the job of the legisatures.

@Deplorable Me, #78:

I think we’ve had enough “probes” going over the same crap, finding nothing, then leading to another “probe”.

There’s plenty that has already been found and documented by the Mueller investigation. That’s apparent even from the redacted version. There’s probably enough in the second part of the report and the underlying evidence to establish high crimes and misdemeanors, in the form of obstruction of justice. If the GOP hadn’t lost their minds and didn’t control the Senate, Trump would likely be out of office before the end of the year.

While the first part of the report concludes there is insufficient evidence to prove the Trump administration colluded with Russia, there’s enough establish that they conducted themselves in a manner that hardly meets the average American’s standards and behavioral expectations for our highest office. The first part also clearly establishes that our election process and national unity were deliberately and systematically attacked by Putin’s operatives, using illegal means. Consider the fact that the beneficiary of this shows no signs whatsoever of doing anything to counter future efforts, which almost certainly will be brought to bear in the 2020 elections.

Nor are the things covered by the Mueller report the only legitimate concerns about Donald Trump. There are many indicators suggesting that he might have serious conflicts of interest, and/or be seriously compromised as a result of his financial dealings. ALL of which he is doing everything in his power to prevent from being investigated, legal or not. What should we expect? Everything he does is HUGE.

Doing something about this has largely fallen to the Democrats because elected Republicans have largely abdicated their responsibilities, if not actually becoming complicit.

If the aliens are out there, I call on them to beam Donald up and do an anal probe. Such a request is certainly no worse than asking the Russians to hand over Hillary’s emails. Every little contribution will be appreciated.

@Michael: 2 Senators are easy to influence with donations and PAC cash for the war chests. The majority of legislators of 50 states not so easy.
I would still vote for the House representative of my district.
This concept may be above your head.

@Greg:

There’s plenty that has already been found and documented by the Mueller investigation.

Yeah, he identified and documented no collusion and no obstruction. The report also revealed that elections aren’t the only thing whiny, crybaby, sore loser liberals don’t accept the results of; if their rigged “investigations” don’t provide them with their political objectives, they don’t accept those results, either.

@kitt:

2 Senators are easy to influence with donations and PAC cash for the war chests. The majority of legislators of 50 states not so easy.

When you’re talking about the two senators for any particular state, the only legislature that was involved was the legislature of that one particular state. California’s state senate and assembly chose California’s senators — not the legislatures of all fifty states.

@Michael: Special interest wanted to have influence in the senate, at this point they only have to work on 50 senators with donations. It takes more than 2 senators to pass a bill to the presidents desk. So the States best interests dont matter, just how much the special interest is going to give them in their reelection coffer.
Like I said this may be above your head.
http://www.silentbull.com/17th-amendment-bad-repeal-it/