Diversionary Shuffle

Unhinged:  Citing former CIA Director John Brennan’s “lying and frenzied” commentary, Trumpspeak for his unending and all too spot on criticism, Trump sent Sarah Huckabee Sanders to her podium to announce that he was revoking Brennan’s security clearance yesterday. The statement that Sanders read said that he was also evaluating action on the security clearances of other officials, all of whom have been critics or targets of him and his actions.  Trump’s Nixonian enemies list includes former Director of National Intelligence Clapper, former FBI Director Comey, former NSA and CIA Director Hayden, former acting Attorney General Yates, former NSA Rice, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe,  former FBI attorney Lisa Page, recently fired FBI Agent Peter Strzok and current senior Justice Department employee Bruce Ohr. Though Brennan has been an active and scathing Trump critic, many of the others on the list have been more restrained, however, all share a history of involvement in the Russia investigation.  While Trump would prefer that we all think that the people on his enemies list are unhinged the truth is that their sanity is intact, it’s his that is questionable, or questionable to the extent that an American leader acting vengefully against his critics, possibly as much in reaction to his concerns about more of those Omarosa tapes and the outcome of the first Manafort trial, now in the hands of a jury, is abnormal.  To that end Trump, who has a habit of impetuously confessing his true motives, tipped his hand to the Wall Street Journal, telling their reporters that he cut off Brennan’s clearance because  of his linkage to the Russia investigation, adding that the others were on his “to do” list because of their involvement in the “rigged witch hunt, which he again called a “sham that these people led” adding “So I think it’s something that had to be done.”  As to Ohr, the only person on Trump’s enemies list who is still a government employee, and for whom the loss of clearance could be a career ender, Trump and a number of his Republican cronies fault him for being friends with Christopher Steele, the highly reputable, former M16 agent responsible for the infamous Russia dossier.  Moreover, it doesn’t help that Ohr’s wife has done contract work for Fusion GPS, the political intelligence firm that commissioned the dossier, first for a Republican client, and then funded by Democrats.  A few things stand out about Trump’s action.  First, his statement was dated July 26, an indication that he’s been planning the announcement for a while, keeping it in his pocket until he needed a diversion from another news story, something like Omarosa or Manafort, maybe.  Second, his action is unprecedented, it hasn’t been done before, notably Michael Flynn retained his clearance after he was pushed out by Obama and even while he was on the road with Trump calling for Hillary to be “locked up.”  Third, former officials retain their clearance to benefit the government, not the other way around.  Current intelligence leaders frequently need to access their expertise and institutional memory in order to understand and implement policy, policy that helps maintain national security.  To that end,  maintaining access to Brennan’s expertise is particularly valuable, he has considerable amount of knowledge with regard to international terrorism and had a leading role in the takedown of Osama Bin Laden.  He is also an expert on Russia, a negative for Trump, but valuable to current intelligence leaders.  Last night it was reported that Dan Coats, the current Director of National Security was not given any advance notice regarding Trump’s action, and though she’s remained silent so far, it’s highly likely that CIA Director Haspel was also out of the loop.  The Lawfare Blog reports that ordinary practice would require the two of them to be responsible for taking the lead on the withdrawal of Brennan or any other CIA related person’s security clearance so although Trump has the ultimate executive power, once again, his effort to take an end run around procedure might bite him in the butt, especially to the extent that he ever takes action against Ohr, who has additional rights given that he is an active employee.  It won’t help that Trump admitted to the Wall Street Journal that the people on his enemies list are there for their association with the “witch hunt” rather for any actual intelligence infractions. A little more obstruction? Reaction across the beltway had been as expected.  Republican leaders have so far have remained largely silent, no comment yet from Speaker Ryan who had earlier said that Trump was just trolling when he threatened to withdraw a few of these security clearances and no comment from Majority Leader McConnell, but a thumbs up from Senator Rand Paul.  And Senator Lindsay Graham just continues to call for another special counsel to investigate the FBI and the Hillary emails.  As expected Democrats are fuming with Senator Blumenthal calling Trump’s action a violation of the Constitution since it’s an attempt to squash free speech.  He is also concerned that Trump’s action is  predictive of what he’ll do next to shut down the whole Mueller investigation.  As to that investigation, Trump’s crazy or crazy as a fox legal spokesperson, Rudy Giuliani is again speaking out of both sides of his mouth.  On the one hand, while saying that “facts are in the eye of the beholder” he insists that Trump might sit down with Mueller as long as that sit down takes place before September 1 and that no questions relevant to obstruction or collusion are asked.  At the same time, yesterday he said that Trump’s legal team plans to “quash” any subpoena from Mueller and would fight it to the Supreme Court.  He also threatened that they would “unload: on Mueller “like a ton of bricks” if he doesn’t wrap up the investigation by September 1.  Get ready for those bricks, there is no way that the investigation will be over by then.

Still Separated:  Though the government remains vague about the actual number, the ACLU reports that somewhere around 600 children remain separated from their parents.  Even worse, there are no records about more than twenty of those children so it’s quite likely that they will never be returned to their families.  Like him or not, the loquacious, fame seeking Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti, who recently announced that he is seriously entertaining a run for the Democratic presidential nomination, has actually taken things into his own hands.  Working with an immigration attorney, he managed to free one nine year old Guatemalan boy from the bureaucratic clutches of the government and then accompanied him back to South America for reunification with his mother. He plans to continue to do the same for others, and though his actions provide him with lots of good press, they help the families bigly and show case the government’s unwillingness to clean up their mess so let’s cut him some slack despite his grandstanding.