UPDATE BELOW
"From Seth Abramson Twitter Feed:
(THREAD) Yates sets emergency WH meeting; reveals Flynn is compromised; urges action; Trump talks to staff; they ask Yates JUST 4 QUESTIONS:
QUESTION #1: "Why do you care?" That's right. Trump wanted McGahn to find out why DOJ would CARE that the NSA had been compromised by Putin.
QUESTION #2: "Will you prosecute?" Trump made clear via McGahn he had no intention of punishing Flynn for lying to the FBI. But did the DOJ?
QUESTION #3: "Aren't we justified in doing nothing?" Via McGahn, Trump implied FBI investigation of Flynn was a reason NOT to fire him. Huh?
QUESTION #4: "What's your proof?" Despite a detailed proffer by the Attorney General, Trump was MOST interested in seeing what the DOJ had.
None of these reactions are what you'd expect from a president who's just learned his NatSec chief has been comprised by a geopolitical foe.
And yet, what's even stranger than the preceding five tweets in this thread are the four ACTIONS the Trump White House thereafter took.
ACTION #1: Within 72 hours of Sally Yates blowing the whistle on Flynn being compromised—susceptible to kompromat—Trump summarily FIRED HER.
ACTION #2: Trump brought Flynn into MANY classified settings: a call with Putin; a meeting with Prime Minister Abe; North Korea discussions.
ACTION #3: Trump did NOTHING to correct (nor showed any signs of INTENDING to correct) misstatements Flynn AND Pence had made to the nation.
ACTION #4: Trump fired Flynn ONLY when The Washington Post caught him in a cover-up, THEN said that Flynn (yes, FLYNN!) had been MISTREATED."
From "The Week:""...the Trump White House was given a full accounting of Flynn's lies and the damage they could have caused. We also know that McGahn's office was concerned enough about Yates' briefing that he followed up with her immediately to figure out how much trouble Flynn was in and what consequences any action against Flynn might have.
According to White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, Trump himself was made aware of all this immediately after Yates first briefed McGahn.
With this information in his possession, Trump did nothing.
Flynn stayed at his job for nearly three more weeks and was involved in top-level national security policy decisions, even though Trump was fully aware that he was potentially compromised and had not been truthful with senior administration officials."
UPDATE:
P.M. Carpenter:
"...the "biggest story" yesterday was not that of "surveillance," nor that of "fake news," nor the "total hoax" of collusion nor Yates's "old news" testimony. The real story is that of a dunderheaded president determined, at best, to protect a duplicitous snake; at worst, to knowingly harbor an anti-American mole.
As for Trump's tweeted claim that Clapper merely "reiterated what everybody … already knows — there is 'no evidence' of collusion w/ Russia and Trump," that too was a deliberate fallacy. In fact, Clapper made clear that his earlier remark of "no evidence" was made in his unawarenness of the FBI's "counterintelligence investigation" of Flynn.
What we're left with is a president who's either dangerously ignorant or intentionally untruthful; a villainous, one-man propaganda machine; a highest-office threat to America's national security — in short, a borderline-treasonous loser himself. And he's just getting started.
Pray that our borderline-treasonous Congress has a change of mind, and itself gets started in removing the threat."
9 comments:
Firing Yates is odd for all sorts of reasons. Surely they didn't think firing her would make her disappear; in fact, she'd more likely to testify in the future since she no longer had a job to fear losing. Perhaps it was a deterrent to other whistle-blowers? If so, it doesn't seem to be working.
I can just picture the trolls' reaction to this post. "Uhh.....Fake news! Trump won, U libturds R sore loosers! What about Obama not wearing a flag pin?" Their only option is to change the subject and try to get people talking about something else. If you look at Trump's tweets lately, he himself is doing that.
Infidel753, One of the senators (I think it was Sheldon Whitehouse) reminded the committee that many years ago an 18-minute gap in an audio tape helped take down a presidency. This time it's an 18-DAY gap between the Trumpistas knowing Flynn was a foreign agent and firing him. Trump fired Yates before he fired Flynn.
Flynn broke the law; Yates was trying to uphold it. Trump fired Yates first.
That needs to be kept in front of the American people as a reminder of how corrupt Trump is.
Did anyone happen to see Ted Cruz try to paint Sally Yates into a corner only to be totally eviscerated by her? HAHAHA Truly, it was a thing of beauty and she didn't even bat an eye or pop a sweat while gutting him. I'm in love!!
BlueBull,Yates is the sort of civil servant one can only dream of. She knows her stuff better than the so-called Constitutional lawyer, Cruz, and I believe she's dedicated to the law, the Constitution, and America, and not a political party.
Cruz looked like a smarmy political hack.
From fb friend, G.G.:
Sally Yates knows it however and has paid the price for it. We too shared in paying that price because, after what seems like centuries of being told king-like, tyrannical Obama was exceeding his authority, we have a replacement that can't tolerate even the other branches of government challenging his edicts and commands; even though our government was designed to do just that. The balance of powers seems anathema to Trump who apparently had a hard time believing he couldn't override courts and pass legislation and prosecute by fiat.
Yates, of course has so far been vindicated by the courts, Pyrrhic a victory though it has so far been. It was obvious during yesterday's hearings that the Republicans are still shocked and amazed that an attorney General would dare to do such a thing or even be interested in a matter the White House considered "internal." The matter of course concerns the nation greatly: a National Security adviser on Turkish and Russian payrolls, making deals for immensely profitable policy change unknown to us all except probably to Trump and his inner coven of profiteers. Since it involves an adversarial and powerful nation, it's quite a bit worse than Nixon trying to rig his re-election or the Teapot Dome Scandal and those run-of-the-mill crooked President precedents.
It remains to be seen how well Trump will handle this growing problem, whether it's more infantile twitter attacks, witch hunts and the attempted persecution of the innocent or Nixonian resignation. I expect the former. I expect it will either end in a stalemate or a lengthy extraction from the caves and bunkers rather than some legal MOAB. I expect the Crime family/dictator scenario to continue too long and to continue to have the support of the people about to be bled dry hanging out there in the wind. Trump's power will indeed be questioned and he will continue to have no honest answers and we are going to have to live with it anyway.
The best part of Sally Yates' testimony that I saw was when she punched Ted Cruz in the nuts.
Yates strikes me as a tough cookie. Very credible testimony.
This issue has legs.
Breaking news is that Trumputin has fired James Comey. I suspect he's upset about being investigated by the FBI for his obvious ties to Russia. If the damn fool thinks firing Comey will stop the investigation, he's even more crazy than I thought.
ooops, just heard that President Happy Hands fired.
Wonder if it had anything to do with the "Russia" investigation.
Seems like a good technique to try to cool it down.
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