Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Come on, man.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Ah, the different things are different argument.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Russiagate Open Thread: Hey, Remember That Jared Kid?…

Russiagate Open Thread: Hey, Remember That Jared Kid?…

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Yet another shoe from the Trump Crime Cartel millipede…

… The Feb. 9 phone call from Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein to White House Counsel Donald McGahn came amid growing public scrutiny of a number of administration officials without final security clearances. Most prominent among them is Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, who has had access to some of the nation’s most sensitive material for the last year while waiting for his background investigation to be completed.

A week after the call from Rosenstein, White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly announced that staffers whose clearances have not been finalized will no longer be able to view top-secret information — meaning that Kushner could stand to lose his status as early as Friday…

In his phone conversation with McGahn, Rosenstein intended to give an update on the status of Kushner’s background investigation. He did not specify the source of the information that officials were examining, the three people said.

Justice Department officials said Rosenstein did not provide any details to the White House about the matters that need to be investigated relating to Kushner.

“The Deputy Attorney General has not referenced to the White House any specific concerns relating to this individual’s security clearance process,” spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement…

There are conflicting accounts about whether Rosenstein discussed with McGahn the significance of the information and its possible impact on Kushner’s clearance. Two people said the deputy attorney general told McGahn the Justice Department had obtained important new information, suggesting it could be an obstacle to his clearance process. One other said Rosenstein did not discuss the nature of the ongoing investigation.

Bob Bauer, who served as White House counsel in the Obama administration, said administration officials should view Rosenstein’s alert as a strong reason to revoke Kushner’s interim top-secret access…

Ordinarily, security clearance experts said, the failure to completely disclose all contacts would jeopardize an applicant’s chances of obtaining final clearance.

In addition, Kushner’s actions during the transition have been referenced in the guilty plea of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, who admitted he lied to the FBI about contacts with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Prosecutors said Flynn was acting in consultation with a senior Trump transition official, whom people familiar with the matter have identified as Kushner…

“That sounds bad. Is that bad, Dad?”

At CPAC, this very morning:

Reader Interactions

107Comments

  2. 2.

    JPL

    Today the president said that Jared’s a good boy, and that is a sign that the next shoe is gonna drop.

  3. 3.

    Corner Stone

    WTF is going on with Mueller charging Manafort with obstructing the Mueller probe while in office?

  4. 4.

    Raoul

    Would a soon-to-drop indictment be reason enough to end Kush’s interim clearance?
    It would be irresponsible not to speculate!

  5. 5.

    dmsilev

    So Trump says that Jared’s clearance is up to Kelly, which I guess we can parse as ‘give him a clearance or you’re out’.

  13. 13.

    RobertDSC-iPhone 6

    I can’t imagine the train wreck if Kelly sticks to his guns and removes Jared & Ivanka.

    Gross.

  15. 15.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Just saying – In my experience, trying to set up backchannel communications with the Kremlin via the Russian embassy would end most people’s chances at a security clearance. But there seems to be something else as well.

  17. 17.

    NotMax

    @debbie

    Related.

    Will it have banks of blinking slots and a lounge act as well?

    The Trump administration is considering an offer from Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson to pay for at least part of a new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, four U.S. officials told The Associated Press.

    Lawyers at the State Department are looking into the legality of accepting private donations to cover some or all of the embassy costs, the officials said. The discussions are occurring as the administration plans a ribbon-cutting for a scaled-down, temporary embassy that will open in May — more than a year ahead of schedule.
    [snip]
    It’s not clear if there is any precedent, nor whether government lawyers would give the green light to accept Adelson’s or anyone else’s donations.

    Kathy Bethany, the former cost management director for the State Department’s Bureau of Overseas Building Operations, said she couldn’t recall the U.S. government ever accepting donations to build embassies during her tenure, which ended in 2014.

    “I don’t know how well that would work,” Bethany said. “Would we be beholden to putting their name on the building? I’ve never heard of that.” Source

  18. 18.

    Adam L Silverman

    “There have been running battles between Trump and his generals,” said one of the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Kelly is a retired Marine general and McMaster an Army lieutenant general.

    “But the clearance business is personal, and if Trump sets special rules for family members, I‘m not sure if Kelly and McMaster would salute,” the official said.

  21. 21.

    dmsilev

    @Adam L Silverman: If it comes down to that, Trump would pick his family, no contest. He wouldn’t have the guts to fire either general, he’d just overrule them and see if they were willing to follow through on a “I quit” ultimatum.

  23. 23.

    Adam L Silverman

    @dmsilev: This has been leaked to try to keep him from doing so. It will look bad enough if he has to pick his 3rd National Security Advisor or 3rd Chief of Staff in a year. Both would be devastatingly bad PR.

  25. 25.

    Corner Stone

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    But there seems to be something else as well.

    It would sadden me but I hope it comes out that JarJar is on tape having sex with an underage boy.

  27. 27.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Adam L Silverman: I agree it would look bad, more straw on the camel’s back for (I fervently hope) 2018, but trump only sees the short term, the hoots and whoops and hollers of his base, and the impotent brow-furrowing of the Republicans. I suspect he gets as much pleasure from the latter as the former, knowing all he has to do is invite Lindsey Graham, or better yet do a rally in South Carolina, and put the little preener in his place. In the meantime, I suspect McM’s replacement would be worse, and all the instability is not good for the country.

    Graham’s bete noire, Susan Rice, has responded to the Graham-Grassley letter. Twitter seems to think it’s quite the brushback

  30. 30.

    WaterGirl

    @Adam L Silverman: I think Trump saying “it’s up to Kelly” is his cowardly way of saying he won’t go out on a limb and give Jared clearance anyway, which I believe he is able to do.

    It just gives Trump deniability – Jared, don’t be mad at me, it was General Kelly who made the decision. TOTAL FUCKING COWARD.

  32. 32.

    WaterGirl

    @dmsilev: I almost always agree with you, but not on this one. Trump is completely unwilling to take the heat for granting Jared clearance even though he can’t get it through normal channels.

  37. 37.

    mike in dc

    Don’t they have to either revoke Jared’s clearance by midnight tonight or close of business Monday, or else resign? It would make them look impotent to set that deadline and then do absolutely nothing about the worst, most prominent offender.

  38. 38.

    MomSense

    Does it bother anyone else that all of these people who couldn’t get clearances received top secret intelligence for months and may now leave knowing all of this intelligence they weren’t trustworthy enough to possess?

  40. 40.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Walker: Close. The Stand starts at a military base where they were testing a modified flue for either bio weapons or bio weapons antidote.

    At this point, as callous as it sounds, at this point you just hope he got run off the road and killed in a road rage incident and his body is in one of those woody road side drop offs near a hairpin turn that are in a lot of places in Atlanta.

  42. 42.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @WaterGirl: Natasha Bertrand has a screen shot of it (I hate those…) that is fairly readable if you click on it

    @Adam L Silverman: I think the smartest person (that I know of) they could get for CoS is probably Christie– and if I really have to say it, I despise that boorish, bullying and I believe thoroughly corrupt fuckface, but he’s not stupid. But because of who were dealing with, there’s the whole soap opera aspect of it. There are rumors about Kevin McCarthy, whose stupidity and malleability would of course suit trump, Jared and the Trumplings. That video of him saying trump was on the take from Moscow might make things awkward…

  43. 43.

    Adam L Silverman

    @mike in dc: Despite the President’s remarks today, the final adjudication of a clearance is not up to Kelly. It is up to the adjudicator. For a White House appointment, that should be in the White House Security Office. They take all the information from the background investigation and the polygraph, if the latter is required, review it, and make a decision known as an adjudication. Being read on, meaning being given access to, specific classified areas or compartments, is determined by Kushner’s front line supervisor, which is Kelly as the Chief of Staff, in consultation with the White House Special Security Officer who handles the clearance indoctrinations. My understanding from the reporting is that Kushner’s investigation is not complete because he either keeps amending his forms, as he did with his financial disclosure forms a couple of weeks ago, and/or because the investigators keep finding new things that raises flags, concerns, and/or questions. This is all on Jared. To get the clearance you have to fully disclose. The fact that he can’t or wont means that the investigators keep finding stuff he didn’t disclose, which then seems to require him to amend his disclosures. This would not normally be allowed.

  46. 46.

    WaterGirl

    @MomSense: Me! It worries the hell out of me. Jared may be working for “free” but he could sell or could have sold a lot of top secret information to make some $.

  47. 47.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Graham’s bete noire, Susan Rice, has responded to the Graham-Grassley letter. Twitter seems to think it’s quite the brushback

    She was smart enough to get top cover from the White House Counsel. Senator Grassley and Graham struck out.

  48. 48.

    Corner Stone

    @Adam L Silverman:

    They will definitely have trouble finding anyone who isn’t a complete hack to replace LTG McMaster. Pretty much the same for Gen (ret) Kelly.

    Flynn and Priebus, From the earth ye came and to the earth you shall return. If the earth is a pool of stupid hackatry.
    McMaster lost so much of his credibility months ago. Kelly has zero left. Hire Ted Nugent for either position at this point.

  53. 53.

    mike in dc

    @Corner Stone: Well, I’m not stupid. The logical/rational response usually only happens after all other options have been exhausted. I do think this is going to become a recurring question at press conferences, though.

  55. 55.

    Adam L Silverman

    @eric: Actually they believe the bullshit their side spews about the other side. That they’re all stupid, incompetent, or both.

  57. 57.

    WaterGirl

    @chris: Do you have a link where the letter is readable? Because I couldn’t read it from the letter Jim, Foolish Literalist provided.

  58. 58.

    JPL

    @Adam L Silverman: Do you have the feeling that someone will finally rein Trump in, preferably with cuffs.
    I remember Watergate and what Trump and his cronies have done is much worse.

  59. 59.

    WaterGirl

    @JPL: I click on that but the letter is not readable. It’s way too small and I can’t even see the whole thing. What trick do I not know?

  62. 62.

    JPL

    @WaterGirl: If you click on each page, it does enlarge it somewhat. The second page is easier to read, but it’s the third paragraph in the first page that high lights the concerns about Flynn.

  65. 65.

    Adam L Silverman

    @JPL: If/when the Democrats take over one or both chambers of Congress, then some of the institutional checks and balances will be turned back on and start running. The Federal courts are doing a bit, but the action is going to be in Congress until Mueller finishes doing what it is he’s doing.

  66. 66.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Marshall’s story about this is behind his paywall, but this is the first I’ve heard of suicide threats

    Josh Marshall @ joshtpm
    At the end of 2015, Manafort was desperate for money, pleading to save his marriage, owed millions to a mobbed up oligarch. He told family he was considering suicide. Six weeks later he was asking Tom Barrack to hook him up with Donald Trump.

  70. 70.

    Roger Moore

    @MomSense:

    Does it bother anyone else that all of these people who couldn’t get clearances received top secret intelligence for months and may now leave knowing all of this intelligence they weren’t trustworthy enough to possess?

    It bothers me, but Jared honestly bothers me more than the rest of them put together. The other people who were denied clearances look like people who might be susceptible to bribery or blackmail. Jared looks like somebody who will sell to the highest bidder. I would say he deserves to wind up in the cell next to his father, but his father isn’t in SuperMax.

  73. 73.

    JPL

    @JPL: This is the key paragraph in the response to Grassley

    “President Obama and his national security team were justifiably concerned about potential risks to the Nation’s security from sharing highly classified information about Russia with certain members of the Trump transition team, particularly Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn,”

    Today we found out from the Washington Post article on Jared, that Jared’s security clearance is being held up, because of Flynn.

  75. 75.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Adam L Silverman: O, the would-be Dragon Of Budapest! (stolen from Rick Wilson) I hope Chris Hayes brings back his Gorka impersonation, it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen him do.

  77. 77.

    Ohio Dad

    @MomSense: I’m not worried about Jared knowing classified stuff. The super-secret stuff tends to be things that everyone knows (but are “plausibly” denied), embarrassing deeds that are being hidden — mainly from Americans, and technology with military and intelligence value that is also available in unclassified academic works. Most information that can harm the US if in the hands of an adversary (like military positions and movement) has a low level of classification and would not be of interest to Jared. The highly classified identities of intelligence assets abroad could be an exception to this, except that there has been a tendency of late to violate this security for partisan gain (see Plame, Valerie and others).

  78. 78.

    Roger Moore

    @Adam L Silverman:

    He’s not going to give up the million dollar contributor gig he’s got at whichever network gave it to him to become COS.

    If Trump were to abandon Jared, Christie would be a very reasonable choice, and I wouldn’t be too surprised if Christie took it. I honestly think Christie would A) want the power, B) want to serve his party and his country (in that order), and C) understand that serving in the White House would enhance his future wingnut welfare potential. But there’s just no way Trump is going to bring Christie in if the main thing he’s looking for in a new COS is willingness to protect Jared. There’s just too much bad blood to make it work.

  84. 84.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @WaterGirl:

    Jared may be working for “free” but he could sell or could have sold a lot of top secret information to make some $.

    Yep. And dog knows he needs the $. Makes him especially dangerous.

  94. 94.

    Another Scott

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Dunno.

    After firing Comey blew up in his face he (or someone around him) whimpered (something like) “the Democrats wanted Comey fired, too!!1” He had no idea that it would be such a firestorm. He thought he could do it, look like BMOC, steal the Democrats’ thunder, make everyone else in the government cower, and have nothing but sunshine and roses going forward as the Russia investigation ended on Comey’s exit from the JEH building. Instead…

    We know Trump’s a coward – especially after that. He won’t fire anyone – he’ll just try to force them out if he (or Javanka) wants them to go.

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (“Beauregard is still in the house…”)

  95. 95.

    Another Scott

    @MomSense: One potentially saving grace is that more than a clearance is required to be able to see stuff. There’s also the requirement to have a specific Need to Know. Bannon and Javanka and all the rest couldn’t look at anything they wanted – they had to have the specific need to know.

    But, of course, just having the interim clearance is bad enough… Grr…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  96. 96.

    sukabi

    @Cheryl Rofer: back channels, hidden assets, failure to disclose foreign contacts on security forms (x 100)….given all those things that are known it wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t get the Carter Page treatment with a FISA warrant…maybe Mueller will be able to indict on everything from money laundering to treason.

  97. 97.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Another Scott:

    One potentially saving grace is that more than a clearance is required to be able to see stuff. There’s also the requirement to have a specific Need to Know. Bannon and Javanka and all the rest couldn’t look at anything they wanted – they had to have the specific need to know.

    Like Trump gave a shit about that.

  98. 98.

    Scotian

    @Adam L Silverman:

    @SiubhanDuinne: Good name, bad villain.

    The scary part for me reading this was that I could see it easily/clearly enough, yet in both Bondian and Austin Powers settings/flavours equally well,. Gorka is one of those I find a mystery as to why anyone can take him seriously. Yet look at where he has managed to be and the access it has afforded him and you cannot but also see the very sinister ugliness of a true Bond level villain there too. Not that I truly think he is any such thing, except in imitation, not originality, and without the latter the former is a limited, if not always less dangerous to the rest of reality. A bad villain indeed, Honestly he reminded me a bit too much of some of the old Cold Warrior wannabes from the tail end of that period, say last 15-20 years from the fall of the Wall. These days I’m not sure what I make of him, aside from I still find him utterly contemptible in his own right, but he in many ways feels the most slippery and enigmatic of the secondary characters that have floated through the inner circles of power in TrumpWorld since the campaign days. I keep wanting to dismiss him as low level even in my own head, and yet I know I cannot, if only because of the access he has had in shaping the dynamics that appear to be dominant in “the Trump Base” view of the rest of the world and reality. This creates its own power, especially given how driven this President of the United States of America (formality appro sadly) is by satisfying that base view whenever he gets it in his “Executive Time” FOX and other media part of his regular days. So Gorka freaks me out on a lot of levels, and your comment really reminded me of that fact, and felt I had to share with the rest of the class…*chuckle*

    Seriously, I do find Gorka one of the more fascinating characters in his own right, which with this cast of characters in this orbit over the last couple of years is no small feat to be managing. He is so out of a series of bad tropes and cliches vibe and yet he has been where he has been. A reminder that no matter how bad fiction can get, reality can always be worse than anything the mind of a human can manage….*sigh*.

    Thanks for both a chuckle and a shiver at once, be it ever unintended. Hard to manage in this area of matters these days, even black/morbid humour has become too much like parody with this reality for my tastes. The shivers alas on their own, not so hard to come by, the chuckles, well…

  99. 99.

    Honus

    @Gin & Tonic: this. Most people don’t realize you get to be a general by not fucking, not by having balls. If you had real balls and convictions you washed out long before then.

  100. 100.

    jonas

    Most prominent among them is Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, who has had access to some of the nation’s most sensitive material for the last year while waiting for his background investigation to be completed.

    Gosh, I thought potentially mishandling classified information — say, by not having the proper clearances, or I dunno, using a private email — was the worstest crime against humanity ever. Oh well.

  102. 102.

    jonas

    @Adam L Silverman:

    “But the clearance business is personal, and if Trump sets special rules for family members, I‘m not sure if Kelly and McMaster would salute,” the official said.

    Please. If Kelly and McMaster were concerned about this shit, they would have resigned a year ago. They’re not. They’re true believers. I mean hell, Kelly was willing to just completely tell a baldfaced lie about a war widow and a member of Congress just to make Trump look good and McMaster watched Trump tell the Russians about a top secret Israeli antiterror operation in the fucking Oval Office and didn’t really seem to give a shit. I think they can overlook lil’ Jared not having all his paperwork in order. Or at least be willing so smear a war widow make it look like he does.

  103. 103.

    jonas

    @Wag: That too. At the end of all of this, it will be shown that Trump did everything he accused Clinton or Obama of doing, only 100x worse. As has been observed many times, with these clowns it’s always projection. Always.

  104. 104.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    @Scotian:

    Gorka is one of those I find a mystery as to why anyone can take him seriously.

    Hungarian Nazis were weird. They somehow convinced themselves that Magyars would count as honorary Aryans in the new dispensation, and that if they sent enough Jewish and Romany families off to death-camps, this would somehow save them from being next on line.
    Hungarian neo-Nazis are even weirder,
    IIRC, Gorka reckons that he isn’t a Nazi himself, he just wears his father’s Nazi lapel badge because Heritage.

  105. 105.

    JGabriel

    WaPo:

    “I will let General Kelly make that decision, and he’s going to do what’s right for the country,” the president said during a news conference. “And I have no doubt that he will make the right decision.”

    These guys just can’t stop themselves from sounding like characters in a bad mob film:

    I’m sure you’ll make the … right decision … John. The right decision for the country, for the administration, for your career, for your family …

  106. 106.

    JGabriel

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Just saying – In my experience, trying to set up backchannel communications with the Kremlin via the Russian embassy would end most people’s chances at a security clearance.

    Which raises the question, why are so many military and former military leaders willing to work with an administration that would try to do that? Perhaps I’m wrong, but it seems self-evident now that Kelly and McMaster are true believers, so any argument that they’re staying to “protect the country” lacks credibility at this point.

    I mean, why spend a career ostensibly working to defend the US, then serve in an administration so obsequious to the country which has been our most consistent adversary for the past seven decades plus?

  107. 107.

    JGabriel

    AP via NotMax:

    The Trump administration is considering an offer from Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson to pay for at least part of a new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, four U.S. officials told The Associated Press.

    JPL:

    Why not just open a casino?

    Because it wouldn’t have diplomatic immunity.

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