Seriously, nothing matters — via The Times:
Trump Ordered Officials to Give Jared Kushner a Security Clearance
WASHINGTON — President Trump ordered his chief of staff to grant his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, a top-secret security clearance last year, overruling concerns flagged by intelligence officials and the White House’s top lawyer, four people briefed on the matter said.
Mr. Trump’s decision in May so troubled senior administration officials that at least one, the White House chief of staff at the time, John F. Kelly, wrote a contemporaneous internal memo about how he had been “ordered” to give Mr. Kushner the top-secret clearance.
The White House counsel at the time, Donald F. McGahn II, also wrote an internal memo outlining the concerns that had been raised about Mr. Kushner — including by the C.I.A. — and how Mr. McGahn had recommended that he not be given a top-secret clearance.
By all means, let’s haul these specimens before a congressional committee and examine the concerns that were raised about Kushner. And speaking of hearings, looks like Trump Org CFO Weisselberg will be compelled to appear, and Ivanka and Don Jr. will be interviewed. (Gums is the new Tiffany!)
Scratch the opening sentence: elections matter. Open thread!
SFAW
More Fake News! Witch Hunt! The Demon-rats are lying!
Or, as Yul Brynner would say: “et cetera, et cetera, et cetera”
FlipYrWhig
One of the regulars (sorry to forget who!) has been pointing out lately that Trump appears to see Kushner as the son he never had, even though he has three actual sons. It rings totally true. The psychological damage of this family is intense. Imagine relying on wan, moist nonentity Jared Fucking Kushner as your most trusted aide. Mindboggling.
MattF
I guess that since Trump has complete access to all classified information, it would be pointless to restrict Jared’s clearance.
Mike in DC
I hope NY State indicts Eric, DJTJ, Ivanka and Jared, sometime between now and election day.
Baud
The “email scandal” was always intended to fool potential Clinton supporters, and it worked.
humboldtblue
Behold and rejoice with joy, Juicers!
Guy Fieri (the boss of sauce) is opening a chicken restaurant with the aim to make it a franchise.
He’s gonna call it, Chicken Guy! (seriously)
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
Trump believes that Young Jared is as steely as Michael Corleone.
And of course, Eric is Fredo.
schrodingers_cat
NYT is still fluffing noble general Kelly. WTF? Brave marine general kept notes. How courageous of him.
jonas
@humboldtblue: I’ll wait for the Peter Wells review…
Betty Cracker
@FlipYrWhig: Yep, I can’t imagine relying on that whey-faced, noodle-armed whelp of a felon to clean a cat box, let alone handle the foreign affairs of a once-great nation. That family makes the Borgias seem heroically well adjusted.
Damien
@Brachiator: People keep saying that like it isn’t Fredos all the way down.
trollhattan
Byrds of a feather.
Beginning to think the Northams need to start wearing their fancy thinkin’ overalls to work.
trollhattan
@humboldtblue:
Whomever did the review of his New York place needs to get him or herself there, stat.
jonas
@Mike in DC: Trump may or may not have explicitly directed his sons or other people on his campaign to collaborate with the Russians and Wikileaks, but Mueller is going to pull the lid off of Trump’s business shenanigans, which of course his kids are neck-deep in as well. They will either end up in prison with Cohen, or spend the rest of their lives defending various lawsuits that are bound to arise after their utterly fraudulent business empire is exposed for the house-of-cards money laundering operations it has been for years. I cannot WAIT to see those arrogant pricks frog-marched into the SDNY courthouse by federal marshals.
Adam L Silverman
@MattF: This is the real point here that you’ve made. The President can grant access to anyone to see anything that he wants them to see. It wasn’t going to matter what the FBI’s clearance investigators found or how Jared did on the polygraph or which way the adjudicators ruled on the Top Secret clearance or how the CIA’s adjudicators ruled on the request for Sensitive Compartmented Information access. All that matters is whether the President did or did not want Jared to have access. That’s it.
Lapassionara
@trollhattan: What is it with white people? Just clueless!
Lapassionara
@Adam L Silverman: I sure hope there is a deep state, and that it is listening.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: You’ve missed the point of this information about Kelly. I’ve been lawfully ordered to do things that I cannot support because I think they are unethical and will actually lead to illegality. I always keep records of both the order and my objections. On several occasions, when I’ve inevitably been contacted by the Criminal Investigative Division folks, the documentation has been very helpful to the cases they’re building.
ETA: When I was once ordered to do something illegal, after trying to move the person giving the instruction to legal ground, and failing, I resigned.
TS (the original)
Slightly off topic – but today on the front page of the WaPo to which I pay a very minimal subscription – I cannot find an article positive towards trump – for the first time since I don’t know when. Is our journalists learning?
Adam L Silverman
@Lapassionara: It is. Which is why Jared kept trying to set up backchannels with different interlocutors like the Russians and the Saudis and the Israelis.
Betty Cracker
@Adam L Silverman: That’s true, but it was becoming politically untenable, which is why it looks like Trump intervened.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
CIA? More like CYA, amirite?
Baud
@Adam L Silverman:
You have no place in my administration.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: No contemporaneous resignation and whistleblowing, however.
Jeffro
We are coming for you all, RICO Clan. Or should I say RICO Klan? Either way…we are coming for you all.
Next up: Mr. Weisselberg! Let’s see “Gym” and Mark get all wound up when he corroborates everything Cohen already told the world…
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Later in the article, it notes that the FBI also had concerns. ?
Mary G
Jared’s going to Saudi to see his BFF MBS while Trump was failing in Korea was the exact kind of bone-stupid move we’ve come to expect from him. And he can’t be bothered to even furrow his brow at them over Khashoggi? I usually think he and Lucretia will get off, but I really hope they don’t.
Adam L Silverman
Oooooh!
Adam L Silverman
@Betty Cracker: Ooopsie!
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker:
I love this. Vaguely reminiscent of
Miss Bianca
@Betty Cracker:
Damn it, Betty! I nearly choked laughing!
Miss Bianca
@trollhattan: If that’s the review I remember, I’m not sure you could pay him enough to go!
Baud
@Adam L Silverman: She didn’t say which president!
debbie
@Brachiator:
Yes, I await his magic in the Middle East. I wonder if Bib’s “troubles” (which are proving more troublesome than he anticipated) have held Jared at bay. He can’t want to be anywhere near someone found to be corrupt. Wouldn’t be prudent.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: Kelly made clear during his tantrum about Frederica Wilson– also the Khan family, abortion, etc– and during his tenure in both offices that he’s all in on the white nationalism. Lawrence O’Donnell can be annoying, but man he had Kelly’s number in the blink of an eye, and old school urban ethnic racist, Archie Bunker with some military spit and polish.
I’m not gonna throw any parties for McGhan whatever comes out, but several people have speculated that he’s already flipped for Mueller
ruemara
@humboldtblue: No thank you.
@Adam L Silverman: Oh, this is a guaranteed day of nuklear twitter reactions.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: Wow…they’re gonna put Felix Sater up there? Hey trumpov, you may as well start packing that go-bag now…
@Adam L Silverman: I wonder if the House Dems have the…um…ovaries to bring her before the committee and ask her a few questions about the whole process she’s describing with such a straight face. Methinks they do.
schrodingers_cat
@Adam L Silverman: I haven’t missed it at all. NYT is giving Kelly the benefit of the doubt by taking him at his word, a courtesy they never afford to D politicians, include our last nominee, HRC.
ETA: I do take you at your word. With Kelly I need corroboration.
Brachiator
It’s wild. Government officials working for Trump keep taking notes about shit to cover their asses, and Trump supporters keep shouting to the heavens, “Hot Damn! Greatest President ever!” Nothing registers for them.
And as odious an individual as Kelly is, it says much that he apparently did not trust the man that he was working for.
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: @Betty Cracker: The FBI does the actual clearance investigations for executive branch appointees, including those working in the White House. All the information they compile along with the results of the polygraph are then bundled with notes from the clearance investigators and sent to the adjudicators. In this case the adjudicators are at the White House Special Security Officer’s office. The adjudicators recommendation, based on the FBI’s clearance investigation, was reject. The President ordered the Special Security Officer to ignore that recommendation and award the Top Secret clearance. At that point Kushner’s request for a Sensitive Compartmented Information clearance access was forwarded to the CIA, which adjudicates that clearance for executive branch appointees including White House personnel. The CIA’s adjudicator denied the SCI access, which the President also ordered overruled. Both the FBI, the CIA, and all the adjudicators below the Special Security Officer who is a presidential appointee at the White House all did their jobs correctly. Apparently Kelly and McGahn did their jobs correctly here as well. But under his Article II powers, the President has the final say as to who gets access to what and he wanted Jared to have TS and SCI access, so Jared got TS and SCI access.
Kay
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Adam L Silverman: Ah, I wondered why Brian Beutler was calling her a liar on twitter. Didn’t doubt it, but didn’t know the direct connection to this.
@Betty Cracker: Chuck Rosenberg, the human incarnation of sober-sidedness, stated almost in passing on Nicole Wallace’s show that Jared had “issues” which lay outside Mueller’s scope. He said it so casually that no one commented on it, but considering the source, it made me wonder what he’s heard from former colleagues, or just from reading between lines.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: What are they giving him the benefit of the doubt on? This was widely reported, minus the information that he wrote a memo, months ago while he was still Chief of Staff. The guy may be a racist, misogynist asshole, but it doesn’t mean that he didn’t do the right thing here or is getting press coverage that is underserved in this instance.
debbie
@schrodingers_cat:
OT: Have you had your interview yet?
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Who do you think tells Bibi and Muhammad bin Salman everything that goes on in the White House? Kushner.
schrodingers_cat
@debbie: It was this morning.
debbie
@debbie:
Bibi’s not only claiming “fake news” and “witch hunt” in his protestations (pity neither translates to Hebrew), but he also invoked “blood libel”! A bit over the top, Beebs?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@humboldtblue: Good, cause Chicken Boy is already taken.
debbie
@schrodingers_cat:
Hope it went well!
A Ghost To Most
Is there an open source database of all the various facts, evidence, interviews in these cases somewhere? It’s gotten hard to remember all the various bits of mosaic that haven’t been glued down yet.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m about as far from an expert as you can get, but this seems like an area where Chairman Schiff could make things very uncomfortable for Jared, maybe also for McGahn and Kelly
ETA: @A Ghost To Most: ain’t that the truth
schrodingers_cat
@debbie: One can never tell with these things. I thought it went rather well. There was another finalist. Whose interview was in the afternoon. So now I wait.
Duane
How much crime and misdemeanors does the walking orange turd have to commit to be impeached or hauled into court. 5th avenue shooting? It’s literally something else everyday. Like he was trying to get canned. Someone please step up and put him, and us, out of this misery.
A Ghost To Most
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Kelly filed a memorandum at the time saying he opposed it. Whether that helps him or not, I leave to others.
debbie
@schrodingers_cat:
And we along with you. You have many people rooting for you.
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
Don’t you mean Muhammad bone Saw..???…
Also, isn’t that illegal, to be sharing secret White House information with foreigners of any flavor? I mean, having access to that level of secret info personally is one thing, but it doesn’t make one authorized to declassify secret squirrel info to others, does it? Surely not, actually !!
Mary G
KJU gave his first answer to a foreign reporter’s question to David Nakamura of WaPo. Just adding another little insult by picking the paper Twitler hates the most.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: I hate interviewing. Good luck.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: And Jared’s email management practices are perfect. Priorities.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mary G: interesting, as with Putin and probably the Gulf leaders, the ones trump thinks are his pals despise him and laugh at him
Adam L Silverman
@J R in WV: Yes. It is highly illegal.
Brachiator
@J R in WV:
The president has broad authority to do whatever he thinks appropriate with respect to classified information.
Congress might try to rein him in, but, you know the Senate we have is the rubberyest of rubber stamps.
Can Trump authorize Young Jared to share information with foreign nationals? I guess Adam can weigh in on that one.
Adam L Silverman
I’m going to the gym before I break something!
Jeffro
Annnnnnd we’re 2 hours late opening tomorrow already here in Fairfax. I can’t blame the school division for making that call (no doubt they will update it with a full cancelation in the a.m.) but still…come on FSM, these kids gotta go to school!
stinger
@schrodingers_cat: What did you wear? :-)
Aleta
See Ivanka lie — she does have tells.
1/2 https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1101258905127026688
BruceFromOhio
@Duane: One step at a time. “Cohen is a LIAR” gets put to bed first with a series of corroborating witnesses, then Madame Speaker can explain to the children in the Senate that they are complicit if they resist the articles that result. Or the ratfucker resigns. Either outcome is suitable.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Mueller will hand that off to the relevant US Attorney, probably SDNY.
Brachiator
This has not been a good week for national leaders. Even leaders we may like.
Duane
@Lapassionara: Picking cotton by hand is a painful, awful hurtful job. I’ve tried it. For ten minutes. It’s torturous.
Pam Northam needs a day of picking so she truly feels the pain of her actions.
Mary G
O/T but this has been bugging me since I read it yesterday: (WaPo) The U.S. is funding dangerous experiments it doesn’t want you to know about
Written by a couple of professors, so the right will deem it egg-heady socialism and call them traitors for calling it out.
Oh, no big deal, just fooling around with trying to make lethal viruses easily transmissible to millions of people. I shutter (in honor of CS) to think how many decisions the Twitler administration is making that we don’t know a thing about.
RSA
@trollhattan:
Maybe she could have told each white child, “You’re a racist and a traitor who wants to dissolve the United States.” For balance in her historical presentation, right?
Roger Moore
@debbie:
Is this the Israeli equivalent of calling your accusers a lynch mob?
Brachiator
@BruceFromOhio:
This would be a meaningless gesture.
C Stars
@humboldtblue: Woo hoo! Fingers is the tastiest part of the chicken! Miami, though. When does one open in his hometown of Santa Rosa…?
stinger
@Jeffro: Our schools have had so many lost days and late openings due to snow, freezing rain, and bitter wind chill temps that the legislature is considering a bill to reduce the number of required instructional hours/days.
debbie
@Roger Moore:
It’s the origination story for anti-Semitism. I’m not sure he used it correctly. I can’t be sure because I don’t understand Hebrew, but there’s this:
It seems to me he has it backwards. Adam would know better than I.
Sebastian
@FlipYrWhig:
Three sons? Who is the third?
debbie
@Sebastian:
Barron.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT: as plausible a theory as any….
I was at the gym today and somebody had put Fox on TV (a first in my two plus years as a member). The Beast stopped at some military base on the way home and was having a fine old time getting applause and cheers, and Fox covered the whole thing, and I’m sure those clips will be repeated the next couple of days to make him feel better
Frankensteinbeck
I said this the first time security clearance issues came up and Adam laid out the process. The various departments would deny Kushner clearance, and Trump would override them because legally he can do that. I think I was only one of many who had the same attitude, but I don’t remember for sure.
It seems very likely Kushner has used this access to sell American secrets to our adversaries for profit. If this is correct, I would assume the IC is spitting mad and looking for a way to translate this into the destruction of Jared and all that he holds dear.
@FlipYrWhig:
They are true intellectual equals, with only slightly different styles. I’m sure they call each other geniuses all the time, and every time Kushner spouts an idiotic buzzword thinking that’s a plan, Trump loves it. Kushner is breathtakingly stupid, breathtakingly corrupt, and breathtakingly full of himself. Oh, and he’s banging Ivanka. Trump sees himself in Kushner.
Trump’s sons have been beaten into subservience. They don’t have the chutzpah and proactive nature Kushner has.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@debbie:
That sounds familiar.
debbie
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Trump’s vocabulary will be a scourge for many years after he is gone.
Kay
@stinger:
We ran out of “calamity days” too. I love that name so much I say it more then necessary :)
We had five. Five calamities.
chris
@A Ghost To Most: Not exactly a database but it’s thorough and updated all the time.
https://kikoshouse.blogspot.com/2018/09/a-comprehensive-timeline-of-russia.html
Mike in NC
In “normal” times neither Trump nor any of his criminal children would be able to qualify for a security clearance.
Roger Moore
@debbie:
I know what blood libel is; it’s the claim that Jews used the blood of Christians (usually claimed to be children) in their religious rituals. I’m just wondering if its use in Israeli politics is similar to the way Americans jump to call any accusation they don’t want to answer a lynch mob.
Sebastian
@debbie:
Yes of course. Thanks.
Chief Oshkosh
@Adam L Silverman: B-b-but the hunk on the talking picture box just told me that Trump denies that he even ASKED anyone to give Jared clearance. Indeed! Harrumph! Harrumph! The resident says that he doesn’t think that he has the authority to do that! Harrumph!
germy
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/03/21/one-humanity-conversation-henry-louis-gates-wole-soyinka/
Jay
@Roger Moore: @debbie:
“Blood libel or ritual murder libel (also blood accusation)[1][2] is an antisemitic canard[3][4][5] accusing Jews of kidnapping and murdering Christian children in order to use their blood as part of religious rituals.[1][2][6] Historically, these claims—alongside those of well poisoning and host desecration—have been a major theme of the persecution of Jews in Europe.[4]”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel
Bibi jumped the shark.
schrodingers_cat
@Sebastian: Barron
germy
https://politics.theonion.com/netanyahu-defends-new-alliance-with-israel-s-far-right-1832879468
BobS
@Adam L Silverman: I wouldn’t be surprised to hear Slater had an accident March 13. You think Adam Schiff could arrange to have a SEAL team chaperoning him the next two weeks?
Percysowner
In part 1,372 of Everything Trump Touches Dies Lynne Patton skipped an important HUD meeting to help attack Cohen — now she might be in trouble (updated) https://www.rawstory.com/2019/02/lynn-patton-skipped-out-on-an-important-hud-meeting-to-appear-at-mark-meadows-side-now-she-might-be-in-trouble/?comments=disqus
germy
@Percysowner: The clip is so odd. Patton stands there awkwardly and silently. And then a blonde woman sitting behind her says something, Patton turns around to look at her, and then sits down.
Blonde Woman: “Okay, that’s enough. You can sit down now. Back to the Sunken Place”
BobS
@germy: That was a disturbing visual. It would have looked less out-of-place if they were dressed in period clothing, say Mississippi, 1850.
germy
@BobS:
Did you see the 2012 clip of him promising to send Obama “back to Kenya or wherever he’s from” ?
BobS
@germy: Yeah. Of course, it would be worse if he were a racist. But he’s not, so there’s that.
Duane
@debbie: Shitmidas is so rotten and vile he ruins words.
schrodingers_cat
@debbie: Aww thanks.
@stinger: I went with black pants with an ultra feminine blouse and a red jacket. I wore gold hoops and a seed pearl station necklace of medium length. Nut brown booties with a low heel. I decided to wear pants at the last minute because the weather was really shitty. Cold and snowing, when I left home.
@Baud:Thanks.
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Ian Bremmer’s new(wish) not for profit spin off think tank’s sole research fellow is funded by the Koch Foundation. The point of the fellow’s work is to promote the isolationist “Independent America” conclusions of Bremmer’s book Superpower: Three Choices for America’s Role in the World”. This includes developing and overseeing a curriculum for high school students promoting the independent America concept.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: The advantage of being a virtual candidate, no interviews.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: That sounds like a perfect plan, Juche as worked so well for the DPRK.
Emma
@Betty Cracker: cackles madly… *cough, cough, cough*…. cackles madly….
stinger
@schrodingers_cat: Red jacket — good power move!
Jamey
@Mike in DC: And emancipates Barron.
schrodingers_cat
@stinger: Its a nice shade of red. The blouse was cream. I like to break up suits, head to toe in the same color is boring.
Amir Khalid
@humboldtblue:
I know of Guy Fieri’s culinary reputation. Let’s just say I don’t fancy his chances of becoming the next Colonel Sanders.
Gravenstone
@Mary G: Captain Tripps, c’mon down! Walkin’ dude is waiting for ya.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: Never happen, Guy doesn’t have the 11 herbs and spices.
Wapiti
FTFNYT could be a little more accurate. My suggestion:
President Trump ordered his chief of staff to grant his son-in-law and nepotism hire, Jared Kushner, a top-secret security clearance …
ETA: I wonder if the Democrats should use “nepotism hire” more often when talking about Kuschner and Ivanka.
Immanentize
@Kay:
When I was young in upstate NY, the school year included 5 days more than the state minimum so no craziness of extending the school year would be necessary.
I guess that practice, at some point, became unacceptable. Here in Mass, if there are too many snow days, they are made up at the end of the school year. Students must go, but teachers do not, leaving students watching porn videos or something all day for many days.
James E Powell
@Kay:
I’m expect that Maggie Haberman will explain how we all have it wrong.
debbie
@Roger Moore:
@Jay:
Not just any religious ritual. It was said the blood (drained from sacrificed Christian babies) was used to make matzos. If you’ve ever seen matzos, you would know how fucking ridiculous that claim is.
Bibi had it backwards, but I’m sure he used that expression to insult and inflame. It is of little importance to him if he is misusing the very hateful term.
Ruckus
@Duane:
I’ll second this. Dad stopped along a field we were driving by when I was 7-8 yrs old and asked the foreman if we could pick some cotton for a bit. That was a lesson that no matter how bad your job may be, there probably are people having to do worse. Maybe a lot worse. And probably for less pay. Maybe a lot less pay.