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CF: Chapter A

The parallels with Nixon keep increasing on a daily, hourly basis. Nixon had a screw our enemies list. 

“The “enemies list” was just one of President Richard Nixon’s many abuses of power exposed in the Watergate scandal. The memo from White House Counsel John Dean on this day set forth his ideas about using federal agencies, such as the IRS, to punish people the Nixon administration believed were their enemies. Actually, there was more than one “enemies” list, as it grew over time.”

“Famously, when the enemies list was exposed on June 27, 1973, as part of the Watergate scandal investigation, CBS News reporter Daniel Schorr was reading the names on the list live on the evening news and discovered his own name on the list.”

John Dean put it succinctly and bluntly:

John Dean: “This memorandum addresses the matter of how we can maximize the fact of our incumbency in dealing with persons known to be active in their opposition to our Administration; stated a bit more bluntly — how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.”

Of course, everything Nixon did Trump has to do though while Nixon’s enemies list-the Dean Memo-was done behind closed doors in a backroom and Trump does his publicly. One thing Nixon differed on is Trump believes the best defense is to commit crimes in plain sight. As a historical matter that’s dubious. It’s pretty clear that the only reason Nixon went down is he taped himself. Without the tapes he’d have gotten away with it.

Trump’s belief that the best way to get away with a crime is to do it in plain sight, then, is quite wrong, not to say delusional. Trump has this mistaken idea that he has exceptional political instincts and because he ‘won’ the election, anything he did during the campaign was a good idea as it worked. 

Seth Abramson argued that in time what Trump did here will prove to be as big a mistake as firing Comey.

Regarding why Trump revoked Brennan’s security clearance now it was clearly to get Omarosa off the front page and the top of the headlines.

 

But that’s why he did it now. It’s clear that he’d planned this for weeks and was just waiting for what he saw as the best time. But why did he revoke Brennan’s clearance? He just told the Wall Street Journal: because of the Russia investigation. 

“President Trump drew a direct connection between the special counsel investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and his decision to revoke the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan and review the clearances of several other former officials.”

“In an interview Wednesday, Mr. Trump cited Mr. Brennan as among those he held responsible for the investigation, which also is looking into whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Mr. Trump has denied collusion, and Russia has denied interfering.”

“Mr. Brennan was director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Democratic administration of former President Obama and one of those who presented evidence to Mr. Trump shortly before his inauguration that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election.”

“I call it the rigged witch hunt, [it] is a sham,” Mr. Trump said in an interview. “And these people led it!”

He added: “So I think it’s something that had to be done.”

“Mr. Brennan—who since leaving office has become a frequent critic of the Republican president—in a tweet called the revocation of his clearance “part of a broader effort by Mr. Trump to suppress freedom of speech & punish critics.” He wrote it “should gravely worry all Americans, including intelligence professionals, about the cost of speaking out.”

This fits the pattern of what he did after firing Comey-his WH tried to stick to the message that it was about something else-ludicrously that Comey wasn’t fair to Clinton, which while true, pretty clearly wasn’t the reason. But on Lester Holt Trump just blurted out it was because of Russia. Again, he harbors the illusion that hidden in plain sight is a brilliant strategy. To the contrary all it does is give investigators clear prima facie evidence. But he doesn’t understand law-hey, he won the election.

To be sure, it’s quite possible it won’t end with Brennan. Trump has put many officials on the list-some like Comey and Andy McCabe that don’t even have security clearance anymore.

 

“Earlier in the day, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the administration was also reviewing the clearances of former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former FBI Director James Comey, and former National Security Agency and CIA chief Michael Hayden.”

“I don’t trust many of those people on that list,” Mr. Trump said in the interview. “I think that they’re very duplicitous. I think they’re not good people.”

Most of the individuals left government service months or years ago under varied circumstances, including being fired by the president and his aides. Some, including Mr. Comey, have said they no longer have or use their clearances.

What this is really about is part of a much bigger attack of Trump on the right to free speech.

“If we’re saying the only way I can speak is to be in adulation mode of this president, I’m sorry,” Mr. Clapper told CNN on Wednesday.

But that’s exactly what Trump wants, what he’s trying to achieve. While the immediate rationale for doing this now was to take the attention away from Omarosa’s one woman wrecking crew against Trump has his flacks-totally agree with Jonathan Capehart:

-one thing that clearly emerged from Omarosa’s revelations is that Trump’s aggressive effort to forestall all criticism of himself with extremely stringent and aggressive nondisclosure agreements (NDAs). Omarosa states that after she was fired in a very bare knuckles way by John Kelly, she was offered a job on the 2020 campaign. Trump likes to put people who have left him on the 2020 campaign so as to buy their silence about anything negative; of course, many of these folks like Hope Hicks, Brad Parscale-and his namesake son-are serious material witnesses in the Mueller probe.

She also revealed that Sean Spicer is being paid to say great things about Trump, that ‘he’s a rainbow jumping over unicorns.’

Indeed, another Trump defending guest admitted to Katy Tur that he too is being paid to say nice things about Trump. So putting all this together with Trump’s revoking security clearance of those who have criticized him-or who are witnesses against him-Trump’s endgame is clear: a world where, as Brennan puts it, you can only speak about Trump in adulation mode.

FN: An interesting question is what happened to Omarosa. She started out as a one woman wrecking crew and while she had some early bombshells and it had seemed she’d be offering months of them she tapered off soon after-was she threatened with litigation?

End of FN

The statement that Sarah Huckabee Sanders read made this pretty clear:

“In a statement that accompanied the announcement to revoke the security clearance, Mr. Trump cited what he called Mr. Brennan’s “wild outbursts on the internet and television” as reasons for the move.”

Free speech is free speech, even if you don’t like it, even if you think it’s somehow a ‘wild outburst.’ Here’s James Comey’s statement:

One thing is clear: the election in November is truly a battle for the Soul of America. When you see how draconian his crackdown on free speech and the rule of law is now imagine an emboldened faux ‘President’ if the GOP holds onto the House? Then he really can consolidate his illegitimate reign.

UPDATE: Does the Mueller Report mention this incident?

UPDATE: Later Trump did indeed deactivate the security clearance of other scapegoats-McCabe, Comey, et al.

Again Mike- did this make it to the Mueller Report?

 

 

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October 28, 2016: a Day That Will Live in Infamy Copyright © by . All Rights Reserved.

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