RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Israeli government was the source of the classified intelligence that President Trump shared with a pair of Russian officials in a meeting last week, multiple reports said Tuesday,

Citing a former official with knowledge of the matter, NBC News reported that Trump’s information came from America’s longstanding Mideast ally.

Trump and his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, both defended his discussion with the Russians, saying that nothing inappropriate had been revealed.

McMaster said the president wasn’t aware where the information about ISIS threats to airliners originated or how it was gathered.

“The president wasn’t even aware where this information came from. He wasn’t briefed on the source or method of the information either,” said McMaster, who was in the Oval Office meeting with Trump and Russia’s ambassador and foreign minister.

He would not say whether the information Trump shared was classified, and offered a broad defense of the president during a White House press briefing.

The US Army general also slammed the Washington Post, which first reported the story in which sources alleged that Trump had endangered a foreign source by revealing the information.

“The premise of that article is false that in any way the president had a conversation that was inappropriate or that resulted in any kind of lapse in national security,” McMaster said.

“In the context of that discussion, what the president discussed with the foreign minister was wholly appropriate to that conversation and is consistent with the routine sharing of information between the president and any leaders with whom he’s engaged.”

There was no decision made in advance to release the information, he said. The president, he added, brought it up during the course of the conversation.

The White House alerted the NSA and CIA about the disclosure “out of an abundance of caution.”

McMaster said the “real issue” was that “our national security has been put at risk by those violating confidentiality and those releasing information to the press.”

Trump took to Twitter to defend himself over the sitdown with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

“As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety. Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against ISIS & terrorism,” he wrote before going after the leaks himself.

“I have been asking Director Comey & others, from the beginning of my administration, to find the LEAKERS in the intelligence community,” he griped.

Later Tuesday, CIA Director Mike Pompeo was set to brief the House Intelligence Committee about assorted issues involving Russia, including Trump’s disclosure.

Lawmakers quickly reacted, with Democrats slamming Trump and even some Republicans questioning his judgment.

For Democrats, there is nothing like having the media and the intelligence bureaucracy on the team.

We don’t know all the details, but let’s stipulate that if President Trump disclosed to Russian diplomats secret information that was shared with the U.S. by a foreign intelligence service, as the Washington Post alleges, that could have been a reckless thing to do. General H. R. McMaster, the president’s national-security adviser, claims the Post’s story is not true; but there has been pushback from critics who say that McMaster’s denial was lawyerly.

The matter boils down to whether Trump disclosed a city in Islamic State territory from which an allied intelligence service (perhaps through a source who infiltrated ISIS, or through a collection method that enabled intelligence to penetrate ISIS operations) discovered a threat to civil aviation (reportedly involving explosives hidden in laptop computers). In asserting that the report is “false,” McMaster insisted that Trump had not “disclosed” any “intelligence sources or methods” or “military operations that were not already publicly known.” That denial, however, arguably sidesteps what the Post actually reports. The paper claims not that Trump provided the identity of the source or the nature of the intelligence method involved but that the president mentioned a city that is the locus of the information. By saying Trump did not “disclose” the source, is McMaster saying there’s no way that what was revealed could compromise the source?

It is reasonably argued that this tip could enable to Russians to figure out which ISIS cell has been infiltrated, thereby endangering the mole or other penetration method. It is also reasonably argued, though, that the Post’s own reporting of what McMaster describes as a standard diplomatic exchange of sensitive intelligence has given the Islamic State valuable information it would not otherwise have learned.

In any event, without going into details: Trump concedes that he discussed “facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety”; and the Post maintains that it was persuaded by “officials” (not further identified) to withhold from its report the name of the city, lest “important intelligence capabilities” be jeopardized. If knowledgeable government officials did plead with the Post to refrain from reporting these details, that would be cause for concern that the president erred, perhaps significantly.

Trump’s disclosure was certainly not illegal. The president is in charge of classified information. He has unreviewable authority to disclose it himself and to authorize executive-branch subordinates to disclose it. But legality (as Jim Geraghty explains in the “Morning Jolt”) is not the point. The question is competence: Was the president trying to impress the Russians with his range of intelligence knowledge, even though the Russians would naturally assume an American president knew such things? If so, the incident would raise questions about Trump’s conduct of foreign policy. Avoidable gaffes can gravely imperil intelligence sources. The doubts they can create about our government’s reliability in keeping secrets may induce allied intelligence services to withhold vital information from us. And avoidable gaffes can happen to an official who is not well versed in the give-and-take of high-level diplomatic exchanges. That would not be an excuse: President of the United States is not an entry-level position.

All that said, how unusual is this sort of thing, really? It is a good question that Steve Hayward raises at Power Line — along with a Washington Post report reminding us that, less than a year ago, the Obama administration was offering to share with Russia intelligence about ISIS operations in Syria . . . which sounds an awful lot like what Trump was doing.

Listening from Budapest to the Washington debate on whether President Trump leaked intelligence secrets to the Russians in a White House meeting attended by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, as alleged in a Washington Post report, I’m struck by the extraordinary number of people who have been jumping to conclusions — as from an ideological circus’s trampoline while also performing somersaults — in the discussions.

Jonah is an experienced performer on the trampoline when he’s in the mood, but I’m starting with his most recent commentary — because he’s not in that mood on this occasion. In fact, his is the most sober and persuasive analysis so far of what happened and why from a Trump-skeptic standpoint, though that’s not as flattering a compliment as I would like it to be.

The “why” is important — and Jonah raises it by asking if the Post story is “plausible.” He concludes rightly that it is because Trump has shown on a number of occasions that he is boastful, impulsive, and anxious to display his mastery of affairs. And what better occasion to do this than when he is seeking to impress the Russians — an adversary he apparently wishes to win round — by claiming that he has lots of good intelligence that would help them if they were willing to join the U.S. in a fight against their common enemies, ISIS and terrorism?

Might Trump have gone too far in describing just how much he knew and how U.S. intelligence services had acquired the information? Of course, from what we know of the president, he very well might have done. That’s why the report is plausible. And the credibility of Jonah’s argument is enhanced by the fact that he stops there, dismissing as “resistance paranoia” the idea that Trump was engaged in some sort of treasonous covert operation for the Kremlin. Again, rightly so.

Now, we come to the question. Okay, so the Post report is plausible. Is it true? And here Jonah and others have to confront the firm and outright denials the report has received from the three leading U.S. national-security officials. These denials — they appear below — both flatly deny the overall story and dismiss particular points in it. It’s therefore elicited from skeptics two responses: that they don’t clear up the many unanswered questions that the story raises and that therefore the denials, though sweeping, may well be (or for some people, probably are) carefully worded lawyerly evasions.

Jonah raises a reasonable version of the first response and asks four questions about, in particular, the most comprehensive denial from National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster: “Why not take any questions? Why not address the details of the story? Why deny things not alleged? Why did intelligence officials urge the Post to withhold key details if this is ‘fake news’?”

My off-the-cuff replies are: (a) to avoid complicating the clear denial with endless extraneous points; (b) see previous reply; (c) to forestall criticisms that he hadn’t addressed obvious points; and (d) because the Post sources were wrong in saying that Trump had revealed these things but these things were nonetheless intelligence secrets they wanted kept secret. Admittedly, my replies to Jonah’s questions are highly speculative, but that’s because neither of us know for certain what the accurate answers are. I’m merely suggesting that there may be innocent answers to them.

I think we can be more confident, however, in rejecting the criticism that the final words of McMaster’s denial — “I was in the room. It didn’t happen.” — were a lawyerly evasion. Admittedly, in the post-Watergate era, journalists have got used to playing linguistic philosophers when parsing political statements. The simplest technique on these lines is to ask: “Well, that’s what he said; but what didn’t he say?” It’s a useful technique for keeping a story alive, moreover, because it sometimes seems as if there is an infinite number of things he didn’t say.

But we shouldn’t confuse logical possibilities with political realities. As a practical political matter, McMaster has said that the story is false, there’s nothing in it, and Trump didn’t reveal intelligence secrets to the Russians. You can’t spin “I was in the room. It didn’t happen.” into a denial of something far less than that. If it turns out Trump did reveal intelligence secrets to the Russians, then McMaster will have lied to the country and his resignation will be just a matter of time — as also that of his two fellow-deniers, Dina Powell and Rex Tillerson.

Late-breaking new, however! According to half the reporters and commentators in Washington, Trump has admitted exactly that and revealed his subordinates to be lying gamely on his behalf. Trump today tweeted in two linked tweets as follows:

“As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining…. …to terrorism and airline flight safety. Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against ISIS & terrorism.”

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump and his administration worked to contain the fallout Tuesday after reports that he disclosed sensitive counterintelligence to Russian officials, with the president himself tweeting that he has the “absolute right” to share such information.

The information that was shared was provided by Israel, according to officials with direct knowledge of the matter.

In a news briefing Tuesday, Mr. Trump’s national-security adviser, Lt. Gen H.R. McMaster, said Mr. Trump’s conversation “was wholly appropriate” but that he believed the leaking of it put national security at risk.

Gen. McMaster wouldn’t discuss whether information Mr. Trump conveyed to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador was classified, but said that the president had “in no way compromised any sources or methods in this conversation.” He said Mr. Trump hadn’t been briefed on the source of the intelligence he discussed.

Earlier Tuesday, Mr. Trump tweeted that he has the “absolute right” as president to share “facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety,” before offering an explanation for why: “Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against ISIS & terrorism.”

Later Tuesday, after delivering joint remarks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the White House, Mr. Trump briefly addressed his meeting with Russian officials last week, saying it had been “very, very successful.”

“We’re going to have a lot of great success,” Mr. Trump said. “We want to get as many to help fight terrorism as possible.” He then exited the event. CONTINUE AT SITE

There is so much legal ignorance in the reporting and commentary about the “Russia investigation,” it is hard to keep up. The latest is that we need a special prosecutor because the firing of FBI director James Comey could amount to Watergate-type obstruction of justice.

The claim is half-baked, but I suppose it is an improvement. Up until now, as I pointed out over the weekend, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and the media-Democrat echo chamber agitating for a special prosecutor had forgotten the little matter of . . . a crime. Putting aside all the downsides of a special prosecutor that I have outlined on other occasions (e.g., the constitutional flaws of the arrangement, the fact that a special prosecutor is not actually independent of the president and Justice Department, the reality that a special prosecutor undermines an administration’s capacity to govern . . . ), it is foundational that there must be a crime before a prosecutor is assigned to investigate it.

Even under the 1983 Ethics in Government Act (which lapsed in 1999), Congress required a finding (by the attorney general) that there was information indicating a serious criminal-law violation before the appointment of a special prosecutor (or independent counsel) would be triggered. (See Section 591(a) of Title 28, U.S. Code.) By contrast, Trump detractors have failed to identify any penal-law violation as to which there is a basis to believe President Trump or someone in his campaign may be guilty.

The only criminal offense arising out of the Kremlin interference in the 2016 election is hacking. It is not enough to say there is no evidence that the Trump campaign was complicit in this hacking. We must add that U.S. intelligence agencies have told us who carried it out – Russian intelligence – and have further explained that the Russian scheme targeted both Republicans and Democrats.

So now, at last, we have a gambit to fill this gaping hole in the demand for a special prosecutor: Trump’s dismissal of the FBI director is said to interfere with the FBI’s ongoing Russia investigation; therefore, the theory goes, it could amount to obstruction of justice, a felony. This suggestion is legally and factually specious. It is based (not for the first time) on a misrepresentation of the kind of investigation the FBI is doing.

President Trump’s firing of James Comey revealed strange timing, herky-jerky methods, and bad political optics.

Certainly, in the existential political war that Trump finds himself in, it would have been wiser, first, to have rallied his entire White House team and congressional leaders around the decision and established a shared narrative, to have been magnanimous to the departing James Comey, and to have had obtained private guarantees from a preselected successor that he or she would serve and be appointed within a day or two.

But otherwise the firing was overdue.

The head of the FBI (quite outside his purview as an investigatory official) announced in summer 2016 to the nation that he had decided not to seek an indictment of Hillary Clinton. Then, again in the role of a presumed federal attorney, he seemed to reverse that judgment by reopening his investigation. Then he appeared to re-reverse that decision — all at the height of a heated presidential campaign.

Throughout such a bizarre sequence, Comey stuck to a (flawed) exegesis about the nature of federal statutes in question (intent is not a mitigating circumstance in the felonious insecure transmission of classified federal documents).

Comey de facto had assumed yet another new role in addition to his newfound claims to be both an investigator and a prosecuting federal attorney — that of legislator and judge.

Last summer, the many-headed Comey apparently believed that he would face no consequences for his moth-to-the flame desire for public showmanship — given the widely shared belief that Hillary Clinton was going to be president and that Loretta Lynch would probably continue on as attorney general. (Lynch met privately with Bill Clinton on the tarmac five days before Hillary Clinton’s FBI interview, and, around the same time, Clinton allies said that Hillary was considering retaining Lynch as the attorney general.)

In Comey’s case, in his public and congressional statements, he repeatedly emphasized that he was conducting an ongoing investigation of possible “collusion” between Putin and those who surrounded Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign.

Yet at the same time, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had casually exonerated Trump from just those charges of collaborating with the Russians. Comey may have confirmed that in private to some senators.

In contrast, in the past, Comey had foolishly put some currency in an unsourced and unverified but tawdry and soon-leaked Fusion GPS dossier of supposed Trump sexual antics in Moscow — fake news stories generated, as Comey should have known, by opposition researchers funded first by Republican Never Trump operatives and then by the hit teams of the Clinton campaign.

Yet Comey was uncharacteristically quiet about ongoing disclosures that members of the Obama administration had unmasked names of people surveilled by intelligence agencies. At best, if true, the administration unduly revealed identities and then leaked them to the press; and at worst, it deliberately reverse-targeted political opponents, on the pretext that normal monitoring of Russian officials had, mirabile dictu, caught up Trump associates. Either way, it illegally leaked classified material.

Comey probably understood that keeping silent about FBI inquiries into alleged collusion with the Russians could earn bad enough press to endanger his career. And in the opposite fashion, he seemed to think it was wiser to remain mute about FBI investigations into why and how the administration had surveilled American citizens and then leaked their names to pet reporters.

In the end, Comey’s gymnastics were too clever by half, and he strategized himself out of a job. One of his legacies will be that Hillary Clinton broke the law in using an unsecured server, illegally passed on classified materials, destroyed a great deal of evidence, and participated in Clinton Foundation payola through the cheapening of her position as secretary of state — and got off not just scot-free but outraged that anyone would suggest she should face any consequences whatsoever.

Democrats and their media allies are whipping themselves into a frenzy in their quest to impeach the duly elected 45th president of the United States and drive him from office.

It is part of the Left’s collective mental breakdown. These people still cannot accept that Donald Trump defeated the anointed Hillary Clinton in November so they lash out at the president and his successors, often violently, as we’ve seen in recent months. This Trump Derangement Syndrome allows left-wingers to justify a growing laundry list of antisocial behavior in the furtherance of their goal. The same people pushing Trump’s impeachment sat by silently as Barack Obama, the most despotic, overreaching president since the great proto-fascist Woodrow Wilson, committed impeachable offenses nearly every day.

At the moment, the Left’s ire is focused on Trump’s unexpected decision last week to fire FBI Director James Comey. Trump explained to Comey in a letter that his employment was being terminated based on the recommendation of the Department of Justice. Both Republicans and Democrats had been furious with Comey in recent years because the unelected official inappropriately injected himself and the FBI into political matters. But now Trump’s enemies are claiming his termination of Comey’s employment constitutes obstruction of justice because the FBI is investigating far-fetched allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

This push to end the Trump administration came as MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough made a case for impeaching President Trump. With his new fiancee, co-host Mika Brzezinski at his side, the former Republican congressman from Florida declared in an authoritative-sounding voice that the president admitted he fired FBI Director James Comey last week “to end an investigation against the president and all the president’s men, which is exactly what happened.”

And I’m not being hyperbolic when I say it, if there are articles of impeachment ever drawn up, the first article of impeachment drawn up against Donald Trump will be the first article of impeachment drawn up against Richard Nixon, and that is obstruction of justice. Because I could find you a thousand Republican criminal defense lawyers across America who could say what Donald Trump has admitted already on national television could rise to the level of obstruction of justice.

This isn’t what actually happened even though the media keeps reporting over and over again that the “real” reason the president fired Comey was specifically to thwart an investigation into the Russian conspiracy theory nonsense.

For example, Dylan Matthews wrote a piece at Vox with the bold headline, “Firing James Comey to impede an investigation isn’t smoke. It’s fire.” But the article itself, which compares the circumstances surrounding the near-impeachment of President Richard Nixon, is a real letdown, rife with leaps in logic.

It takes as a given that Trump admitted he fired Comey for a nefarious, corrupt, self-serving purpose, something that is patently untrue. Nor is it clear that Trump violated any law, as Georgetown Law professor Jonathan Turley, an honest leftist, has said.

Matthews writes:

The fact of the matter is that without any more information than we already have, we already know Trump’s conduct is almost as outrageous as what Nixon acknowledged in the smoking gun tape. In Nixon’s case, what crossed the line, moving top leaders from his own party to go to the White House and tell Nixon that his presidency was over, was Nixon’s attempt to hamper the FBI’s investigation into Watergate.

And we know, for a fact, that Trump fired FBI Director James Comey because he was upset by the FBI’s investigation into his Russia ties.

We know that because Trump said so himself. Asked by NBC’s Lester Holt why he fired Comey, Trump replied, “I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won.'”

But do we know “for a fact” what Matthews claims we know?

Trump’s comment about Russia came during the NBC interview last week and took the form of one of the president’s rambling, stream-of-consciousness answers. In one two-and-a-half segment in the interview, Holt badgered Trump, interrupting him an astonishing nine times, which surely could not have made it easy for Trump – or anyone – to stay firmly on-topic throughout.

“Look, he’s a showboat,” Trump said of Comey. “He’s a grandstander. The FBI has been in turmoil. You know that, I know that, everybody knows that. You take a look at the FBI a year ago, it was in virtual turmoil — less than a year ago. It hasn’t recovered from that.”

After acknowledging he met with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who wrote a detailed legal memo urging Comey’s dismissal, Trump said he accepted Rosenstein’s recommendations but added he was planning to fire Comey anyway.

“Oh, I was going to fire regardless of recommendation,” Trump said.

According to a transcript at Real Clear Politics, the rest of the conversation went like this with Trump jumping around from subject to subject. Part of the transcript is reproduced below so readers can get a sense of just how convoluted the discussion was.