Tag: national security intelligence
Three Years Later, Republicans Keep Gaslighting Themselves

Three Years Later, Republicans Keep Gaslighting Themselves

Three years after the spectacle of rioters storming the Capitol played out on television screens across America, the events of January 6 are now highly open to interpretation depending on one's partisan lean.

For Democrats, it's generally clear that a mass of MAGA supporters, provoked by Donald Trump's lies about a stolen election, launched a violent attack on the Capitol in an effort to interrupt certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power. That, of course, is what happened, as has been proven by the sweeping January 6 congressional investigation and hundreds of convictions.

Republicans, who have had to gaslight their way to an acceptable narrative, appear to believe some combination of the following fabrications: 1) the Jan. 6 violence was justified because Joe Biden's victory was illegitimate (i.e. Democrats stole the election); 2) Jan. 6 was mostly a peaceful protest (a narrative driven by right-wing talker Tucker Carlson, among others); and 3) the Jan. 6 violence was organized and instigated by FBI plants.

Since the outset of his 2024 campaign, Trump has openly embraced the MAGA rioters, launching his latest presidential bid in Waco, Texas, a city synonymous with extremist lore. The event kicked off with a variation of the national anthem sung by Jan. 6 convicts—or "hostages," as Trump prefers to call them. Trump has pledged to pardon some or possibly even all of those involved in the January 6 insurrection if he is elected president in November.

"Trump heading into the 2024 election has decided to go all in as being the pro-January 6 candidate," counterterrorism expert and January 6 investigator Tom Joscelyn told NPR. "He's gone full steam ahead in praising and in his own way endorsing the January 6 rioters and extremists who attacked the Capitol."

Yet outside of Democrats and pro-Trump Republicans, many Americans aren't as settled about what took place on January 6 and why. A sizable swath, in fact, would simply rather move past the Capitol attack as a bygone unpleasantry.

But as President Biden wages his reelection campaign on the threat that Trump and MAGA Republicans pose to American democracy, it's incumbent on Democrats and pro-democracy voters to relay a clear and direct narrative about what unfolded on Jan. 6 and who was responsible for the worst homegrown attack ever launched on the U.S. seat of government.

To that end, the progressive consortium Navigator Research has assembled a road map for how to discuss the Jan. 6 riot in ways that resonate broadly with voters.

Here are the nonpartisan explanations of the day that resonated with broad segments of the electorate as being most true and most concerning, according to Navigator:

  • More than 2,000 rioters ultimately broke into the Capitol, many of whom vandalized and looted parts of the building (69 percent true, 72 percent concerning).
  • Approximately 140 police officers were assaulted by rioters (64 percent true, 71 percent concerning).
  • Five people died as a result of the events on January 6, including Capitol police officers (60 percent true, 75 percent concerning).
  • More than 1,000 people have been arrested for their actions on January 6 (62 percent true, 66 percent concerning).

Navigator polling shows the Republican Party is currently viewed as more prone to political violence than the Democratic Party, but only by 11 points (47 percent to 36 percent). And nearly one in five voters remains unsure about which party is more prone to political violence.

With that in mind, Navigator fleshed out how to extend culpability for the January 6 assault to congressional Republicans by raising concerns about their ongoing efforts to promote political violence. The group found that Americans' top concerns with GOP conduct include that:

  • Congressional Republicans continue to allow the white supremacist factions present at the January 6th attack to play a dominant role in deciding the direction of the Republican Party (71% concerning, including 71% of independents).
  • Congressional Republicans voted against investigating basic facts about what happened at the attack at the Capitol building on January 6th (71% concerning, including 70% of independents).
  • Some Republican members assisted or encouraged the organizers of the attack on January 6th (70% concerning, including 73% of independents).

The 2024 presidential election is shaping up to be a rematch between the pro-democracy forces who elected Biden in 2020 and the pro-Trump forces who sought to overturn the will of the people.

Trump has left no doubt about his allegiance to the people who sought to stage an insurrection on Jan. 6 at his behest and congressional Republicans have left no doubt about their allegiance and submission to Trump as the party’s standard-bearer.

That puts the preservation of democracy, January 6, and the broader matter of right-wing violence directly on the ballot this November. So it's worth all of us making an effort to have one or two fast facts at the ready when our independent-minded friends and neighbors question the severity of the deadly January 6 riot. Because if Trump wins, he and his allies will rewrite history—and alter the course of American democracy.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Trump Lawyers Mull ‘Doomsday Plan’ To Hide Bolton Testimony

Trump Lawyers Mull ‘Doomsday Plan’ To Hide Bolton Testimony

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Democrats continue to hope that former National Security Adviser John Bolton will testify during President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, and Bolton has said that he would testify if subpoenaed. But the Washington Post has reported that Trump’s allies (including Senate Republicans and Trump’s legal team) are so worried about the possibility of Bolton testifying before the U.S. Senate that according to a senior administration official, they are willing to turn possible Bolton testimony into classified material. And MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow cited the Post’s report as evidence of how “freaked out” Trump’s allies are over possible Bolton testimony.

Trump’s allies, Maddow explained, are considering a “doomsday contingency plan” in which they would “move John Bolton’s testimony to a classified setting” because of “national security concerns, insuring that it is not public.”

Maddow commented, “Oh, so that’s what classification procedures are for: so you can call something a national security concern that must be classified because it might show the potential to incriminate the president at trial. Is that the national security you’re worried about? Is that what the classification process is for? That seems pretty desperate.”

Bolton, according to foreign affairs expert Fiona Hill, used the phrase “drug deal” to describe how he felt about Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to get the Ukrainian government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. House Democrats believe that testimony from Bolton would do a lot to show that Trump committed impeachable offenses in his dealings with Ukraine.

Watch Maddow’s coverage of the report below, via MSNBC:

Ex-CIA Official Under Trump Doubts ‘Intelligence’ Behind Iran Strike

Ex-CIA Official Under Trump Doubts ‘Intelligence’ Behind Iran Strike

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

In a new post for the blog Just Security from the New York University Law School on Wednesday, a former CIA counterterrorist manager revealed details of his work under President Donald Trump and why he’s skeptical of the administration’s defense of killing Suleimani.

Douglas London, who worked at the CIA until the end of 2018, said he “often struggled in persuading the president to recognize the most important threats.”

Rather than caring about what career professionals thought were the biggest danger to the United States, Trump was instead interested in — what else? — actions that he could tout as personal victories. This drew the president toward what London called “celebrity targeted killing,” that is, the assassination of high-profile figures whose names could make a big splash in the newspapers. The killings of Abū Bakr al-Baghdadi, the former leader of ISIS, and of former Iranian military leader Qassim Suleimani fall into this category.

This description of Trump’s priorities rings true — he is always trying to take credit for supposed presidential accomplishments, like his recent attempt to garner praise for the falling rate of cancer deaths. Even before coming president, the appearance of success was always more important to him than actual business success.

In this spirit of killing “celebrity” targets, London said Trump was obsessed with killing a son of Osama bin Laden, Hamza, even though the intelligence community saw him as a low-priority target.

When it comes to the killing of Suleimani, which London was not involved in, the ex-CIA official argued that the Trump administration’s explanation for his killing doesn’t add up.

“[It] appears to have been more about Trump, and the potential for headlines, rather than the intelligence,” he wrote. “Soleimani’s very public removal was too great a headline to pass up for Trump, but there were other options.”

He also doubted that Gina Haspel, the current CIA director, recommended the killing, even though the New York Times has reported that she was on board. It would have been “uncharacteristic,” he said, for her to recommend such a move when it would likely lead to missiles being fired at U.S. troops. She would have been unlikely to anticipate that Iran’s counterstrikes would not result in any known fatalities, as they did.

And as for the claim that there was some “imminent threat,” as Trump officials have claimed, that justified his killing, London didn’t buy this explanation:

I do not debate we had intelligence regarding any number of prospective attacks Iran was facilitating through proxies in Iraq, and elsewhere. But don’t we always? The Iranians design potential operations at various degrees of lethality and provocation, some of which they will execute, others to put aside for a rainy day. It’s what they do. The reality is that the U.S. government would have been legally bound to warn the public of a threat against an American embassy. The U.S. Intelligence Community is also prohibited from exclusively warning American government officials of threats likewise faced by civilians, and regardless of nationality. For this reason, the deep skepticism that has met the president’s claim that Iran was planning to attack four U.S. embassies is certainly warranted.

The White House’s narrative and the posture adopted by the intelligence agencies are inconsistent with U.S. options, if there was, in fact, a specific, credible, and imminent threat from Iran. Rather, the Trump administration appears to have cherry-picked information from the broader intelligence to support its actions. Intelligence assessments on the anticipated escalatory paths Iran would follow in response to kinetic U.S. retaliatory measures have been consistent and well briefed to every president. The surprise wasn’t that the Iranians escalated, but that they  pulled their punches to minimize casualties and provide an off ramp to further escalation.

Further undermining the Trump administration’s argument that the Soleimani strike disrupted an imminent plot to kill Americans, the IRGC is a military institution and so taking out its leader is unlike removing a key terrorist leader, whose death can often eliminate the planning, communications and direction for a particular attack. The IRGC’s command and control are likely largely unaffected, whereas its resolve has likely increased. Moreover, the U.S. acting without any deniability seems to have forced Iran’s hand to respond openly.

Read the full post at Just Security.

‘Russia Is Still Listening’ As White House Ignores Election Security

‘Russia Is Still Listening’ As White House Ignores Election Security

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

A new report for the New York Times about a Russian hack of the Ukrainian oil company Burisma is giving many a disturbing sense of history repeating itself.

The company, which is at the center of the impeachment of President Donald Trump, was reportedly targeted by Russian military hackers. The Times explained:

…experts say the timing and scale of the attacks suggest that the Russians could be searching for potentially embarrassing material on the Bidens — the same kind of information that Mr. Trump wanted from Ukraine when he pressed for an investigation of the Bidens and Burisma, setting off a chain of events that led to his impeachment.

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter worked on the board of Burisma while his father was in office and conducting diplomacy with Ukraine, which raised concerns about conflicts of interest and influence peddling. However, there’s been no credible allegations or evidence put forward to indicate that the Bidens were engaged in wrongdoing, and the vice president’s efforts to root our corruption in Ukraine may have even cut against the interests of his son’s company. Nevertheless, Trump and other Republicans have tried to turn the matter — which was entirely overlooked until Biden became a formidable 2020 contender — into a massive scandal for the Democratic frontrunner.

Now, it looks like Russia is helping in the effort. This is hardly a wild accusation, given the extensive evidence that Russia intervened in 2016 to get opposition research on Trump’s opponent and to otherwise manipulate the election.

Democrats are casting a critical eye at the Trump administration following the publication of the report, noting that Trump has done far too little to curb Russian election interference and has, in fact, encouraged it.

“We only learned of this hacking through the press,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is one member of the Gang of Eight that is traditionally kept in the loop on significant intelligence matters. “Congress must be briefed on what the administration knows about this attack and why the president doesn’t have a plan to protect our elections.”

It’s not clear how much the administration knows about the cyberattack, though the Times’ report does indicate that one “American security official” was a source for information about the operation.

“Russia is still listening, Russia is still attacking,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), who sits on the House Intelligence Committee.

He was referencing Trump’s infamous proclamation during the 2016 campaign: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find [Hillary Clinton’s] 30,000 emails that are missing.” According to former Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Russian hackers made their first attempts that same day as Trump’s request to obtain Clinton’s personal emails.

So it seemed that Russia was listening then, and it seems like Russia is following Trump’s lead now by targeting Burisma, the company he is so personally interested in. And he’s made it clear that, if Russia or anyone else wanted to offer him dirt on an election opponent, he would welcome it.

“I think I’d take it,” he told ABC News in June when asked about whether he’d accept opposition research from foreign governments. “I think you might want to listen, there isn’t anything wrong with listening.” Though he equivocated, he suggested he might not inform the FBI if presented with such an offer, despite the obvious counterintelligence risks and potential for criminal activity.

“As far as I see it now, knowing that this president in the past, as Special Counsel Mueller said, invited, welcomed, and planned to benefit as a candidate from Russia’s help, if he does not condemn this, I and many other Americans will hold him as complicit in any attack on any candidate that seeks to benefit Donald Trump,” Swalwell told MSNBC.