I had a fascinating conversation yesterday with Gen. Michael Hayden, who you likely remember as President Bush’s CIA Chief. He was NSA Director in the late Clinton administration, continued in that role under Bush. Bush later made him CIA Director and he served briefly in that role under Obama. As a top intelligence official through Bush’s two terms he was at the center of all the controversies about rendition, warrantless surveillance, drone attacks, etc. He now appears an ardent Never Trumper, though I don’t think he applies that term to himself. He has a new book out called The Assault on Intelligence. We talked about a number of issues, including what someone does in a career as an Air Force intelligence officer. But the one that interested me most was how the Russians honed their ‘information dominance’ strategies first in Russia and then in Eastern Europe and then in US pre to 2016, amplifying Ebola hysteria and playing a key role playing up the Jade Helm hysteria back in 2014, which TPMers will remember from our coverage. Listen to the conversation here.
There are certain frameworks and situations in the law in which it does not matter why something happened, it simply matters that something has demonstrably happened, to establish the point, making the finding or act. I have thought for some time that we face a similar situation with the man who currently holds the U.S. Presidency. Over the course of 16+ months, President Trump has acted consistently and with some success to destabilize and break up the western alliance (both its formal manifestation in NATO) but also its less formal dimensions in trade and other partnerships. He has also worked consistently on really every front to advance the interests of Russia. Read More
We’re roughly halfway through primary season and we’re starting to get a sense of who the candidates in many key races will be. The midterms are just five months away. Have questions about how things are looking for the Democrats’ bid to win control of the House? Wondering which Senate races are most critical?
Our senior political correspondent Cameron Joseph has answers.
Send your election-related questions our way through email, or post them in the Hive. We’ll select one each week (more or less) for Cameron to respond to.
Some fascinating reporting here by Tierney Sneed. This is probably Paul Manafort’s last week before he goes to jail.
As predicted, Eric Greitens resignation as Governor of Missouri appears to have stopped in its tracks the investigation into his dark money group.
I’ve been wondering the same thing as TPM Reader GG all day long. It’s a whole other issue that the President’s private criminal defense attorney shouldn’t be opining, seemingly on his behalf, about high-stakes national security issues. But this comment … Rudy told a conference in Tel Aviv that “Kim Jong Un got back on his hands and knees and begged for it, which is exactly the position you want to put him in.”
What is going on with Team Trump appearing to go for the most inflammatory possible language in relation to Kim? Between Bolton’s Libya nonsense and Rudy’s “begging on his knees” remark, surely we have to note a pattern of extreme provocation that seems laser-focused on upending the summit.
You heard that crazy story about how a White House contract employee was arrested by the Secret Service because of an outstanding warrant for attempted murder in Maryland. Almost certainly this is some crazy story tied to Martest Edwards’ personal life and not anything to do with the White House. But he wasn’t just any contractor. He worked at the National Security Council. An online bio on Linkedin says he worked as an executive assistant at the Pentagon from June 2015 and as a “police officer” at the Defense Intelligence Agency since early 2012. He seems to have had various positions at the DIA doing general security related tasks. Who knows what this guy’s story is. But I’m curious to learn more about how he got his job and what his job was at the NSC.
One of my most important lessons in Trumpist ideology came early and it came from then-Times columnist Joe Nocera. Describing one of Trump’s golf resort deals, he wrote over two years ago: “What was taking place in Jupiter was an essential part of Trump’s modus operandi. In every deal, he has to win and you have to lose. He is notorious for refusing to pay full price to contractors and vendors after they’ve completed work for him. And he basically dares the people he has stiffed to sue him…” It goes beyond this though. Trump doesn’t know he’s won until you lose. Indeed, that’s what winning is: making you lose. Read More
A Director at Cambridge Analytica funneled secret cryptocurrency payments to Wikileaks.
David Taintor and I look at the evidence that Donald Trump got his Trump Tower meeting cover story from none other than Vladimir Putin in the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast. Listen here.