"Susan Hennessey, a national security fellow at the
Democratic-aligned Brookings Institution and former
National Security Agency lawyer, wrote: “Hard to fully
convey the gravity of this… Unthinkable Kushner could
stay in the White House… The most significant question
seems to be whether Trump was aware of and/or
directed Jared and Flynn’s contacts w/Kislyak."
"Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA and NSA
and a prominent Trump critic, told CNN on Saturday:
“This is off the map. I know of no other experience like
this in our history, certainly within my life experience."
THE
SWAMP DWELLERS:
GLOBAL
LOOTING of the POOR
TRUMP,
KUSHNER and FAMILY, BILL, HILLARY &
CHELSEA CLINTON, MICHELLE AND “HOPE & CHANGE” PSYCHOPATH MUSLIM BARACK
OBAMA!
Will
they finish off America as they serve themselves and the super rich???
"Susan Hennessey, a national security fellow at the
Democratic-aligned Brookings Institution and former
National Security Agency lawyer, wrote: “Hard to fully
convey the gravity of this… Unthinkable Kushner could
stay in the White House… The most significant question
seems to be whether Trump was aware of and/or
directed Jared and Flynn’s contacts w/Kislyak."
"Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA and NSA
and a prominent Trump critic, told CNN on Saturday:
“This is off the map. I know of no other experience like
this in our history, certainly within my life experience."
THE SWAMP DWELLERS:
Jared Kushner’s Growing Stench of Treason
It’s time to talk about treason.
We now know, according to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports cited by the Washington Post, that in early December 2016 Jared Kushner and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak “discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities, in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring.”
At any time in the Cold War, what Kushner did would certainly have attracted the stigma of treachery. Should the same standard apply today?
Let’s consider Kushner’s best defense. Backchannels are an accepted part of diplomatic relations. A relationship may be too controversial for public consumption, and it is useful to have fora where diplomats and those entrusted with the leadership of states can speak frankly, without the glare of the media.
But this appears to have been no ordinary proposal for a backchannel. First and foremost, the intent was to avoid monitoring by the United States’ own intelligence agencies. And second, Trump’s team weren’t in government yet (unless the intent was for the backchannel to continue, or to start, after the inauguration, and thus provide a means to avoid U.S. intelligence monitoring while in office, which would be even more dubious).
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The charitable interpretation here is that the Trump transition team did not want the Obama administration to know what they were discussing with Moscow. But this is unpersuasive as a defense, because if those conversations were within the realm of legality, what difference would it have made if the Obama administration knew about them? One might retort that it was important that the outreach to the Russians be kept out of the public domain, and that the Obama administration could have frustrated that by leaking to the press. But this argument is inane, given how publicly Trump advertised his desire for rapprochement with Russia during the campaign.
A final argument might be that Trump’s team was aware that it is illegal for private citizens to conduct diplomacy with a foreign government, so they needed a secret backchannel. Of course, being illegal, the Trump team would never make that argument. They might say, perhaps not unreasonably, that they were not conducting diplomacy, but merely talking to the Russians as an opposition party might do (call it the Marine le Pen argument). But you can’t have it both ways: either the enterprise was legal, in which case there would have been no need to hide it from U.S. intelligence, or it was not.
Let’s be clear. There would be nothing inherently illegitimate with the Trump transition team pursuing better relations between the United States and Russia. Indeed, it was a major part of the campaign platform Trump used to win the election. Foreign policy debate between Russia doves and hawks has been going back and forth since the deterioration of post-Cold War relations following the West’s intervention in Kosovo 1999, and those who want the West to have warmer relations with Russia have many reasonable arguments.
But it’s the very legitimacy of wanting better relations with Russia, given Trump’s democratic mandate to pursue such a course, that makes Kushner’s desire to hide the Trump transition team’s connections with the Kremlin from U.S. intelligence so dubious, especially if he did intend for the backchannel to continue, or to start, after the inauguration. That is the kernel of the illegitimacy here: not the effort to improve relations through a backchannel, but the extraordinary measures to keep it secret from one’s own side.
In the Cold War, Kushner’s actions would have attracted the stigma of treachery because Russia was an enemy of the United States. But his actions would not have gotten him indicted because there was no ongoing open war in accordance with the legal definition of treason (18 U.S. code § 2381): “Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason”.
Similarly today, what we are talking about is not the legal offense of treason but the stigma of treachery — the broader social meaning of treason.