Tag: Espionage

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Crime Donald Trump Espionage Justice Department

Michael Cohen Warns: Trump Will Blackmail DOJ By Threatening To Give Top-Secret Information To Foreign Countries

Michael Cohen, who served as Donald Trump’s personal attorney for over a decade, says he believes his former client may attempt to share top-secret information with foreign countries if the Justice Department indicts him for violations of the Espionage Act.

Appearing on MSNBC Sunday, Cohen was asked by host Michael Steele:

“Based on everything you know about him, why do you think he wanted to keep those top secret documents at Mar-a-Lago.”

Cohen responded:

“He’s gonna use it as a get out of jail free card. It’s a way to extort America turn around to say if you put me in jail, if you go after me — he’ll even say his children — I will have my loyal supporters who you do not know who has copies of information that may have been, and again this is my conjecture, that I would take those documents, I will release them to Iran, to China, to North Korea, to Russia.

“You want to take me down, I’ll take the whole country down.”

Cohen added:

“Remember, and I’ve said this with you 1000 times, Mike, Donald Trump doesn’t care about this country,” he continued. “He doesn’t care about anyone or anything other than himself.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mGz5ZoKjQ0&feature=emb_logo

Based on Trump’s past actions and behavior, Cohen is probably correct. But if the failed, one-term president does indeed give away classified information to our adversaries, he needs to keep in mind that he could wind up like Ethel and Julius Rosenberg: On federal death row, waiting to be executed, and so can anyone who assists him.

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Crime Donald Trump Espionage Justice Department

DOJ Now Believes Trump Was Up To ‘Something Nefarious’ With Top-Secret Documents: Report

The Justice Department now believes that failed, one-term former president Donald Trump was up to “something nefarious” by keeping classified and top-secret documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

Washington Post reporter Amber Phillips noted on MSNBC Friday that new court filings prove the DOJ has a very important motive for getting the documents back into federal custody:

“Step back and try to think about this because there is a lot going on, and it’s all heating up right now. I think we’re right to be talking about this Mar-A-Lago raid a lot, and that’s because the FBI agents had to go out there and spell out examples of crimes they think Trump or his allies committed in Trump’s residence, and a judge agreed that there is possible cause. I mean, it’s right there. This is pretty serious.”

But it was what Phillips said next that’s most terrifying and worth keeping an eye on in the weeks ahead:

“Now the question that I have and legal experts have that I talk to have said is, did the FBI just want the documents badly enough to go in there and get them and then they’re done, or do they think there was some kind of misuse, and yesterday’s hearing, I thought, in court, reading a little bit of the tea leaves underscored that the FBI and the Justice Department are concerned that something nefarious was going on. There is still an ongoing case, we’ll mess up our prosecution if we keep this going. That is the No. 1 case to follow, and after that there is another Justice Department investigation into Jan. 6 that has hundreds of defendants, and they’re looking into President Trump’s words and actions regarding the Electoral College votes, and we could talk more about that in a minute. But it is a big one.”

 

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Crime Donald Trump Espionage National Security The Trump Adminstration

18 Former Trump Officials Say His ‘Standing Order’ On Declassifying Top Secret Documents Is BS

According to disgraced, one-term former president Donald Trump, he had a “standing order” that stipulated any classified documents he took from the Oval Office to the White House residence residence, meaning it wasn’t improper or illegal for him to have thousands of top secret files at his Mar-a-Lago resort because he had already declassified them.

But 18 former officials who served in the Trump administration, no order was ever issued and the ex-president is lying yet again, according to a report from CNN.

“Nothing approaching an order that foolish was ever given,” said John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff for 17 months from 2017 to 2019. “And I can’t imagine anyone that worked at the White House after me that would have simply shrugged their shoulders and allowed that order to go forward without dying in the ditch trying to stop it.”

Mick Mulvaney, who succeeded Kelly as acting White House chief of staff, also dismissed the idea and told CNN he was “not aware of a general standing order” during his tenure.

A senior White House official dubbed Trump’s assertion of automatic declassification “total nonsense,” adding, “If that’s true, where is the order with his signature on it? If that were the case, there would have been tremendous pushback from the Intel Community and DoD, which would almost certainly have become known to Intel and Armed Services Committees on the Hill.”

Another fact that directly undercuts Trump’s claim of a “standing order” of declassification according to David Laufman, the former chief of the Justice Department’s counterintelligence division, is that “Programs and officials would have been notified. There is no evidence they were.”

Multiple sources said they believed that Trump’s claim the documents were declassified was nothing more than a transparent attempt to try to defend himself for taking the documents to Mar-a-Lago.

“There is a process to declassify, the president can’t just wave a magic wand,” a former senior Trump White House official said.

Meanwhile, Trump and his ragtag collection of so-called “attorneys” are trying to get the affidavit used to obtain the search warrant unsealed without any redactions, a move that could threaten the lives of federal law enforcement officials and jeopardize the ongoing Justice Department investigation of whether or not the former president violated the Espionage Act.

A federal magistrate said Thursday that the DOJ has until Thursday, Aug. 25 to submit a redacted version of the affidavit which he will then rule on.

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Crime Donald Trump Espionage

Trump’s Lawyers Likely To Flip On Him To Save Themselves From Espionage Charges

As Donald Trump’s legal problems continue to multiply, this week’s search warrant served by FBI agents at Mar-a-Lago could also wind up ensnaring his attorneys as co-conspirators.

A report from the New York Times notes that an attorney for Trump assured the Justice Department in June that all classified materials located at the ex-president’s Palm Beach golf resort had been returned, which the FBI has now proven was a blatant lie.

At least one lawyer for former President Donald Trump signed a written statement in June asserting that all material marked as classified and held in boxes in a storage area at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and club had been returned to the government, four people with knowledge of the document said.

The written declaration was made after a visit on June 3 by Jay I. Bratt, the top counterintelligence official in the Justice Department’s national security division.

That report was later confirmed by a second outlet, Mediaite notes:

CNN’s Katelyn Polantz confirmed the NYT reporting on Saturday, that a lawyer for the former president signed a letter in June attesting that all classified records and information had been returned. The existence of this signed statement that was uncovered on Saturday, potentially demonstrates that the Trump team was not completely honest or forthcoming with the Department of Justice about the storage of government material.

This occurred around the time that “Justice Department officials came down to Mar-a-Lago,” in an attempt to recover government documents being held at the estate. From the June visit, officials returned with additional documents marked classified, which was shortly followed by the written declaration from the lawyer claiming that all sensitive material had been returned.

That means that Trump’s legal team is also facing charges of obstructing justice and even espionage, which could send them to prison for decades.

Former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal wrote on Twitter that Trump’s attorneys may now have no choice but to flip on their client and testify against him if they want to avoid significant time in jail.

And former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti noted that the attorney who vouched for Trump can no longer represent him:

As several of Trump’s former attorneys (i.e. Rudy Giuliani, Michael Cohen) can attest, when you agree to represent the Donald, you’re basically throwing your life away.

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Donald Trump Espionage Foreign Policy Russia Trump-Russia

Trump Allowed Russia To Steal The ‘Crown Jewels’ Of U.S. Intelligence: Report

As if it wasn’t bad enough that failed, one-term former President Donald Trump repeatedly kowtowed to Russian President Vladimir Putin, it turns out that Russian hackers also managed to steal what is being called the “crown jewels” from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The Associated Press (AP) reports that hackers from Russia managed to steal emails from top officials in the DHS, which could have serious implications for U.S. national security:

“Suspected Russian hackers gained access to email accounts belonging to the Trump administration’s head of the Department of Homeland Security and members of the department’s cybersecurity staff whose jobs included hunting threats from foreign countries, The Associated Press has learned.

“The intelligence value of the hacking of then-acting Secretary Chad Wolf and his staff is not publicly known, but the symbolism is stark. Their accounts were accessed as part of what’s known as the SolarWinds intrusion, and it throws into question how the U.S. government can protect individuals, companies and institutions across the country if it can’t protect itself.”

The Biden administration is trying to decide exactly what sanctions to impose on Russia for the DHS hack, but based on the AP’s reporting, it seems fair to surmise the punishment will be severe.

Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) says targeting the DHS allowed Russia to have access to some of the most carefully guarded secrets in the world:

“The SolarWinds hack was a victory for our foreign adversaries, and a failure for DHS. We are talking about DHS’s crown jewels.”

Since Homeland Security is tasked with overseeing several important agencies — including the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Customs Service, the Russian hack means Russian intelligence may have obtained information that could directly impact the security of the United States.

Though it remains unclear exactly how harsh the White House will choose to be with sanctions, it has already become clear to Russia that relations between the two nations will continue to be strained. When Biden was recently asked if he thought Putin was a “killer,” he quickly replied that he did.

Trump, on the other hand, tried to suggest there were many killers in the United States, trying to excuse Putin’s murderous actions.

One thing is certain: Russia and Putin will no longer be coddled by the American head of state. And based on their actions, they damn well shouldn’t be.