That’s an interesting point, I guess an intelligence officer could see that as a huge deal whereas if that’s the story, it’s going to be a massive dud.
The Putin angle is interesting to me, because if that’s what it is and it goes public, I think it could pierce some bubbles. The first being the eDem bubble that’s living in this fantasy world of not needing to impeach him. The second is the right wing bubble, and obviously most of them are too far gone, but if there’s some evidence that he made some illegal promises to Putin that endangered National Security, it could really shift the “NO COLLUSION” narrative. I also think that if there is still a red line for the McConnell’s of the world, that might be it.
Colluding to win an election is one thing, and they can justify that to themselves because they think the ends justify the means… But colluding to rat out an intelligence asset, or sell out some state secrets to enrich yourself? I think there’s at least a chance that still matters.
The joke will be on me when it comes out that he promised Putin the name of the asset, Alaska, the nuclear football, a US withdraw from NATO and Guam in exchange for green lighting Trump Tower Moscow, and Mitch shrugs.
I’d guess he promised Putin to turn over someone in exchange for Paul Whelan. To be such a big issue it would have to be someone not in US custody like Bill Browder.
Let’s not forget Qatar were the ones who bailed out that building that would have bankrupted Kushner’s whole real estate business, even though everyone thought it was a terrible investment. As ChrisV says they’ve been on the outs with most other Arab states behind SA for the last few years. I don’t think Qatar cares about ploughing its own furrow and pissing people off, but they want out from the half-hearted blockade that’s on them and do seem to be trying to influence the Trump regime with money at the moment.
Pretty certain it has nothing to do with the spy they had to pull out. And honestly if it’s Putin, I don’t see it being something of financial benefit to Trump, simply because I can’t see Putin discussing such things with Trump directly (both because he’s not dumb enough and because it’s a bit trivial for him to be personally concerning himself with). I think it’ll be something related to US strategic concerns and national security and the possibilities are endless - might be election related, might be Persian Gulf related, might be NATO related. In some of those cases (most obviously the election) there are potential personal benefits for Trump, in other cases, like I said, he’s just a dumbass and liable to promise stupid things to people just because he wants them to like him. And that’s the thing - he’d totally want Putin to like him. Look at how he fawns over “the generals” domestically - he’s attracted to that sort of power and wants their approval. This is not to mention the possibility that Putin has blackmail material on him.
EDIT: I mean, for God’s sake, he basically comes out on the side of Trump’s actual intel people that the reason for the exfiltration was leaks by the Fake News Media, while pretending to be a skeptic of Intel sources…
“President Obama’s Education Department — promulgating regulations beyond its statutory authority, invoking erroneous data, and fanning the false narrative of a ‘rape culture’ on college campuses — has created a regime of kangaroo justice,”
I can’t read the Washington Post story, but the NYT’s one said that they had already decided the source needed exfiltrating and made an offer to him in 2016 (and is sourced in part from officials from that era). The concern then was that information about what US intelligence knew that was in the public domain might lead to his identification. So it isn’t just Trump people saying things that call in to question the reason for his exfiltration.
It’s also hard to think the original leak had anything much to do with concern about protection of sources given it enabled the guy’s name to be found within hours, a name which he has used living in the US post exfiltration.
I don’t think this means the don’t-blame-Trump version is therefore the one to believe, but thinking it might be correct doesn’t seem hackish. I’m not defending all of Taibbi’s article though as I’ve not even read it.
If the spy was pulled much earlier, could Trump have promised to return him? Could that be why we’re hearing this story now?
And just imagine being that guy or a member of his family. Hope he’s happy with what he received, because he’ll be sleeping with one eye open for the rest of his life.
Sometime in late 2016, US intelligence officials decide that it would be a good idea to get this guy out (before or after election day doesn’t seem perfectly clear), but the source wants to stay.
In January 2017, there’s some additional reporting about intelligence on Russia’s involvement in election interference.
In May 2017, Trump shares intel with Lavrov.
According to CNN, shortly afterwards, the decision was made to pull the spy out. CNN says that it was “driven, in part, by concerns that [President Donald Trump]and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy.” Note that, in classic hack fashion, Taibbi doesn’t quote this paragraph even though it’s absolutely central to the story. In fact, he quotes the lede and then quotes the third and fourth paragraphs in full (my quote is from the second paragraph). Then he bizarrely refers to the third and fourth paragraphs as the second and third paragraphs, effectively erasing this quote. Maybe the CNN article changed, but the last update is from 9/9. Note that he also doesn’t link to the CNN article even though that’s the subject of his piece.
WaPo says that the specific May 2017 incident was not the driver of the decision to exfiltrate the spy.
The spy is exfiltrated on June 14, 2017, according to the Russian press.
On June 23, WaPo publishes a more in-depth piece on the election hacking intel.
So, the apparent story is that U.S. intel people got worried in 2016, either because their guy’s intel was getting a high profile or specifically because Trump was elected, but they couldn’t convince the spy to leave. Then they got more worried over repeated mishandling of classified info. Eventually, the asset agreed to leave. Then after he was out, the media published a bunch of stuff they had been holding back for safety reasons. The May 2017 thing is apparently not directly involved, but is a publicly known example of Trump mishandling classified info. (Taibbi’s view is that connecting the Lavrov incident is “brazenly fusing two unconnected narratives,” which he supports by simply concealing the claim that connects them.)
This all makes perfect sense. NYT suggests that there were further press inquiries in 2017 that prompted them to take up the exfiltration question again. Perhaps this means that WaPo intended to publish their more in-depth article even if the guy was still in Russia? Or perhaps it just signaled to people that a lot of info was getting out. But CNN and NYT both agree (and WP doesn’t dispute) that there was one push to exfiltrate the guy in 2016, then there was a second, successful one in 2017, which NYT says was prompted by press inquiries and CNN adds was supported in part by mishandling of classified info.
But Taibbi and Trump’s intel goons want to say that leakers to the fake news media were the sole cause of this guy having to leave. Taibbi says that all three pieces admit that this was the “actual reason” for the exfiltration, which is just a lie. These are the best quotes he can actually pull:
In the Times :
But former intelligence officials said there was no public evidence that Mr. Trump directly endangered the source, and other current American officials insisted that media scrutiny of the agency’s sources alone was the impetus for the extraction.
The Post :
In January 2017, the Obama administration published a detailed assessment that unambiguously laid the blame on the Kremlin…
“It’s quite likely,” the official continued, “that the U.S. intelligence community would already be taking a hard look at extracting any U.S. assets who would have been subject to increased levels of scrutiny” after the assessment’s publication .
CNN:
A US official said before the secret operation there was media speculation about the existence of such a covert source, and such coverage or public speculation poses risks to the safety of anyone a foreign government suspects may be involved. This official did not identify any public reporting to that effect at the time of this decision and CNN could not find any related reference in media reports.
The only statement in there that really aligns with Taibbi’s claim is from NYT: “current American officials insisted that media scrutiny of the agency’s sources alone was the impetus for the extraction.”
Taibbi then runs with the storyline provided by the state security apparatus he’s such a principle opponent of, citing three things:
Unnamed “senior intelligence officials” spent much of the early months of the Trump administration bragging their faces off about their supposed penetration of the Kremlin.
A January 2017 WaPo piece on election interference that sourced claims about Russian reactions to Trump’s victory to “intercepted communications” rather than a source.
Discussed at great length, the June 2017 WaPo piece that was published after the source apparently left Russia. Taibbi merely states that this article was published in June 2017. (Actually “June, 2017,” which is a typo mildly suggestive of having had the full date in there, consistent with how he cites other media reports, but then removing it to better sell his story.)
Taibbi’s ranting about John Brennan (is he jealous that American spies get better media gigs than Russian ones?) and his claim to be skeptical of the media parroting the state security apparatus are pretty ballsy but 100% dishonest. John Brennan works for MSNBC, not the CIA! Taibbi himself is furiously misleading his readers to promote the line that is sourced exclusively to “current American officials.”
So, to summarize, the reports don’t make it clear whether the decision to remove this guy was based on concern that the intel he provided about election interference was being used in ways that might compromise him, that the media was asking questions about him, or that Trump’s repeated mishandling of classified info was thought to endanger him. It seems reasonable to believe that it was some combination of all three (and maybe different things were important to the source and the handlers). It also seems to be the case that the link between the Lavrov disclosure and the exfiltration is tenuous, other than as a public example of classified info mishandling that may have been relevant. What is extremely hackish though is to misrepresent basically everything to protect Trump from the charge that he repeatedly mishandles classified info and that doing so has had concrete impacts on national security.
