Tag: National Security Council

Trump picks loyalist who helped Nunes hype bogus Obama wiretap claim for top NSC intel position

AlterNet logoIn contrast to all the U.S. presidents who were very reliant on their advisers, President Donald Trump has shown a strong preference for unquestioning loyalists — and he has been surrounding himself with them in recent months, from Attorney General William Barr to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. A recent loyalist addition to Team Trump, according to Politico reporters Natasha Bertrand and Daniel Lippman, is Michael Ellis, now senior director of intelligence on the National Security Council (NSC).

Ellis is known for his work as a deputy to White House attorney John Eisenberg and as a counsel to the House Intelligence Committee when it was still being chaired by Rep. Devin Nunes (a far-right California Republican and strident Trump ally). He and Ezra Cohen-Watnick, who now serves as national security adviser to United States Attorney General, were the two White House officials who gave Nunes intelligence reports purporting to show that former officials in President Barack Obama’s administration improperly “unmasked” members of the Trump transition team. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), later said the unsmasking narrative was “all created by Devin Nunes.”

Ellis’ name, Bertrand and Lippman note, has also been heard in connection with the Ukraine scandal: according to Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman — who Trump fired from the NSC after being acquitted by the U.S. Senate on two articles of impeachment — it was Ellis and Eisenberg who decided to move the record of Trump’s now-infamous July 25 phone conservation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into a top-secret NSC server. House Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, argued that Trump committed an impeachable offense when, that day, he tried to pressure Zelensky into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Continue reading.

The looney CrowdStrike conspiracy claims debunked by Fiona Hill during her bombshell impeachment testimony

AlterNet logoAnyone who has spent a lot of time listening to right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars program has heard about the CrowdStrike conspiracy theory —which claims that during the 2016 presidential election, Democrats conspired with the cyber-security firm CrowdStrike to hack the Democratic National Committee (DNC), frame the Russian government for the hack and undermine Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. And the CrowdStrike theory plays a major role in the impeachment inquiry against President Trump, who specifically mentioned CrowdStrike when, on July 25, he tried to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.

Fiona Hill — a former National Security Council (NSC) senior director specializing in Russian and European affairs and a key witness in the impeachment inquiry — debunked the CrowdStrike theory during her public testimony on Thursday for the inquiry. And Hill, speaking on Capitol Hill, had a lot to say about Russian government interference in the 2016 election.

Here are some of the ridiculous claims of CrowdStrike conspiracy theorists that have been debunked by Hill and others during the impeachment inquiry presently taking place in the U.S. House of Representatives.

View the complete November 21 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Trump rails against impeachment inquiry as key White House witness testifies

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Tuesday railed against the impeachment inquiry into his alleged abuse of power ahead of key testimony from a White House official that threatens to deepen the president’s problems.

Trump tweeted or retweeted dozens of messages denying wrongdoing, chastising Democrats for their handling of the impeachment proceedings thus far and questioning the credibility of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official who will meet behind closed doors with lawmakers on Tuesday.

“Supposedly, according to the Corrupt Media, the Ukraine call ‘concerned’ today’s Never Trumper witness,” Trump tweeted. “Was he on the same call that I was? Can’t be possible! Please ask him to read the Transcript of the call. Witch Hunt!”

View the complete October 29 article by Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.

Trump orders ‘substantial’ cut in National Security Council staff: Bloomberg

U.S. President Donald Trump has asked for a substantial cut in the National Security Council staff, Bloomberg reported late on Friday, citing five people familiar with the plans.

The step was described by some sources cited in the report as part of an effort from the White House to make its foreign policy arm leaner.

The request to do so was conveyed to officials in the agency by current White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien earlier this week, according to Bloomberg.

View the complete October 7 article on the Reuters News website here.

White House Official Floated Withdrawing U.S. Forces to Please Putin

The following article by Spencer Ackerman was posted on the Daily Beast website January 9, 2018:

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast

A member of Trump’s National Security Council staff had a radical notion: to pare back American troops in Europe as a way to curry favor with the Kremlin.

A senior National Security Council official proposed withdrawing some U.S. military forces from Eastern Europe as an overture to Vladimir Putin during the early days of the Trump administration, according to a former administration official in the room with him.

While the proposal was ultimately not adopted, it is the first known case of senior aides to Donald Trump seeking to reposition U.S. military forces to please Putin—something that smelled, to a colleague, like a return on Russia’s election-time investment in President Trump. The White House did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment. Continue reading “White House Official Floated Withdrawing U.S. Forces to Please Putin”

Questions multiply over Bannon’s role in Trump administration

The following article by Karen DeYoung was posted on the Washington Post website January 29, 2017:

President Trump’s elevation of his chief political strategist to a major role in national security policy, and a White House order banning refugees from certain Muslim-majority countries from U.S. entry, appeared to come together as cause and effect over the weekend.

Stephen K. Bannon — whose nationalist convictions and hard-line oppositional view of globalism have long guided Trump — was directly involved in shaping the controversial immigration mandate, according to several people familiar with the drafting who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Continue reading “Questions multiply over Bannon’s role in Trump administration”