The former White House adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman claimed on Tuesday that President Donald Trump knew about the hack of Hillary Clinton’s emails before their release in the summer of 2016. When asked during an interview with MSNBC’s Katy Tur whether Trump “knew what was coming out before WikiLeaks released” the emails, Manigault Newman confidently responded “yes,” but she did not specify how. Manigault Newman is promoting her memoir, “Unhinged,” which contains several allegations about Trump’s behavior and dysfunction in his administration. In July, the special counsel Robert Mueller’s office indicted 12 Russian military intelligence officers on charges of conspiracy against the US and aggravated identity theft over the hacking of Clinton’s campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Manigault Newman also confirmed to Tur that she had been interviewed as part of Mueller’s investigation into whether there was coordination between the Russian government and the Trump campaign, but she did not comment further on the substance of the interview. “I am going to expose the corruption that went on in the campaign and in the White House,” Manigault Newman said. “I’m going to continue to blow the whistle on all of this.” The New York Times reported in November that Joseph Mifsud, a highly connected academic, told the Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos in March 2016 that the Russian government had “dirt” on Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.” This disclosure came more than three months before the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks released the hacked emails. Mike Pompeo, who led the CIA before becoming secretary of state, has described WikiLeaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service,” and the organization was identified in the indictment of the 12 Russian military intelligence officers.
Media reports have also found that multiple Trump associates were in touch with WikiLeaks during the election, including the longtime GOP strategist Roger Stone, who was also in contact with the Russia-linked hacker Guccifer 2.0. Stone said in August 2016 that he had “communicated” with Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, but he later walked back his comments and said it was through an intermediary, the radio host Randy Credico. Credico was recently subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury in Mueller’s investigation in September. His attorney told CNN that prosecutors “probably want to talk to him about Roger Stone and Julian Assange.” Stone sent a series of cryptic tweets about WikiLeaks and John Podesta, the Clinton campaign manager, days before the group published a batch of Podesta’s emails in October 2016. Stone denies having any prior knowledge of the document dump. Manigault Newman did not say whether Stone told Trump about the emails, but she described Stone as a “shady character” who was “being investigated and rightfully so.”
On October 10, 2016, three days after WikiLeaks published the first batch of Podesta emails, Trump said he loved WikiLeaks, telling a crowd at a campaign rally that “it’s amazing how nothing is secret today when you talk about the internet.” He also tweeted about WikiLeaks on October 11, writing: “I hope people are looking at the disgraceful behavior of Hillary Clinton as exposed by WikiLeaks. She is unfit to run.” WikiLeaks then reached out to Donald Trump Jr. on October 12, telling him it was “great” to see him and Trump “talking about our publications.” It also “strongly” suggested Trump tweet a link — which he did, two days later — claiming the site would help people search through the hacked documents. WikiLeaks also told Trump Jr. it had just released another batch of Podesta’s emails. An hour later, Trump tweeted: “Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks. So dishonest! Rigged system!” “This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable,” Trump said the same day, at a campaign rally in Florida. “It tells you the inner heart, you gotta read it.” Manigault Newman said people in the Trump administration “should be very worried” about the Mueller investigation.
In short, Trump openly sent a message to the Russians and got immediate action. To say there was “no collusion” is to ignore Trump’s public incitement of Russian hacking, as well as the Trump Tower meeting between his son, son-in-law Jared Kushner, campaign chairman Paul Manafort and a group of Russians; Carter Page’s contacts with Russians and his pro-Russian speech in Russia; and George Papadopoulos’s outreach to those he believed were affiliated with Russia and might have access to dirt on Clinton. That doesn’t even account for any allegedly contacts between Roger Stone and Russia’s favorite cut-out, WikiLeaks. Brennan muses that if Trump called for Russian help in public, it “certainly makes one wonder what Mr. Trump privately encouraged his advisers to do — and what they actually did — to win the election.” It bears repeating that we know a fraction of what special counsel Robert S. Mueller III knows, but at this stage, it is not debatable that some members of the Trump campaign — including the candidate — sought help from a hostile power. That’s collusion by any layman’s definition, and it’s a High Crime and Misdemeanor in the minds of many Americans.
A former official from several Republican administrations said he believes President Trump’s repeated attacks on special counsel Robert Mueller and the Russia investigation are a sign that Trump is worried the investigation is closing in on him. Peter Wehner, who worked in President Reagan’s administration and both Bush administrations, said Monday on CNN that the stronger the case is that Mueller has, “the more vitriolic, the more acrimonious, the more libelous” Trump and his supporters will be in their attacks on the special counsel. “It’s actually a sign of the strength of the case that Mueller is assessing and their fear of what he’s going to reveal,” Wehner said. “If Robert Mueller didn’t have anything, they would ignore him. But they know that he’s got something. And they can’t refute it on the facts, so they have to try and delegitimize him and the investigation.” Wehner added that he doesn’t think Trump’s attacks on Mueller will prove successful. “In the end, Robert Mueller is going to come forward with his report,” he said. “My suspicion is that it’s going to be a very powerful indictment that’s going to demonstrate layers and layers of wrongdoing.”
This silly game has gone on far too long. The country was attacked. Mr. Mueller is trying to determine what happened. The president should be eager to help the country learn and move on. Instead, his lawyers have spent the summer hemming and hawing about the right circumstances for an interview. This summer has brought increasingly dire reminders that Russia interfered with the 2016 U.S. election and that it intends to continue meddling in the country’s democracy. Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats said in July that “warning lights are blinking red” about Kremlin cyber-efforts to meddle in the midterm elections. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) revealed last month that Russians targeted her computer systems for hacking. The president’s senior national security staff stood at the White House lectern on Aug. 2 to inform the country that Russian election interference is a substantial, continuing threat that they take seriously. The message from the nation’s best-informed senior officials was clear, even if, later that evening, Mr. Trump complained that the Russia “hoax” was hurting his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Meanwhile, questions continue to mount about interactions between the Trump team and Russians in 2016. Mr. Trump last week offered his clearest admission yet that a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between his senior staff and a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer was aimed at obtaining damaging information about Hillary Clinton — information that his staff was told was part of a Russian government plot to help Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump later dictated a false statement about the purpose of the meeting. He also, in May 2017, fired FBI Director James B. Comey in an apparent effort to curtail the Russia probe. If Mr. Trump has done nothing wrong and intends to tell the truth, he should welcome Mr. Mueller’s questioning and do everything possible to hasten the special counsel’s final report. Yet , Mr. Giuliani raised the possibility of the Trump side instead preparing its own report to counter whatever Mr. Mueller releases. The effort to create a he-said, he-said situation only heightens the impression that the president has reason to fear the truth. To help dispel that impression, he should answer Mr. Mueller’s questions, and soon.
So now we have the former lawman Rudy Giuliani arguing daily to the American people that their country’s laws and legal processes are illegitimate. Collusion, he now says, is not a crime. President Trump never told James Comey to go easy on Michael Flynn, he avers, contradicting Comey, witnesses who confirm that Trump told everybody but Comey to leave the room on the fateful night—and not least of all, himself. Robert Mueller can’t possibly have anything on Trump. On Fox, Giuliani actually spoke the sentence: “The president’s an honest man.” We know what all this is about. He understands that his client, as the president of the United States, can’t face indictment and trial in the normal way any other American citizen can. The legal system can’t catch up with him, at least while he’s president. Only the political system can. Congressional action is the only remedy for a lawless president. And Congress obeys (in theory) the will of the people. Get the people to hate the law, to believe that the law itself is lawless, and the people’s representatives will be cowed into inaction. So that’s what Giuliani is up to: He, a former federal prosecutor, is trying to get the mob to destroy the law.
You can see the dual claims working in tandem here. The only way Trump is the most honest president we’ve ever had is if facts are “in the eye of the beholder.” The Washington Post assessed that Trump made 4,229 false claims in his first 558 days in office. That’s 7.6 a day. But he—and Giuliani—know that his base of support mostly doesn’t read The Washington Post. They watch Fox News, or listen to talk radio, or otherwise marinate in the wider conservative media ecosystem, where the president’s word is gold and ICE is liberating entire towns from the grip of MS-13. Reality is irrelevant when you have an entire media apparatus ready and willing to bend its contours to your needs. Giuliani himself has taken advantage of this state of affairs frequently. Take this Sunday, when Giuliani told Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union that, “There was no conversation about Michael Flynn” between Trump and then-FBI Director James Comey. The latter claims Trump asked him to let the Flynn thing go, which Comey took to be the president’s attempt to interfere in an ongoing investigation into his associate. But just last month, Giuliani claimed there was a conversation, where Trump asked Comey if he could give Flynn “a break.”
So did he ask him to give Flynn a break, or did the conversation never happen? Yet again, Giuliani seems to be saying everything at once, even if it’s contradictory. It’s an attempt to muddy the waters so that the average member of the public can’t really get a grasp on what’s going on in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, or why the findings might matter from an objective legal standpoint. If all kinds of accusations are constantly flying, it becomes a he-said-she-said where everyone just retreats to their partisan corners.
That’s why we’ve also had a range of talking points on possible collusion:
*There were no contacts of any kind with the Russians.
*There were some contacts, but it was just low-level members of the campaign.
*There was a meeting at Trump Tower with some of the most senior-level members of the campaign, but it was just about Russian adoptions.
*OK, they offered dirt on Hillary Clinton, but that’s politics. Anyone would’ve taken the meeting.
*(And, most recently:) Collusion is not a crime.
How long until we hear that collusion is good as long as you own the libs? Another instructive element of Giuliani’s latest foray into post-truth politics last night was his implication that vicious, cruel, and boorish attacks on your opponents are a form of “honesty.” This was a cornerstone of campaign Trumpism, and it’s a stunning indictment of our politics. In the WWE-pantomime democracy of the moment, landing a punch that earns a roar from the crowd is worth a whole lot more than speaking the truth. Giuliani and Co. are banking on the idea that it doesn’t even really matter what excuse they go with this week. If everyone throws on their team’s jersey when push comes to shove, they believe they can ride out whatever Mueller finds—even if there’s an objective truth about what happened, discoverable and provable, with profound implications for Western democracy, American sovereignty, and the rule of law.
Omarosa and Paul Manafort are occupying far too many headlines for the liking of Donald Trump, American president. So it’s time for some next-level Mean Girls behavior from our large, adult leader. What better way to pull the nation’s eyes away from The Omarosa Tapes or Manafort’s $18,500 python-skin jacket than following through on his threat to yank the security clearances of a former national security official who has criticized him? As CNN’s Kaitlan Collins pointed out, the letter is dated three weeks ago. Does that mean Brennan’s clearance was yanked a few weeks back? That the letter was drawn up but not put in force until now? Either way, Trump is clearly taking punitive action against a political opponent because that person criticized him publicly. You can tell because the list of others in the clearance-revoke crosshairs—supplied by Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders—are all also prominent Trump critics. But perhaps the most striking element is a paragraph detailing the reasoning here from Mr. Donald J. Trump. Brennan should not have access to highly classified material because he makes “unfounded and outrageous allegations,” has “wild outbursts on the internet and and television,” and is prone to “lying” and “increasingly frenzied commentary”? He doth project too much.
In a strikingly authoritarian move, President Trump announced on Wednesday that he has stripped former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance, and is considering taking the same action against a group of current and former officials who have nothing in common beyond being some of his most vocal critics. In addition to Brennan, the list of people who the White House singled out by name includes James Clapper, James Comey, Michael Hayden, Sally Yates, Susan Rice, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bruce Ohr.
After reading a statement from Trump at the beginning of Wednesday’s press briefing, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders fielded a string of questions about Trump’s decision. She struggled to explain the criteria Trump is using to determine who should lose their clearances, and refused to say whether going on TV and criticizing the president — as many of those singled out have done — makes it more likely they will be punished. “It seems like everybody that you mentioned has been a political critic of the president,” ABC’s Jonathan Karl asked. “Is he going after his political opponents with this?” Sanders flatly denied that politics has anything to do with it. “No, if there were others that weren’t, that we deemed necessary, we could certainly take a look and review those as well,” she said. At another point, the Daily Caller’s Saagar Enjeti pointed out to Sanders that one of the people singled out by name for possible punishment, Bruce Ohr, still works for the Department of Justice.
What is remarkable are the lengths Trump goes to shut up critical voices. His lawyer at the time paid hush money to Stormy Daniels. He has been caught on tape discussing hush money to cover up another woman with whom he allegedly had an extramarital affair, Karen McDougal. He apparently insists that his company’s employees sign nondisclosure agreements and tried this with campaign and White House aides as well. He is infamous for threatening to sue individuals and publications who are critical of him. He has threatened and tried to intimidate the press by whipping up his base at rallies, labeling the press the enemy of the people, threatening to pull the (nonexistent) license of NBC and aimed to use the post office to retaliate against Amazon, whose founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Post. He has threatened to revoke the security clearances of former officials who criticize him.
From a constitutional perspective, this is abhorrent and indicative of Trump’s contempt for democracy. His rhetoric about “fake news” has been echoed by despots around the world who crack down or even kill journalists. (In the latest incident, three Russian journalists were killed in the Central African Republic.) The Committee to Protect Journalists has confirmed 35 killings worldwide so far this year who were specifically targeted as journalists. In 2017, 262 journalists were imprisoned around the world for doing their job. The name of the game, whether it is Trump or a Third World despot is the same: Control facts. Intimidate and eliminate criticism, thereby making accountability impossible.
But let’s also look at Trump’s vendetta against free speech from a personal perspective. What is he trying to hide? Seriously, no White House (not even the Nixon White House) has demonstrated such abject fear of inside stories. The common explanation is that this is how he operated as a wealthy businessman, so this is par for the course. However, lots and lots of wealthy people don’t pay hush money, demand nondisclosure agreements and/or threaten litigation at the drop of the hat. Another possibility: Trump, biographers and former employees tell us, has a narcissistic personality that cannot tolerate criticism. Perhaps, but it is also possible there are very good reasons to insist on silence. You’ll recall the “red line” Trump drew about investigating his businesses. He might as well have stuck a neon sign on Trump Tower: “Shady stuff. Do not look.” In short, Trump doesn’t like criticism, to put it mildly, but what he is deathly afraid of is letting the world see what’s going on behind the scenes. You do have to ask what is so terrible that he cannot bear the thought of disclosure?
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