Re: Trump Watch
Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2020 5:41 pm
The corrupt toadying in the Administration plunges right ahead. How many people here heard that the Bolton book had classified material in it? Yup. Of course you did. And you will continue hearing it if you watch Fox News, because they don't let facts get in the way of a good accusation.
Here's the story laid out in longer detail than most of us have any appetite for.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/23/us/p ... ocess.html
In a letter filed in court Wednesday, Ellen Knight, the professional who did the pre-publication review with Bolton, accuses the White House of falsely asserting that Bolton revealed classified information, and of retaliating against her when she refused, for reasons she stated carefully and in depth, to go along with an attempt to get her to back them up.
They lied, and then they pressured her to confirm their lie.
It turns out the accusation was by Michael Ellis, an unqualified political appointee who followed his own ignorant impulses and simply compared content to matters that were on a list of things that had been classified. Sounds legit, right? In the world Rudy Giuliani inhabits, that's all that matters. Sounds legit. The problem is the standard used for that list is the one for official government documents, which "pre-emptively classify" material, such as discussions with foreign leaders, which have not actually been reviewed for material that meets the standard of needing to be classified. But Knight and the other professionals who reviewed the book had already followed standard procedure by looking at the more stringent exclusion standards applied to books published outside, relying on whether the material stayed classified, based on real principles.
So the review by Ellis, whose qualification for the job is that he had worked for Devin Nunes, overturned the professional finding and claimed the book was full of still-classified material. Then the Justice Department, carrying this opinion, sued to block publication of the book. Fortunately the judge wasn't convinced. Would you, as a judge, take the Justice Department's word for anything these days? Judge Lamberth refused to censor the book, even though he left the question of its containing classified material for another day.
That should have been enough to pour shame on Ellis, the Justice Department, and the rest of His Messiahship's enablers. But they didn't stop there. Not only was Knight removed from her White House job and shunted back to a former job outside the national security bureaucracy, but they asked her not to communicate with them in writing so that they could deny her finding that the book contained no unclassified material by never officially declaring the pre-publication process to be complete.
The letter also describes the pressure campaign (more than 18 hours of meetings - this is Benghazi all over again, except done in the dark without cameras) by political appointees to get Knight to say she had erred. They challenged her to explain, and she responded with the details. Unfortunately for them she had actually considered the issues and knew the clear and objective reasons for allowing those matters to be published.
When Knight asked the lawyers why they were so insistent on pursuing legal action against Bolton, she speculated that it was because the most powerful man in the world said that it needed to happen. Several registered their agreement with that assessment, according to her letter.
When Adam Schiff pointed out that His Messiahship would continue to put his own political goals ahead of the good of the American public, every person in the room and most of the television viewers knew he was describing the actual situation.
Here's the story laid out in longer detail than most of us have any appetite for.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/23/us/p ... ocess.html
In a letter filed in court Wednesday, Ellen Knight, the professional who did the pre-publication review with Bolton, accuses the White House of falsely asserting that Bolton revealed classified information, and of retaliating against her when she refused, for reasons she stated carefully and in depth, to go along with an attempt to get her to back them up.
They lied, and then they pressured her to confirm their lie.
It turns out the accusation was by Michael Ellis, an unqualified political appointee who followed his own ignorant impulses and simply compared content to matters that were on a list of things that had been classified. Sounds legit, right? In the world Rudy Giuliani inhabits, that's all that matters. Sounds legit. The problem is the standard used for that list is the one for official government documents, which "pre-emptively classify" material, such as discussions with foreign leaders, which have not actually been reviewed for material that meets the standard of needing to be classified. But Knight and the other professionals who reviewed the book had already followed standard procedure by looking at the more stringent exclusion standards applied to books published outside, relying on whether the material stayed classified, based on real principles.
So the review by Ellis, whose qualification for the job is that he had worked for Devin Nunes, overturned the professional finding and claimed the book was full of still-classified material. Then the Justice Department, carrying this opinion, sued to block publication of the book. Fortunately the judge wasn't convinced. Would you, as a judge, take the Justice Department's word for anything these days? Judge Lamberth refused to censor the book, even though he left the question of its containing classified material for another day.
That should have been enough to pour shame on Ellis, the Justice Department, and the rest of His Messiahship's enablers. But they didn't stop there. Not only was Knight removed from her White House job and shunted back to a former job outside the national security bureaucracy, but they asked her not to communicate with them in writing so that they could deny her finding that the book contained no unclassified material by never officially declaring the pre-publication process to be complete.
The letter also describes the pressure campaign (more than 18 hours of meetings - this is Benghazi all over again, except done in the dark without cameras) by political appointees to get Knight to say she had erred. They challenged her to explain, and she responded with the details. Unfortunately for them she had actually considered the issues and knew the clear and objective reasons for allowing those matters to be published.
When Knight asked the lawyers why they were so insistent on pursuing legal action against Bolton, she speculated that it was because the most powerful man in the world said that it needed to happen. Several registered their agreement with that assessment, according to her letter.
When Adam Schiff pointed out that His Messiahship would continue to put his own political goals ahead of the good of the American public, every person in the room and most of the television viewers knew he was describing the actual situation.