In this piece in the Washington Post, Greg Sargent writes about all the ways Trump’s impunity from accountability has already resulted in more abuse of power. But this example is one I hadn’t thought of and it’s very disturbing:
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) has called on the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, to undertake a review of whether the administration is over-classifying government information to keep it hidden from public view to protect Trump.
We already have examples of this. Democrats on the House impeachment inquiry demanded declassification of closed-door testimony by a top aide to Vice President Pence about his Sept. 18 call with the Ukrainian president.Opinion | U.S. foreign policy is now Trump’s foreign policy. That’s bad for the world.President Trump’s attempt to extort Ukraine for personal gain signals a dangerous turn for American foreign policy, says Global Opinions editor Christian Caryl. (Joshua Carroll/The Washington Post)
The administration refused. Democrats continued to insist it showed Pence had deeper knowledge of Trump’s Ukraine shakedown than publicly known. But this information was kept classified and was never aired at Trump’s Senate trial. “What we know is that the president sees classification as a way to advance his political interests,” Murphy told me in an interview. “He sees that he can use classification to keep embarrassing information from the public.”AD
Now Murphy wants GAO to conduct a systematic review of classified information currently held by the Office of Senate Security, which guards such info, to determine two things. First, whether information that should be classified is being over-classified, unduly limiting how many lawmakers see it. Second, whether information is being classified that shouldn’t be at all, in violation of the law.
Both are bad. The first severely cramps congressional oversight. The second could be illegally constraining members of Congress from publicly discussing information that would illuminate the administration’s conduct and policies.
Murphy wants GAO to compare classification designations that information received when it was held by the administration alone, with designations it got when it was transmitted to the Senate. This would show whether additional classifications were larded on before the info was given to lawmakers.AD
Murphy claims he has already seen a pattern of this. GAO could flesh this out.
Murphy suggested a hypothetical, in which the intelligence community documents another extensive Russian effort to sabotage the 2020 election to help reelect Trump — which intelligence officials themselves have warned is happening. Congress would gather information on this effort. But if Trump over-classified it, lawmakers couldn’t discuss it publicly.
“The information we will gather about Russian interference will likely come through clandestine methods,” Murphy told me. “It is possible the president will be able to keep classified all the information the U.S. gathers about Russian attempts to support his election. That’s the nightmare scenario.” This would put members of Congress in the “awful and unacceptable position” of possessing information about outside interference in the election, without being able to legally share it with the public, Murphy added.AD
Would these members of Congress allow Trump to steal the election rather than reveal classified reports that he’s stealing the election?
I honestly don’t know. I do know that this is worrying:
CIA Director Gina Haspel’s attendance at President Donald Trump’s State of the Union on Tuesday—and her decision to stand and clap at certain lines—has surprised former senior intelligence officials who say the agency director should consistently appear nonpartisan.
Haspel entered the House chamber for Trump’s speech on Tuesday—for the second year in a row—with other members of the president’s Cabinet, including political appointees like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. And she stood, as they did, at Trump’s comments about Medicare and Social Security, abortion, paid family leave and immigration. She clapped at his line about rebuilding infrastructure.
As a career agency official, Haspel is generally held to the same standard as military leaders, who usually clap sparingly, if at all, during the State of the Union to avoid any appearance of partisanship, the former officials said.
The article suggests she was just trying to curry favor with Trump so he wouldn’t mess with the CIA. This seems a little bit extreme for that, don’t you think? She could have just followed the lead of the Joint Chiefs and clapped quietly for certain discrete comments such as the one celebrating the parents of the woman killed by ISIS. But no. She went full MAGA.
I can’t say it would surprise me. She was, after all, heavily involved in the torture regime and nobody loves torture more than Trump. She may just really, really like him, as so many others apparently do.