Trump has the absolute right to blab classified intel

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

President Treason confirms that he blabbed sensitive classified information to his BFFs the Russians, and reminds us that he has THE ABSOLUTE RIGHT to do that. He’s the boss aroun heya, unnastan? Nobody gonna tell him what he can and can’t do. He can do whatever he fucking wants to do, and you peasants can go dig up some more turnips.

An openly scheduled meeting, yes, but still a furtive secretive meeting, and no wonder. US journalists, in sharp contrast to Russian journalists, were not allowed to attend that meeting held in their own country by the head of their own state. US reporters out, Russian reporters in. And that’s the setting in which Prez Treason saw fit to blab information and thus likely guaranteed that no more information of that kind will be forthcoming.

That was 3 hours ago. What was supposed to be in tweet #4? Unknown. Maybe someone tackled him to the floor as he was trying to type it.

Comments

4 responses to “Trump has the absolute right to blab classified intel”

  1. Steve Watson Avatar
    Steve Watson

    Um, didn’t we just find the LEAKER in the intelligence community? (Using the word “intelligence” in a very limited way in this case, of course).

  2. AJ Milne Avatar
    AJ Milne

    He does _not_ have this right, under the terms by which the intelligence partner provided said intel.

    Not that he’s ever been much for honouring agreements. But, anyway, he’s now a liar _and_ a blabbermouthed incompetent, on the same issue, in the same day.

  3. iknklast Avatar
    iknklast

    And, even if he does have the right to do it, that doesn’t mean he is right to do it. Rights often take second place to responsibilities. I don’t have the right to do something, however much within my rights, that inflicts harm on others.

    I think he doesn’t realize he forgot to end his right to swing his arm when he got to the end of our nose. Now we are bloody and angry, and he’s just shoving words at us about his damn rights. IF he DOES have that right, then it is damn time to take that right away.

  4. Lady Mondegreen Avatar
    Lady Mondegreen

    I linked to this article from Lawfare in Ophelia’s previous post; I’ma link it again here because it’s a really worthwhile read. It’s a bit long but well worth the time:

    https://www.lawfareblog.com/bombshell-initial-thoughts-washington-posts-game-changing-story

    A few points from the article:

    First, this is not a question of “leaking classified information” or breaking a criminal law. Let’s dispense with one easy rabbit hole that a lot of people are likely to go down this evening: the President did not “leak” classified information in violation of law. He is allowed to do what he did. If anyone other than the President disclosed codeword intelligence to the Russians in such fashion, he’d likely be facing a long prison term. But Nixon’s infamous comment that “when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal” is actually true about some things. Classified information is one of them. The nature of the system is that the President gets to disclose what he wants.

    Second, this is not a garden variety breach, and outrage over it is not partisan hypocrisy about protecting classified information.

    There is a semi-regular partisan food fight over the other party’s handling of classified information. There are too many examples of hypocrisy and faux-outrage on both sides to count. So Republicans can point to any number of statements by Democrats minimizing the significance or severity of disclosing classified information; Democrats, meanwhile can do the same with Republican statements underscoring the importance of protecting classified information.

    This debate, which we assume to be inevitable, is a distraction and should be ignored.

    The information allegedly disclosed here appears to be of an extremely sensitive nature. According to the Post, President Trump’s own aides “appeared to recognize immediately that Trump had overstepped and moved to contain the potential fallout” by contacting the directors of CIA and NSA. The Post does not report whether the White House also notified the foreign ally who provided the information of the compromise.

    Fourth, it really matters why Trump disclosed this information to Russian visitors. The story is vague on this point. But the question of why Trump acted as he did will matter a great deal to how the political system absorbs this news. The implication of the Post story is that Trump acted impulsively and in a boasting kind of way. If that’s right, the matter is egregiously bad.

    Fifth, this may well be a violation of the President’s oath of office. Questions of criminality aside, we turn to the far more significant issues: If the President gave this information away through carelessness or neglect, he has arguably breached his oath of office. As Quinta and Ben have elaborated on in some detail, in taking the oath President Trump swore to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States” and to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” to the best of his ability. It’s very hard to argue that carelessly giving away highly sensitive material to an adversary foreign power constitutes a faithful execution of the office of President.

    Violating the oath of office does not require violating a criminal statute. If the President decided to write the nuclear codes on a sticky note on his desk and then took a photo of it and tweeted it, he would not technically have violated any criminal law–just as he hasn’t here. He has the constitutional authority to dictate that the safeguarding of nuclear materials shall be done through sticky notes in plain sight and tweeted, even the authority to declassify the codes outright. Yet, we would all understand this degree of negligence to be a gross violation of his oath of office.

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