This morning, ahead of Sally Yates' testimony before the Senate sub-committee, President Trump tweeted the following:
"Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to the White House Council (sic)."
Aside from the fact that the word he was searching for was "Counsel", this was posted to his official POTUS account on Twitter, which means it's archived forever.
The problem - this is a potential violation of 8 USC 1512 (d), which makes it a crime to harass or attempt to intimidate a federal witness. Someone at the WH must have pointed this out because the tweet was deleted a couple of hours later. But since it was posted to an official government account, it's still archived, so the evidence is still there.
Any reasonable person can understand that you don't comment on witness testimony before the fact in an attempt to discredit them. The operative word here is "reasonable" - when you're Donald J Trump, you apparently get to play by your own rules.
For the record, Yates and Clapper were both asked that question. Both answered, "I don't know". Will we now see tweets accusing them - with absolutely no evidence - of lying under oath?
What we know now is that Yates warned WH Counsel about Flynn and the possibility that he was compromised. We also just learned that Obama advised Trump NOT to hire Flynn during their meeting two days after the election. The Trump administration position, voiced over and over again by Sean Spicer, that Obama is responsible for Flynn's security clearance doesn't pass the sniff test. The WH does not assign or remove a security clearance - it's not their job. Obama fired Flynn in 2014; the contacts with the Russians occurred in 2016, and he was hired by Trump in 2017.
Further, there is a difference between clearance and access - you may have clearance, but it's useless without access. Having a driver's license is clearance; getting the keys to the car is access.
Access is provided by the one who hires you, and that requires vetting, which is something the Trump team didn't do with Flynn. Just another example of Trump blaming someone else for something he screwed up.
Just get used to this. Everything that goes right, whether or not he had anything to do with it, is a win for Trump. Everything that goes wrong is someone else's fault. Obama seems to be a favorite target. |
