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Ned Price @nedprice
, 17 tweets, 5 min read Read on Twitter
<THREAD> Remember when CIA Director Pompeo was considered one of the admin's “adults"? Turns out he's more than just a hack; he’s dangerous.
The latest evidence—a doozy—is @theintercept's rpt revealing he met with Bill Binney, apparently at Trump’s urging. theintercept.com/2017/11/07/dnc…
Binney has gained far-right & far-left-wing prominence for his insistence that the DNC hack was an inside job. consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/int…
This is the same theory that the Russians, their American boosters & enablers, & @Wikileaks has pushed to take focus off Russia.
Pompeo professes to believe the Intelligence Community’s (IC) high confidence assessment Russia was behind the hack & leak of DNC et al…
…Even though he has consistently downplayed Russia’s electoral interference, as he did publicly in July at the @AspenSecurity Forum…
…and—intentionally or not—falsely claimed that IC determined the interference did not affect the election’s outcome. washingtonpost.com/world/national…
Per @theintercept, Pompeo met w Binney at CIA's Langley HQS, where he was accompanied by surely otherwise busy CIA subject matter experts.
Startlingly, according to Binney, Pompeo then PROPOSED Binney meet with other intel agencies & Pompeo pledged to set up those meetings.
These are not the tactics of a man trying merely to get his conspiracy-fueled boss off his back. Suggests Pompeo buys what Binney is selling
Also lends credence to CIA officers’ concerns Pompeo, rather than speak truth to power, would go to bat for Trump. washingtonpost.com/amphtml/world/…
But Russia isn’t the only area of concern. Pompeo is Trump’s lackey when it comes to Iran, as I previously explained
& those stories that Trump pressured NSA Dir. Adm. Rogers, DNI Dir. Coats & others to tell Comey to cool it? washingtonpost.com/world/national…
They all feature Pompeo, but, unlike other protagonists, wo/ suggestion Pompeo rebuffed the ask to obstruct justice or sell a narrative.
There’s at least a circumstantial case that, rather than complain to colleagues, as other did, Pompeo did what was asked of him by Trump.
Just about everything we’ve heard of Pompeo’s ldrship is troubling. But real concern is what we’re NOT seeing or hearing--at least not yet.
All told, these stories reveal Pompeo has no respect for the work & word of the men & women he has no business purporting to lead. <END>
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THREAD: Paul Whelan's release must be a priority, but a 1-for-1 swap for Maria Butina would set a dangerous precedent. There are creative, strategic ways to avoid it, including a model from 2014, which the Trump administration would be wise to consider. (I won't hold my breath).
First, the danger. Swapping Whelan for Butina, who has pleaded guilty to the charges she faces as a Russian agent, would signal to Moscow that any private US citizen is fair game to extract the release of its own agents. All Americans in Russia would be placed in harm's way.
That's why it can't be a 1-for-1 swap. The Obama administration faced a similar situation in 2014. The Cubans wanted to swap Alan Gross, a former USAID contractor whom they had baselessly accused of espionage, for members of the so-called "Cuban 5" spy ring detained in the US.
Read 9 tweets
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THREAD: If past is prologue, Trump will use this belated troop visit to deflect from the rhetorical bodyslam his own SecDef delivered to him & his worldview last week. The record shows Trump has consistently used our military as a prop for his personal and political advantage:
As a candidate, Trump took aim at one of our most storied military heroes, John McCain, claiming he liked those "who weren't captured." politico.com/story/2015/07/…
He later savaged a Gold Star family, claiming the fallen soldier's mother perhaps wasn't allowed to speak. nytimes.com/2016/07/31/us/…
Read 15 tweets
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This raises lots of questions, but also the possibility the Trump administration is furnishing highly confidential personal information of public-servants-turned-Democratic-candidates to their political opponents. Have to get to the bottom of this. nyti.ms/2MVzfNK
The @CLFSuperPAC obtained an UNREDACTED version of @SpanbergerVA07’s SF86, a highly confidential personal document never released to the public. Not even her SSN was blacked out. Either the Trump administration provided it, or a foreign adversary did.

We cannot shrug this off.
These docs seem to have originated with a FOIA request, making it all the more likely this wasn’t the Russians or Chinese—but our own govt potentially exacting retribution against a Democrat in a competitive race.

That makes it all the more frightening. buzzfeednews.com/article/gracew…
Read 5 tweets

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<THREAD> On the heels of Pompeo’s disastrous trip to North Korea, Trump took to Twitter today to insist Kim Jong Un signed a “contract” to denuclearize & to blame China for any apparent NKorean backsliding.

Here are some thoughts on where things stand.
1/
As many North Korea experts warned, Trump entered last month’s Singapore summit with Kim with two misimpressions.

First, Trump believed his “maximum pressure” campaign meant that he had Kim over a barrel, ready to make big nuclear concessions. 2/
But, in reality, Kim entered the summit from a perceived position of strength having already crossed the goal line, achieving a nuclear capability to credibly threaten the United States (via an ICBM), thereby ensuring regime survival & global prestige. 3/
Read 22 tweets
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<THREAD> On North Korea, Trump is prone to one of two opposite errors—either of which could lead to a war and/or leave our alliances in Asia in tatters. 1/7
The first is MAXIMALISM: Expecting a Libya-style capitulation, which is what Trump's comments to Macron suggest and what Bolton and Pompeo have intimated in recent days.

This is the danger my new @washingtonpost article with @NarangVipin discusses. washingtonpost.com/outlook/trump-… 2/7
The risk that unrealistic expectations could prematurely doom diplomacy and put us back on a path to war is also discussed in this good piece by @james_acton32 foreignpolicy.com/2018/05/02/kor…
Read 7 tweets
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<THREAD> Why are some exaggerating/mistaking what the #GrassleyMemo says?

See this widely-shared thread below by @KimStrassel.

I wrote about the Grassley memo at length here: justsecurity.org/51956/dissecti…

I’ll raise specific points of disagreement with Strassel in this thread ... 1/
2. Strassel: “it confirms the Nunes memo and blows up the Schiff talking points”

FALSE: it undercuts #NunesMemo on 2 main claims: whether the FISA application relied on news story for corroboration and whether DOJ told court about political origins of Steele’ dossier.

I wrote:
3. Strassel: #GrassleyMemo “is confirmation that the FBI's FISA application relied on the dossier and a news article”

FALSE: In addition to what I wrote in #2 on the news article, top expert David Kris explains Nunes memo highly implausible on this issue:
Read 10 tweets
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<THREAD> This is a season of peace, but we need to pause for a minute to talk about war. The greatest security threat in the coming year is the prospect of a massive war on the Korean Peninsula—& Trump's dangerous gambit toward North Korea makes that outcome much more likely. 1/
North Korea has had nukes since the mid-2000s. During the 2016 campaign, when the North’s capability only seemed to threaten our regional allies South Korea and Japan, Trump was relatively sanguine. 2/
In fact, candidate Trump even suggested that Seoul & Tokyo should fend for themselves and consider getting their own nukes to counter the threat from North Korea rather than turning to America for help. nytimes.com/2016/03/27/us/… 3/
Read 37 tweets
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<THREAD> Separate from the very real possibility of Trump-Russia collusion, the Flynn revelations this week speak to a clear pattern of behavior by both Team Trump and GOP leadership: conspiring to go easy on the Kremlin despite Russian interference in our election. 1/
We know the Kremlin reached out to the Trump campaign (e.g., Papadopoulos, Don Jr) via multiple channels to offer Clinton “dirt”/emails, and received a welcome response from Team Trump. washingtonpost.com/news/politics/… 2/
We know that Trump urged Russia to hack HRC in the summer of 2016 & that Trump surrogates repeatedly sought emails via Russian hackers & WikiLeaks. slate.com/blogs/the_slat… 3/
Read 16 tweets
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Let's talk about the #MasterpieceCakeshop case at #SCOTUS. It involves a familiar story... <THREAD>
Three customers walk into a small business that sells specialty foods. The owner turns them away or denies access to full range of products.
When the owner is challenged in court, he claims the First Amendment exempts him from public accommodations law. He's described as an artist
Read 19 tweets

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