System corruption in the US side made Russia's Ukraine invasion inevitable. Also China is reacting to war as a regional power and not a super power
Keep in mind the fake Kremlin order of courage award. It exemplifies much of the dynamics of this horrible war. which was started by Putin because he thought the USA was hopelessly corrupted from top to bottom.
The system corruption I am referring to has two legs. First is the attempt by Meadows on Trumps behalf to use intimidation of Trump's opponents, a move gleefully tracked in real time by both Russia and China, and also the dynamics of the "perfect call" between Trump and Zeleniskyy as to talking dirt on Joe Biden and this in exchange for arms for the Ukraine army. Again, both gleefully tracked by Russia and China
With that sort of garbage, Putin drew with his world view the "obvious" conclusion that Washington was so corrupted that he had a free hand to do whatever he damn well pleased
So what does Putin see, and others as to the chessboard as to Ukraine, and what this reveals, in terms of power plays ?
quote
But how mighty is China really? Measuring and comparing power between nations and across time is an imprecise exercise at best. Nonetheless, we can gain valuable information about China’s current power position if we compare it to the contemporary United States and Cold War-era Soviet Union—and consider three important concepts: polarity, hegemony, and the original definition of a superpower.
Such a comparison reveals that the United States is a pole, regional hegemon, and superpower. The Soviet Union was a pole and a superpower—but did not have regional hegemony. And although China is a pole in what is now a bipolar U.S.-China system, it is neither a regional hegemon nor a superpower. While these categorizations might read like abstract nuances in a scholarly debate, they actually have major, concrete implications for strategy and policy in the 21st century.
Polarity?is simply the number of great powers in the international system. The most common method to determine which powers count as great is to look at key indicators: population, territorial size, resource endowment, economic capability, military strength, political stability, and policy competence. Using these seven indicators, we can see the international system now has a distinct?bipolar power structure, with China and the United States as the two poles—similar to the U.S.-Soviet rivalry during the Cold War.
In terms of economic power, the current system is actually even more perfectly bipolar than during the Cold War, with China’s?aggregated economic wealth?almost equaling that of the United States. The?Soviet economy, on the other hand, never accounted for more than 50 percent of the U.S. economy. With regard to military power, however, the current international system is less perfectly bipolar than it was during the Cold War, with a larger gap in military might between Washington and Beijing now than Washington and Moscow then. The major reason for the larger gap is that China spends a?smaller share of its GDP?on defense than the Soviet Union did during the Cold War.
End of quote
So what does Putin do to redress this deficiency ?
quote
Putin and his henchmen are at their core, dishonest, manipulative and proudly immoral. Their public messaging and laughable foreign affairs statements are part of their system for influencing others to achieve their strategic goals. Fortunately, Russian influence efforts are clumsy, heavy-handed and more often than not, fear based. Truth rarely comes into play. In other words, Putin and pals threaten, in order to:
end of quote
This is in a word GAS LIGHTING on a massive scale, and should be seen as such.
The reason why Putin thought he could get away with invading Ukraine is frankly due to the corruption which Trump showed in 2019 and in 2021 , post election
quote
Months after he had left office, former president Donald Trump, directed his former chief-of-staff, Mark Meadows to leak highly classified government records regarding Peter Strzok, the former Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, to the press.?In the final days of Trump’s presidency, Meadows had removed the classified files from the White House, which Trump and Meadows believed would discredit Strzok.
The explosive ramifications of such a knowing and willful leak of classified information by Trump, or by someone on his behalf, at his direction, after he left office, is that Trump would have potentially committed a felony.
As president, Trump enjoyed a virtually absolute and unfettered constitutional authority to declassify virtually almost any government secrets he so wished. But once gone from office, Trump no longer had any legal authority or power beyond that of an ordinary citizen to declassify government papers or; much less leak classified records. Any provision of classified information at that time would be a crime.
And of course THIS one, the 2019 harassment call between Zeleniskyy and Trump'
quote
The President:?I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.
end of quote
IMO Putin thought he had broken the US alliance system and that he could count upon a level of avarice and cowardly behavior ,so if Putin could make his invasion of Ukraine a permament occupation that the alleged US hegemon would fall apart due to systematic corruption
IMO Putin was counting on the USA to have rotted out from top to bottom so there would be nary a whimper as to what Putin did, if he could occupy Kyiv within a month and coerece the EU into compliance
IMO using corruption as a strategic weapon
Needless to state Putin is finding the situation not nearly so simple
Also, China is leveraging what it can of the situation in East Asia as a regional dominant power, but not as a global hegemon. An imbalance which infuriates many in Beijing
quote
Why China Is Not a Superpower
How the United States, China, and the former Soviet Union stack up.
By?Jo Inge Bekkevold, a senior China fellow at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies.
MARCH 2, 2023, 5:00 AM
China’s growing power is the single most influential driver of geopolitical change today. Notwithstanding Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, the United States has clearly identified China as its?number one challenge. In June 2022, for the first time ever, NATO included China in its?Strategic Concept, signaling a radical shift in the bloc’s security outlook.
But how mighty is China really? Measuring and comparing power between nations and across time is an imprecise exercise at best. Nonetheless, we can gain valuable information about China’s current power position if we compare it to the contemporary United States and Cold War-era Soviet Union—and consider three important concepts: polarity, hegemony, and the original definition of a superpower.
Such a comparison reveals that the United States is a pole, regional hegemon, and superpower. The Soviet Union was a pole and a superpower—but did not have regional hegemony. And although China is a pole in what is now a bipolar U.S.-China system, it is neither a regional hegemon nor a superpower. While these categorizations might read like abstract nuances in a scholarly debate, they actually have major, concrete implications for strategy and policy in the 21st century.
Polarity?is simply the number of great powers in the international system. The most common method to determine which powers count as great is to look at key indicators: population, territorial size, resource endowment, economic capability, military strength, political stability, and policy competence. Using these seven indicators, we can see the international system now has a distinct?bipolar power structure, with China and the United States as the two poles—similar to the U.S.-Soviet rivalry during the Cold War.
In terms of economic power, the current system is actually even more perfectly bipolar than during the Cold War, with China’s?aggregated economic wealth?almost equaling that of the United States. The?Soviet economy, on the other hand, never accounted for more than 50 percent of the U.S. economy. With regard to military power, however, the current international system is less perfectly bipolar than it was during the Cold War, with a larger gap in military might between Washington and Beijing now than Washington and Moscow then. The major reason for the larger gap is that China spends a?smaller share of its GDP?on defense than the Soviet Union did during the Cold War.
According to the theory of?structural realism, the number of poles in a power structure informs great power behavior and international order in unique ways. A bipolar power structure is expected to drive the two poles toward an intensive, all-encompassing rivalry and create a distinct two-bloc divide between the two rivals and their respective allies—a divide that extends to military, economic, and other matters. This was the case during the U.S.-Soviet rivalry, and we see signs of a similar development today. (The debate even asks whether the U.S.-China rivalry will turn into a?new cold war.)
Polarity alone, however, does not provide us with the full picture of China’s might. Unlike polarity, which derives from power and size, the concepts of hegemony and superpower are geopolitical concepts that provide us with additional information about the reach and limits of China’s influence.
“Superpower” was coined as a concept by the American international relations scholar William T. R. Fox in his book?The Superpowers, published in 1944. With the United States and China the two dominant states in a bipolar power structure, it is common to refer to both countries as superpowers. Needless to say, only poles in the international system can be superpowers—but being a pole is not the only requirement for being a superpower. If one goes by Fox’s original definition, China is not a superpower.
Fox divided great powers into two categories: superpowers and regional powers. According to Fox, superpowers have global influence and the capability to throw their armed forces into any major theater of war dictated by grand strategy. Regional powers, on the other hand, may enjoy the formal and ceremonial prestige of great power status, but their influence is great in only a single theater of power conflict. Fox stressed that only a power with a huge territorial range can be a power in more than one part of the world. In 1944, Fox still defined Britain as a superpower due to its Commonwealth and empire—and its ability to project power in all the main theaters of the world, including with large numbers of colonial troops. Yet after World War II, it soon became obvious that Britain was no longer either a pole or a superpower.
The United States is undoubtedly a superpower, with a world-wide network of alliance agreements and overseas bases enabling it to deploy and move forces rapidly between various theaters. The Soviet Union, too, was a superpower. Although Moscow was never able to establish a world-wide network of military bases on a similar scale as Washington, its position in the Eurasian heartland allowed it to influence the strategic theaters in Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia. Toward the end of the Cold War, the Soviet Union also had a navy with global reach.
China, however, is only a regional power. It wields global economic power and influence, but the geographic reach of its military is largely limited to the Asian and Indo-Pacific theaters. From its position in the East Asian rimland, China has more limited geographic reach into the Eurasian continent than the Cold War-era Soviet Union did—and less access to the high seas than either the United States or the Soviet Union. The United States’ blessed geographic position gives it direct and unhindered access to the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic oceans. Although the Soviet Union’s access to the high seas was more restricted than that of the United States, it still had direct access from its homeland to the Pacific and Arctic oceans, as well as almost-but-not-quite direct access to the Atlantic Ocean. China only borders the Pacific Ocean—and is largely hemmed in by major island chains it does not control.
If China is not satisfied being a regional power and aims to become a true superpower, it will need to leapfrog the geopolitical constraints of its home region.
Naturally, China’s nuclear, space, and cyber capabilities all have worldwide reach. China is modernizing and expanding its?nuclear force?as well as its nuclear delivery platforms. Moreover, with nearly 600 satellites in orbit—of which 229 are intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance satellites—China has the world’s?second?largest fleet of satellites?after the United States. Chinese?cyber capabilities?can wreak havoc in every corner of the world. And these days,?balloons?should perhaps also be added to the picture as a potent capability with global reach.
Nevertheless, the geographic reach of these technologies is insufficient to strongly influence strategic theaters beyond Asia. Even in an age of space and cyber warfare, coercive diplomacy is more effective when troops can be physically deployed to a border or shore. Gunboat diplomacy still requires boats, and airplanes still need airfields to operate in far-flung regions. In other words, geography makes China even more dependent than the United States and former Soviet Union on overseas bases and willing allies to move its armed forces beyond its home region. China has almost none of either.
China currently has only?one overseas base—its naval facility in Djibouti staffed with 400 Chinese marines. While the U.S. Navy sails the world’s oceans on a daily basis, the Chinese navy only occasionally conducts?naval diplomacy missions?beyond the Indo-Pacific. This may change, of course, with the Chinese navy now adding aircraft carriers and other blue-water vessels to its fast-growing fleet. China is reportedly looking to add more overseas bases in the Pacific Ocean and Africa. However, it is still a long-term project for China to turn itself into a true superpower with world-wide military reach. Moreover, the U.S. forward posture in China’s neighborhood complicates such a scenario—which is where the third concept, regional hegemony, comes in.
Regional hegemony?is one state’s dominance over the other states in a geographic region, in terms of military and economic power. The United States is a regional hegemon in the Western hemisphere because no other state in that region is in a position to challenge its dominance. Dominance in its home region allows the United States to devote more resources to other geographic regions rather than having to secure its own. In contrast, the Soviet Union was never a regional hegemon, and neither is China today.
The main purpose of great power balancing has always been for a state to counter the rise of a hegemon that can threaten its survival. Since the early 19th century, the United States has continually been concerned with?preventing the rise?of European and East Asian hegemons that would consider expansion into the Western hemisphere. In order to prevent Soviet hegemony in Eurasia during the Cold War, the United States?contained Soviet interests and influence?throughout the Eurasian rimlands, including Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia. This policy not only prevented Soviet hegemony in its region, but also limited the Soviets’ room to maneuver.
China is now facing a similar situation. In order to prevent Chinese hegemony in East Asia, the United States is likely to keep a strong forward posture in the region. Moreover, just like countries in the Eurasian rimlands feared Soviet dominance and welcomed U.S. balancing efforts during the Cold War, Indo-Pacific states are now strengthening their security cooperation with Washington. Australia, India, and Japan are working with the United States in the?Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, while Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea have all stepped up their?dialogue with NATO.
Each of these three concepts—polarity, superpower, and regional hegemony—provides insight to unique and important characteristics of China and the international system. Seen together, they lay out a substantially more comprehensive picture of China’s current power position. From this, we can draw three main conclusions: First, despite China’s impressive rise and the resulting shifts in the international system and global balance of power, China is not yet a superpower. It largely remains a regional power. Second, the United States and its allies will seek to prevent China from gaining regional hegemony. Third, if China decides that it is not satisfied being a regional power and aims to become a superpower in the true sense of the word, it will need to leapfrog the geopolitical constraints of its home region.
China’s geopolitical position, including its lack of true superpower status, has two main strategic implications. First, in a short to medium-term perspective, the U.S.-China rivalry will be regional—restricted to Asia and the Indo-Pacific—and a predominantly naval contest. The confinement of the U.S.-China rivalry to these theaters will challenge?trans-Atlantic relations?in unprecedented ways, while its maritime element points toward a dynamic and potentially?unstable rivalry. The other and more long-term strategic implication concerns any attempts by China to leapfrog the geopolitical constraints of its home region. The manner in which China sets about doing this, and United States’ efforts to prevent it, would then define their rivalry.
Jo Inge Bekkevold?is a senior China fellow at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies and a former Norwegian diploma
end of quote
also
quote
2 hr ago
One of the headlines in today’s news, from a favorite source, the AP/ Associated Press reads: “Russian envoy says nuclear powers may clash over Ukraine.”
Russia today and the Soviets before them operated in influence via a strategy called, “Active Measures.” Russian methods now are generally applied via the so-called, “Gerasimov Doctrine.” There is little to no real difference outside of the digital tools now applied. These tools did succeed far more than expected during the 2016 elections here in the US and concurrently during the “Brexit” mess in the UK. They succeeded not because they were sophisticated and fluid but because they were mostly unopposed. In regard to US national security and protection from foreign influence campaigns, the?US is still barely on the battlefield of influence and for this reason, mostly unarmed.
Putin and his henchmen are at their core, dishonest, manipulative and proudly immoral. Their public messaging and laughable foreign affairs statements are part of their system for influencing others to achieve their strategic goals. Fortunately, Russian influence efforts are clumsy, heavy-handed and more often than not, fear based. Truth rarely comes into play. In other words, Putin and pals threaten, in order to:
As for all of these overt and implied threats since Feb 24th of 2021, Putin has failed to follow through on any of these threats against Ukraine, NATO and all of the other global support required, to sustain Ukraine’s heroic fight for their freedom. Putin most often, supports these threats in the war of influence, actually called,?Narrative Warfare,?via bullying with false threats.
Because Russia makes these threats regularly, it is of critical importance that American voters understand what these threats really mean. The bottom-line points to remember are:
These fake news threats from Putin?and henchmen are focused on building fear into audiences that are fully indoctrinated to support the far-right that has been supporting Putin in the Trump era. These audiences have also been conditioned to believe that we are ignoring our own nation by supporting Ukraine.?This my friends, is?utter BS, for those who can read and do so with credible sources.
What matters when we are tangentially at war is seeing it through to achieve its objectives. Supporting Ukraine is a key part of our national security. We’ve been under attack from Russia/ the Soviet Union for nearly a century. Putin’s Russia attacked our elections and put into power, an administration that supported Putin’s strategic objectives, far more than US objectives, discussed in our?NSS, National Security Strategy. Ukraine is doing the fighting and dying, but they are also supporting NATO objectives, US objectives and the entire world’s stability and security objectives, by defeating Putin. They are doing this for,?pennies-on-the-dollar,?should we have had to do so ourselves.
Defeating Putin’s aggression also seriously hobbles Xi’s aggressive intentions for a variety of reasons?discussed in-depth, in previous TAT articles. Yes, Ukraine’s victory pays dividends for the whole world, except for tyrants.
Summary
The bottom-line here is that as we watch Putin’s threats, we must remember that to date, they’ve been “fake news,” designed to frighten away support from Ukraine. The US and NATO, leading from the front, have done a remarkable job of pulling together and sustaining support for Ukraine’s needs.?If we allow Putin, via influence operations against US and NATO citizens to frighten us from our moral duty, we also take a serious hit to US and European security.
Defeating Putin in Ukraine, as noted previously, also hobbles Xi’s worst instincts in Chinese aggression. Here at home, support for Ukraine is?tragically, partisan, in some but not all respects. Far right influencers like Tucker Carlson and Hannity, skewer our US values on a near daily basis. This undermines our support for liberty.?The new Speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy?has often talked of reducing support and some of?the worst of the MAGA crowd, called the “Freedom Caucus”?want us to stop completely.
The America that I was raised in supports liberty. Americans, “rally to the sound of the guns,” when freedom is at stake. We cannot allow Putin or his propagandists like FOX and company to spread his divisive propaganda, especially his threats and lies about the war. I am making this statement boldy because we have suffered since 2015 under the very real threat that an administration that fawned over Putin and the Party that still amplifies Putinesque propaganda are hard at work. Their fake patriotism is our most significant threat. As bad as Putin is and how egregious his threats, Americans supporting him is worse.
The nation that I, my parents, uncles, son and other family members and innumerable brothers and sisters-in-arms served, doesn’t run from a fight for freedom from oppression. They embrace the hardship of doing what must be done and for the right reasons. Real American patriots do the same. The FOX, GOP and far-right MAGA horde spreading Putin’s fear via fake threats… need to do some soul-searching and then, go on a hunt for real American values.
end of quote
also
https://murraywaas.substack.com/p/exclusive-after-he-left-office-donald
EXCLUSIVE: After he left office, Donald Trump ordered his chief of staff to leak classified information to the press about an FBI agent and other adversaries. Experts believe that may be a felony.
The ex-president may now face even greater legal jeopardy than previously known.
9 hr ago
Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows Getty
Months after he had left office, former president Donald Trump, directed his former chief-of-staff, Mark Meadows to leak highly classified government records regarding Peter Strzok, the former Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, to the press.?In the final days of Trump’s presidency, Meadows had removed the classified files from the White House, which Trump and Meadows believed would discredit Strzok.
The explosive ramifications of such a knowing and willful leak of classified information by Trump, or by someone on his behalf, at his direction, after he left office, is that Trump would have potentially committed a felony.
As president, Trump enjoyed a virtually absolute and unfettered constitutional authority to declassify virtually almost any government secrets he so wished. But once gone from office, Trump no longer had any legal authority or power beyond that of an ordinary citizen to declassify government papers or; much less leak classified records. Any provision of classified information at that time would be a crime.
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Brad Moss, an attorney specializing in national security law, explained to me: “Anything Trump had in his possession that was still classified and that he gave to a reporter or anyone else unauthorized to receive it, after 12:01 pm on January 21, 2021, was unlawful as a legal matter.”
Richard Immerman, an Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence during the George W. Bush administration told me: “Once a president’s tenure in office has ended, he or she has no authority to declassify documents. If he does, he’s breaking the law.”
This new issue arises just as special counsel Jack Smith is already conducting a federal criminal investigation to determine whether Trump broke the law by taking hundreds of pages of other classified papers from the White House to his home in Mar-a-Largo when his presidency was over. The Justice Department has also previously alleged in federal court that Trump “likely concealed and removed” classified documents from one place he was keeping them, to another less likely place where they would be found by federal prosecutors and the FBI, with a purpose to “obstruct” their investigation. Smith has also taken charge of the investigation of whether Trump obstructed justice.
As I have?previously reported, Smith has questioned a small number of witnesses about Trump’s and Meadows’ mishandling of classified documents related to the FBI’s Russia investigation. But the issue does not appear, at least for now, to be a major focus for the special counsel.
The plan to leak classified and derogatory information to Trump about Strzok was described to me by at least three sources, including two of Trump’s former presidential aides, and a colleague of right -wing journalist John Solomon, to whom Trump had already leaked several other?several?classified documents?to?in the final hours of his presidency to help Trump in the hopes of discrediting perceived enemies; in this case, the leaders and agents of the FBI who conducted that agency’s investigation of Russia’s covert efforts to help elect him as president in 2016.
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A former Trump administration official,?in arguing that Meadows had the right to remove a portion of the Russia papers from the White House, and leak them to reporters, once out of office,?asserted that they were justified to do so, citing a presidential order signed by Trump, on Jan. 19, 2021, the last full day of Trump’s presidency. Trump said in the order that the Russia papers were to “be declassified to the maximum extent possible.”
However,?on the very next day, Jan 20,?just prior to Joe Biden taking his oath of office, Meadows wrote a memo clarifying Trump’s order to explain that although Trump had already “declassified certain materials related to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Crossfire Hurricane [Russia} investigation,” none of them would be released anytime soon due to objections from the Justice Department and other agencies, who had yet been able to undertake a “privacy act review, under the standards that the Department of Justice would normally apply, redact material approximately, and release the remaining material with redactions applied.”
I spoke to eight former and current government officials, academic experts, and lawyers in private practice, all with vast expertise and experience in government secrecy and classification issues, to ask them if they believed that the Russia papers remained classified after Trump and Meadows left office.?(Some of those I interviewed qualified in more than one of the above aforementioned occupational categories or even all three of those categories.).??The differences in the opinions they hold are in large part due to the fact that the matters at hand are to some degree unsettled in constitutional law and case law. A clear majority, though not all, told me that Trump’s and Meadow’s actions did not legally declassify the Russia papers, that they remained classified, and that then disclosing their contents once out of office, would almost certainly constitute criminal behavior.
Immerman, the former Assistant Deputy Director of Intelligence from 2007 to 2009, is also a retired historian of U.S. foreign relations and intelligence who has taught at the Army War College and Temple University. For a decade he chaired the State Department’s Historic Advisory Committee. He has had decades of practical experience navigating government secrecy and classification issues.
Immerman told me that claims by Trump administration officials that the Russia papers were declassified by Trump and Meadows prior to them leaving office, and thus both men acted within the law, when they offered them to reporters, have no substance.?He told me: “Their explanation is fatally flawed. A document is declassified at the time any material withheld from declassification is redacted—not pending decisions on those redactions. Further, DOJ reviews documents?prior?to presidential decisions on declassification, not after. I would interpret Meadows’s memo as an effort to retrospectively cover his, or Trump’s tracks.”
Moss, the national security lawyer, like Immerman, told me that the records Trump and Meadows wanted to leak to the press on Strzok remained classified.?Among other reasons, Moss explained: “An actual proper declassification involves a formal process that requires their ‘De-marking,’ the reversing of the markings on the records indicating they were classified. The proper De-marking of these documents would reflect the date of the declassification, the person who declassified them, and the authority on which they acted. That’s what the process requires.”?Yet, that was not done in this instance.
Every single one of the eight experts I queried agreed that Trump and Meadows had not followed the protocols and procedures prerequisite to properly declassifying government records—practices codified and promulgated by his own administration.
Brian Greer, an attorney with the CIA’s Office of General Counsel from 2010 to 2018, during the Obama administration, told me: "The classification system was set up on the assumption that the president would be acting in good faith and in the public interest. Unfortunately, that does not appear to be the case here."
People close to Meadows have told me that Meadows will defend himself and Trump against any allegation that either man broke the law, by leaking any of the Russia papers or Strzok documents, by arguing that those records were properly declassified. Extraordinarily, Meadows himself has expressed the exact opposite view--- in his memoirs.
On Jan. 20, 2021, as Joe Biden was about to be sworn in as president, Meadows raced to the White House, “because he had several documents to pick up, and only two hours to do it,” Meadows wrote in his recent memoir, “The Chief’s Chief.”?Meadows further explained: “For weeks, we had been trying to declassify several key papers that would unravel the full story of how the United States intelligence community had targeted President Trump, spied on his campaign, and attempted to bring him down—which by the way is the only ‘coup’ that ever occurred during President Trump’s years in the White House.”
Meadows added: “The president had declassified some documents before I became Chief of Staff, but several key documents?remained classified?despite his direct orders to declassify a list of relevant notes, memos and emails [emphasis added].”
***
Another authoritative source of corroborating information that Trump attempted to leak classified information on.?Strzok to the press is?New York Times reporter?Maggie Haberman.
In her recent book on Trump, “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America,”,?Haberman made a passing reference – all of two sentences and in the book’s epilogue – reporting that Trump casually divulged to her months after?she left office that Meadows had taken the previously undisclosed and still classified and transcribed Strzok texts with him when he left the White House, and Trump could arrange for Meadows to provide copies to her.
Haberman wrote: “We learned the night before Biden’s inauguration that Trump was planning to make them public.?He ultimately didn’t, but he told me that Meadows had that material in his possession and offered to connect me with him.”
What Trump told Haberman by itself had the potential to be a bombshell, but Trump’s comments to her,?went largely unnoticed; not the least of which was by Haberman herself. Haberman may not have fully understood in the moment or subsequently contextualized the importance of Trump’s comments to her:
Trump in essence was proposing that his former chief of staff, at his direction, leak classified information to Haberman, during a time such a leak would have been illegal, because Trump was no longer president.
As I have?previously reported, on the last day of Trump’s presidency, Trump provided right wing journalist, John Solomon, access to a nearly thousand-page trove of classified records, known among Trump and his closest aides, as the Russia papers. Three sources confirmed to me that derogatory information about Strzok was included in the Russia papers, and?this was among the information which Trump and Meadows aspired to leak to Haberman, Solomon, and others.?
Solomon confirmed to me information, first provided by other sources, that he twice met with Trump in the White House, on Trump’s last day in office, and during?both?of those meetings, was then allowed to read the still-classified Russia papers.
Solomon also told me that while at the White House he met with Mark Meadows as well, who had assured him that the White House Counsel had determined the Russia papers?to?now be fully declassified (other sources told me that the White House counsel made no such determination) and, most importantly, Meadows would send Solomon a full set by the end of the evening.
Indeed, later that evening – the eve of Biden’s inauguration and just?one hour?after Trump signed his presidential order declassifying the Russian papers????a relatively small portion of the records were then turned over to Solomon. Solomon published a story that night (and a second one the following week),?based on the records Trump had provided him.
As for how the documents came into his possession,?Solomon told me, an official from the Justice Department, whose identity he does not know, delivered them in a “plain manila envelope” to the concierge’s desk of the office building where he works. Accompanying the document was a note from the official telling Solomon that the documents were only a “down payment” on a full set of the Russia papers still to come later that same evening. Solomon told me he had not retained the note from the official, one reason he could not identify him.
Solomon told me that he called Meadows to thank him, believing that Meadows had had the documents delivered to him, only to have Meadows respond with an expression of great?surprise and ignorance.?“I don’t know who those are from,” Solomon says Meadows told him. As a result, Solomon said, Meadows decided to “pull back” and not send him the rest of the Russia papers. The following morning, as Biden was about to be sworn in, Meadows wrote his own supplementary memo, clarifying Trump’s declassification order, and delaying release of the Russia papers until the Justice Department and other agencies could fully weigh in.
Solomon told me that the Meadows memo resulted in him receiving no further documents from the Russia papers, although there is some evidence that Trump and Meadows provided Solomon with additional other classified papers – and that they may have done so,?after?Trump left office, when the possession and transmission of such records to others might be illegal. Notably, Solomon himself?went out of his way to convey to me that neither Trump nor Meadows leaked any classified information to him after they left office, because to do so might mean, as Solomon understood it, that one or both men would be violating the law.
Two weeks after Trump left office,?Solomon wrote a column?inferring that he had just obtained more than a thousand additional pages of the classified Russia papers.
On Feb. 5, 2021, Solomon wrote on his website: “More than two weeks after Donald Trump officially declassified the evidence, the vast majority of documents detailing FBI and Justice Department failures in the now-discredited Russia collusion investigation remain out of public view in a delay that has thwarted the former president's goal of sweeping transparency.”
Solomon further wrote: “Just the News?was able to obtain about 15% of the thousands of pages of declassified documents, from a hodgepodge network of White House officials who worked on the declassification, law enforcement and intelligence officials who got their own versions of the declassified documents, and members of Congress who were given copies of some memos in the final days of the Trump presidency.”
Solomon’s claims were disingenuous:?At least some of Russia papers Solomon claimed he now had in his possession were classified, not declassified. By Solomon’s own admission, Trump and Meadows allowed him?twice?on Jan. 19, 2021 to have full access to the Russia papers in the White House, a much more likely source for a portion of the leak of classified documents he was newly claiming to be in his physical possession.
Solomon identified one source of this new leak of the Russia papers as “White House officials who worked on the declassification.”??But in his memoirs, Mark Meadows wrote that?he,?not subordinates at the White House,?personally handled the so-called declassification of the Russia papers.?In the “final weeks” of Trump’s presidency, Meadows wrote, “he personally went through every page” of the Russia papers “to make sure that the president’s declassification would not inadvertently disclose sources of methods,” Even if another White House official who worked on the declassification” leaked the papers to Solomon, instead of Meadows himself, it is unlikely that they did so without Meadows’ approval and perhaps Trump’s as well, given that this purported leaker worked for Meadows, that Meadows oversaw the “declassification effort” on behalf of Trump, and that Trump had already twice personally allowed Solomon access to the papers.
Perhaps most importantly is the timing of Solomon’s having received the 1,000-page tranche of classified Russia papers. Solomon infers that to have happened only recently, just before he wrote his column, and after Trump’s term in office was over. If true, and Trump or Meadows provided the records to Solomon, or?that they directed or conspired with others to do so, that would implicate one or both men in the commission of a potential felony.
Solomon insisted to me that neither Trump nor Meadows had done anything wrong. He said that the records to which he referred?to?in his column were part of a larger collection of declassified documents he assembled from congressional committees, “multiple Freedom of Information requests” by right-wing advocacy groups, information readily available online of records on the FBI’s Russia investigation which had been declassified by Trump political appointees throughout the federal government, and from the appendices of reports by the Justice Department’s Inspector General: “It is more accurate to say that what I put together is a composite,” Solomon told me.
But Solomon himself has described other papers on Russia provided to him quite differently. He was twice given access by the president of the United States to an archive of classified papers on the FBI’s Russia investigation— “thousands of pages” — which Solomon has compared to the Pentagon Papers: “These [Russian papers] are to judicial integrity what the Pentagon Papers were to the Vietnam War,” Solomon said on Fox News in January of 2021. Regarding some of the documents he characterized in his article as declassified while brandishing his access to it, a former White House official said that several of the documents?to which Solomon was referring were declassified by people not authorized to do so. Thus, they remained classified and likely illegal for most government officials to leak them to Solomon. Additionally, Solomon had published a story a full week after Trump left the presidency, based on highly classified documents on Christopher Steele. Solomon has told me that they were provided to him by an unnamed Justice Department official at the direction of Donald Trump and Mark Meadows. Solomon asserted that he received the document on Jan. 19, 2021, the last evening of Trump’s presidency, when it was still legal for Trump to release them. The claim that Trump and Meadows did not provide him those documents after Jan 20, when it would have been illegal for either one or both of them,?to provide them to Solomon,?is as of now based solely on Solomon’s word and nothing more.
Solomon declined to tell me whether he read any documents related specifically to Strzok, but a congressional Republican told me that Solomon had previously asked him to relay to aides to Trump that Solomon was hoping that Trump might provide him with classified documents on Strzok, and that Solomon later told them that he personally raised the issue with Trump, who promised he would get the records to Solomon, and that they contained derogatory information about Strzok.
Although the documents leaked to Solomon were not about Strzok personally, Trump and Solomon persisted in their belief that they would more broadly discredit the FBI’s investigation of the Russian Federation’s Active Measures campaign to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, by helping to elect Trump and defeating Hillary Clinton. Strzok had played both a supervisory and investigative role in the investigation, codenamed “Crossfire Hurricane.” The classified material which Trump provided to Solomon was meant to discredit by name two specific FBI informants providing intelligence to Strzok and other investigators on the case. In doing so, they indirectly attacked Strzok and they also damaged the ability of Strzok and the other FBI agents working the case to further conduct counter-intelligence and criminal investigations by compromising sources and methods.
If Trump was truthful?and accurate in his comments, in what he said to his own aides, Maggie Haberman, and at least one other person, the significance of such to his presidency cannot be overstated.
First, any such leak of classified information by Trump or anyone at Trump’s direction, after Trump had left office, was a potential crime.
Second, if what Trump told Haberman and others was correct when he asserted that Meadows removed presidential records—especially ones that remained classified—from the White House upon leaving office, Meadows too may have violated federal law.
Third, if Trump and Meadows coordinated or worked together to leak classified material on Strzok to the press, that might lead a reasonable prosecutor to open an investigation as to whether they conspired to break the law.
Paul Pelletier, a former Acting Chief of the Justice Department's Criminal Division's Fraud Section, told me, “Any agreement between two or more people to violate federal law is itself a violation of the?federal?conspiracy statute.?It’s that simple.”
Former F.B.I. agent Peter Strzok
Although it is unclear what the previously undisclosed tranche of Strzok texts taken by Meadows from the White House would show, dozens of messages between Strzok and Lisa Page, a senior FBI attorney, were previously made public. Strzok and Page were in the midst of an extramarital affair against the backdrop of Strzok’s leading role in the Russia investigation. The text messages released by the Justice Department at the behest of then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Trump’s congressional Republican allies were salacious. Many of those messages showed the two making disparaging comments about Trump, although less attention was paid to the fact that they also often severely criticized both Democratic and Republican political candidates and officeholders.
Trump and his surrogates have long claimed that the political opinions expressed by Strzok and Page demonstrated evidence of a vast conspiracy that the Justice Department and FBI had conducted their Russia election influence probe for the purpose of preventing Trump’s election, or failing that, once Trump was elected president, to drive him from office.?There is little doubt that Strzok’s and Page’s use of their work email for such purposes harmed the FBI’s reputation for institutional non-partisanship.?The Justice Department’s Inspector General has said he was “deeply troubled” by Strzok’s texts.?But a thorough and exhaustive investigative by that very same Inspector General found no evidence that Trump’s charges of political bias by the FBI in the conduct of its Russia inquiry.?Nor did the Inspector General find any evidence to support Trump’s conspiracy theories that the investigation was undertaken to prevent Trump’s election as president or drive him from office as a contingency. Despite numerous other investigations by Republican allies of the former president in Congress, no credible evidence has ever surfaced to lend credence to those same allegations.
Before Donald Trump named Mark Meadows his presidential chief of staff, Meadows was a Republican member of Congress and a founding member, and later, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus.?As the ranking Republican on the House Oversight Committee, few members of Congress were as zealous in their pursuit of proving conspiracy theories that an amorphous Deep State, the Justice Department, and FBI were abusing their power to destroy Donald Trump.
To achieve those ends, no member of Congress so zealously pursued Peter Strzok.?In instance after instance, the allegations that Meadows has leveled against Strzok and Lisa Page have been debunked or proven to be baseless.
For example, Meadows?lodged an accusation?against Page and Strzok,?alleging that one or both had leaked information from the Russia investigation to harm Trump. The evidence: an email exchange between Strzok and Page to discuss the topic of a “Media Leak Strategy.”
Then President Trump tweeted: “New Strzok-Page texts reveal “Media Leak Strategy.”@FoxNews?So terrible, and NOTHING is being done at DOJ or FBI - but the world is watching, and they get it completely.”
However, as the disclosure of other emails and evidence would show, there was a much more mundane explanation. As a result of Strzok’s own past success in tracking down and prosecuting leakers, he now sat on an ad hoc working group?tasked with preventing leaks of classified information—a top priority of Donald Trump and Mark Meadows during the Trump presidency.
Editing and research assistance by Arie Serota. Additional editing by Jonathan Simon.
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Read Trump’s phone conversation with Volodymyr Zelensky
Updated 4:41 AM EDT, Thu September 26, 2019
President Donald Trump repeatedly pushed for Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter, during a July 25 phone call,?according to a transcript of the conversation?released by the White House.
Read the transcript here:
UNCLASSIFIED
Declassified by order of the President
September 24, 2019
MEMORANDUM OF TELEPHONE CONVERSATION
SUBJECT: Telephone Conversation with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine
Participants: President Zelenskyy of Ukraine
Notetakers: The White House Situation Room
Date, Time July 25, 2019, 9:03-9:33 am EDT
and Place: Residence
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The President:?Congratulations on a great victory. We all watched from the United States and you did a terrific job. The way you came from behind, somebody who wasn’t given much of a chance, and you ended up winning easily. It’s a fantastic achievement. Congratulations.
President Zelenskyy: You are absolutely right Mr. President. We did win big and we worked hard for this. We worked a lot but I would like to confess to you that I had an opportunity to learn from you. We used quite a few of your skills and knowledge and were able to use it as an example for our elections and yes it is true that these were unique elections. We were in a unique situation that we were able to achieve a unique success. I’m able to tell you the following; the first time you called me to congratulate me when I won my presidential election, and the second time you are now calling me when my party won the parliamentary election. I think I should run more often so you can call me more often and we can talk over the phone more often.
The President: (laughter) That’s a very good idea. I think your country is very happy about that.
President Zelenskyy:?Well yes, to tell you the truth, we are trying to work hard because we wanted to drain the swamp here in our country. We brought in many many new people. Not the old politicians, not the typical politicians, because we want to have a new format and a new type of government. You are a great teacher for us and in that.
The President:?Well it is very nice of you to say that. I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine. We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time. Much more than the European countries are doing and they should be helping you more than they are. Germany does almost nothing for you. All they do is talk and I think it’s something that you should really ask them about. When I was speaking to Angela Merkel she talks Ukraine, but she ·doesn’t do anything. A lot of the European countries are the same way so I think it’s something you want to look at but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine. I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine.
President Zelenskyy: Yes you are absolutely right. Not only 100%, but actually 1000% and I can tell you the following; I did talk to Angela Merkel and I did meet with her I also met and talked with Macron and I told them that they are not doing quite as much as they need to be doing on the issues with the sanctions. They are not enforcing the sanctions. They are not working as much as they should work for Ukraine. It turns out that even though logically, the European Union should be our biggest partner but technically the United States is a much bigger partner than the European Union and I’m very grateful to you for that because the United States is doing quite a lot for Ukraine. Much more than the European Union especially when we are talking about sanctions against the Russian Federation. I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost. ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.
The President:?I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.
President Zelenskyy:?Yes it is very important for me and everything that you just mentioned earlier. For me as a President, it is very important and we are open for any future cooperation. We are ready to open a new page on cooperation in relations between the United States and Ukraine. For that purpose, I just recalled our ambassador from United States and he will be replaced by a very competent and very experienced ambassador who will work hard on making sure that our two nations are getting closer. I would also like and hope to see him having your trust and your confidence and have personal relations with you so we can cooperate even more so. I will personally tell you that one of my assistants spoke with Mr. Giuliani just recently and we are hoping very much that Mr. Giuliani will be able to travel to Ukraine and we will meet once he comes to Ukraine. I just wanted to assure you once again that you have nobody but friends around us. I will make sure that I surround myself with the best and most experienced people. I also wanted to tell you that we are friends. We are great friends and you Mr. President have friends in our country so we can continue our strategic partnership. I also plan to surround myself with great people and in addition to that investigation, I guarantee as the President of Ukraine that all the investigations will be done openly and candidly.. That I can assure you.
The President:?Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that. The other thing, There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.
President Zelenskyy:?I wanted to tell you about the prosecutor. First of all, I understand and I’m knowledgeable about the situation. Since we have won the absolute majority in our Parliament, the next prosecutor general will be 100% my person, my candidate, who will be approved, by the parliament and will start as a new prosecutor in September. He or she will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue. The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case. On top of that, I would kindly ask you if you have any additional information that you can provide to us, it would be very helpful for the investigation to make sure that we administer justice in our country with regard to the Ambassador to the United States from Ukraine as far as I recall her name was Ivanovich. It was great that you were the first one who told me that she was a bad ambassador because I agree with you 100%. Her attitude towards me was far from the best as she admired the previous President and she was on his side. She would not accept me as a new President well enough.
The President:?Well, she’s going to go through some things. I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it. I’m sure you will figure it out. I heard the prosecutor was treated very badly and he was a very fair prosecutor so good luck with everything. Your economy is going to get better and better I predict. You have a lot of assets. It’s a great country. I have many Ukrainian friends, their incredible people.
President Zelenskyy:?I would like to tell you that I also have quite a few Ukrainian friends that live in the United States. Actually last time I traveled to the United States, I stayed in New York near Central Park and I stayed at the Trump Tower. I will talk to them and I hope to see them again in the future. I also wanted to thank you for your invitation to visit the United States, specifically Washington DC. On the other hand, I also want to ensure you that we will be very serious about the case and will work on the investigation. As to the economy, there is much potential for our two countries and one of the issues that is very important for Ukraine is energy independence. I believe we can be very successful and cooperating on energy independence with United States. We are already working on cooperation. We are buying American oil but I am very hopeful for a future meeting. We will have more time and more opportunities to discuss these opportunities and get to know each other better. I would like to thank you very much for your support.
The President: Good. Well, thank you very much and I appreciate that. I will tell Rudy and Attorney General Barr to call. Thank you. Whenever you would like to come to the White House, feel free to call. Give us a date and we’ll work that out. I look forward to seeing you.
President Zelenskyy:?Thank you very much. I would be very happy to come and would be happy to meet with you personally and get to know you better. I am looking forward to our meeting and I also would like to invite you to visit Ukraine and come to the city of Kyiv which is a beautiful city. We have a beautiful country which would welcome you. On the other hand, I believe that on September 1 we will be in Poland and we can meet in Poland hopefully. After that, it might be a very good idea for you to travel to Ukraine. We can either take my plane and go to Ukraine or we can take your plane, which is probably much better than mine.
The President:?Okay, we can work that out. I look forward to seeing you in Washington and maybe in Poland because I think we are going to be there at that time.
President Zelenskyy:?Thank you very much Mr. President.
The President: Congratulations on a fantastic job you’ve done. The whole world was watching. I’m not sure it was so much of an upset but congratulations.
President Zelenskyy:?Thank you Mr. President bye-bye.
- - End of conversation - -
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Andrew Beckwith, PhD