I had a feeling that the word ‘backchannel’ was going to blow up in our faces. Weird that TPM keeps using it, even after Josh pointed out that this wasn’t a ‘backchannel’ i.e., a legitimate diplomatic line of confidential communication used to circumvent public diplomatic postures. Kushner wasn’t trying to set up a ‘backchannel.’ He was trying to secretly coordinate with the Russians for private purposes.
Which brings me to the main point. The goal of the Trump-Russia inquiry is to determine whether the Trump campaign, or the Trump White House, ‘colluded’ with Moscow.
‘Collusion’ (per dictionary): ‘Secret or illegal coordination.’
The meetings with the Russians by Sessions, Kushner, Flynn were secret and kept secret even in the face of official disclosure requirements. They are collusive meetings. The secretrequest for a secret line of communication operated by the Russian espionage cadre was itself an instance of collusion (and no doubt part of a series of similar secret acts of coordination). Had the secret comm. system become operational, that would simply have seriously aggravated the existing collusion.
We’re done here. Time for Democrats and the media to look in front of their noses and see what’s there.
Update/Kicker: McMaster, the National Security Adviser, now says he had no knowledge of the meetings. By definition, then, the meetings cannot have had a US national security purpose. If they had, McMaster would have known about them.
Who would replace him? Why surely you jest-it’s Jared of course! Jared who had hundreds of phone calls with foreign nationals, Jared who will bring peace to ME, Jared who will make sure our Rage-O-Matic Maniac In Chief stays focused on reeling in the profits for wifey.
either someone thought this was important enough to burn sources/methods on tapping the russian ambassador, or the russian ambassador deliberately used a line he knew the US IC was listening to
That bothered me too. Who would burn U.S. intel in Moscow this badly? Didn’t occur to me the Ruskies might have staged this, but of course you’re right: that’s always a possibility as well. Either way, something’s off-key here.
We haven’t yet seen a proven quid-pro-quo deal, but evidence for that may exist within the IC, and this is already a public revelation of evidence of collusion. Not proof, but evidence with a high degree of probability. As for McMaster, he knows perfectly well why backchannels legitimately exist, and he knows just as well there’s no legitimate reason for Jared Kushner to be seeking something else—something as secret and secure as possible from the U.S. government while he was still a private citizen. There’s virtually no legitimate reason for that, and every reason to think it’s collusion or even espionage. The reason for the IC to take this step is to alert everyone who’s gaming all this out that the situation couldn’t be more serious and you don’t want to end up on the wrong side of it. It’s a warning flare to Ryan, McConnell, Mr. or Ms. Lesser Congressperson, the Democrats, the media, the thinking public, the courts, everyone who has a stake in this (all of us) and who knows it (some of us).
McMaster and the others—Comey, Mattis, Rosenstein, and more to come I’m sure—did or do have a tough situation. They can mouth the excuses and stay, hoping to do some good and serve the republic at the expense of their reputations, knowing if they walked their replacements might be dishonorable people. Or they can walk out and denounce the regime. The latter might seem more honorable. But the former might be what a self-sacrificing public servant does in this crisis. I’m not going to judge them until the story is over.
I get it. Sometimes, the constant level of corruption, incompetence, and cavalier dismissal of significant issues causes us to miss the most important point: McMaster is our National Security Advisor and he DOESN"T HAVE ANY KNOWLEDGE of clandestine communications set up with Russia.
While it’s true that presidents have had back channel communications with other leaders, even Russia, it’s important to remember that Trump was NOT YET PRESIDENT when Jared made his request. Yes, I’m shouting.
Yes, that is the difference. Almost everyone who has ever negotiated over serious, important issues has used backchannels. But those backchannels are established for a purpose, to achieve a specific end. We need to know, what was the purpose of the Kushner-Putin backchannel? Or was it to be a Trump-Putin backchannel?
If this were all totally legit, wouldn’t that information have been shared with McMaster as part of the passing of the baton from Flynn to McMaster? Flynn was supposed present for at least one of the Kushner-Kislyak conversations.
I’m kinda hoping the off-the-record version of these statements is actually “I’m not concerned about this at all because Bob Mueller’s on the case and I got me an AC-130 Spectre I can throw Jared out of at 30,000 ft if the little shit annoys me. But don’t print that.”
