https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/01/white-house-trump-leaks-code-015194

By DANIEL LIPPMAN and NATASHA BERTRAND

10/01/2019 03:19 PM EDT

Updated: 10/01/2019 06:56 PM EDT

The Trump White House upgraded the security of the National Security Council’s codeword system in the spring of 2018, according to two former Trump White House officials familiar with the matter, as part of an effort to ferret out and deter leaks.

The changes included a new log of who accessed specific documents in the NSC’s system — known as NICE or “NSC Intelligence Collaboration Environment” — and was designed in part to prevent leaks of records of the president’s phone calls with foreign leaders and to find out the suspected leaker if transcripts did get disclosed, one of the former officials said. Prior to the upgrade, officials could only see who had uploaded or downloaded material to the system but usually not who accessed which documents.

That highly classified system is being newly scrutinized in light of a whistleblower complaint alleging that national security officials used the system—meant for storing information classified at the highest level — to conceal politically embarrassing conversations, including a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25 in which President Donald Trump urged Zelensky to investigate his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.

If hiding politically embarrassing material, rather than protecting national security secrets, was the motivation, experts and former officials said, it would be an abuse of the codeword system. While not necessarily an illegal act, it does run counter to an executive order signed by President Obama in 2009 that says information can’t be classified to “conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error” or “prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency,” they said.

</snip>

https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1179180304285802497
Matthew Gertz ✔ @MattGertz

The president of the United States blesses the insane talking point that his Fox News propagandists have been using in recent days. https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/right-wing-media-label-impeachment-inquiry-coup-driven-democrats …

This is extremely dangerous.

Right-wing media label impeachment inquiry a “coup” driven by Democrats
Numerous conservative media figures have responded to the announcement of a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump by calling the investigation an attempted “coup” by Democrats.

mediamatters.org

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump

As I learn more and more each day, I am coming to the conclusion that what is taking place is not an impeachment, it is a COUP, intended to take away the Power of the....

7:44 PM - Oct 1, 2019

https://twitter.com/GeoffRBennett/status/1179173387924578309
Geoff Bennett ✔ @GeoffRBennett

INBOX: Pelosi *and Schiff to hold a press conference tomorrow at 10:45AM ET

7:16 PM - Oct 1, 2019

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1179174150834798598
Reuters Top News ✔ @Reuters

Danish paraglider's parachute snaps mid-air. The tourist and her pilot make emergency landing in the sea

7:20 PM - Oct 1, 2019

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/463917-trump-admin-abruptly-delays-funding-to-house-human-trafficking?__twitter_impression=true

BY JUSTINE COLEMAN - 10/01/19 05:56 PM EDT

The Trump administration has unexpectedly postponed $13.5 million in grant funding intended to house human trafficking victims, NBC News reported on Tuesday.

Five days after the administration updated the funding on Sept. 4 so that it also would help noncitizens, the federal government's grant website said the funding was canceled and not accepting applications, according to NBC.

The grant was expected to provide housing and supportive services for victims of sex and labor trafficking, according to the notice of funding availability.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was supposed to take the lead on handing out the grant money, with help from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), according to NBC News.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department told NBC News the grant had been "postponed," not canceled, and that the DOJ would be taking over responsibilities for the grant.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) sent a letter to both the DOJ and HUD denouncing the departments for the delay in funding with "little explanation or official notice to the public."

"This is unacceptable and will have real consequences for organizations working with trafficking survivors," he wrote.

"A decision to postpone these housing and services grants into oblivion will be a decision to waste anti-trafficking resources already on the table," he added.

</snip>

https://twitter.com/RichardEngel/status/1179168825763401729
Richard Engel ✔ @RichardEngel

Pompeo, who accuses lawmakers who want answers of bullying, had fits of “anger” while at CIA, former Sr intelligence officials say. Often, an official said, it would happen if analysis didn’t match the political theme of the day. Lots of slammed phones + demands for polygraphs.

6:58 PM - Oct 1, 2019

https://twitter.com/jonfavs/status/1179159239840813056
Jon Favreau ✔ @jonfavs

This was literally a joke that Obama used in 2011 to mock Republicans on border security: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-mocks-gop-jokes-they-want-border-moat/ …

Obama mocks GOP, jokes they want border moat
President says his administration has done what Republicans want to secure the border - but speculates they will move the goalposts

6:20 PM - Oct 1, 2019

https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Culture/prince-harry-meghan-legal-action-response-media-scrutiny/story?id=65978732&cid=social_twitter_abcn

By KATIE KINDELAN via GMA Oct 1, 2019, 5:56 PM ET

Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have decided to take legal action against a British tabloid for what they allege was an invasion of privacy.

Harry, whose mother, Princess Diana, died in a car crash in 1997 while being chased by paparazzi, delivered a passionate statement announcing the legal move.

In it, he describes Meghan, whom he wed last year, as "one of the latest victims of a British tabloid press that wages campaigns against individuals with no thought to the consequences."

"Though this action may not be the safe one, it is the right one. Because my deepest fear is history repeating itself," Harry said. "I've seen what happens when someone I love is commoditised to the point that they are no longer treated or seen as a real person. I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces."

The tabloid targeted in the lawsuit, the Mail on Sunday, published a letter in February it claimed was one Meghan wrote to her estranged father, Thomas Markle, after he missed her May 2018 wedding to Harry.

The couple's wedding led to Meghan's estrangement with her father, who bowed out of walking Meghan down the aisle at St. George's Chapel amid a paparazzi scandal and a reported heart attack.

</snip>

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/opinion/trump-impeachment-2020.html

By Will Wilkinson
Contributing Opinion Writer

Oct. 1, 2019

“I think the American people are going to have a chance to decide this at the ballot box in November 2020,” Beto O’Rourke said in March, neatly expressing prevailing Democratic opinion on the question of impeaching President Trump, “and perhaps that’s the best way for us to resolve these outstanding questions.”

This is no longer a tenable position. The president’s bungled bid to coerce Ukraine’s leader into helping the Trump 2020 re-election campaign smear a rival struck “decide it at the ballot box” off the menu of reasonable opinion forever. Mr. Trump’s brazen attempt to cheat his way into a second term stands so scandalously exposed that there can be no assurance of a fair election if he’s allowed to stay in office. Resolving the question of the president’s fitness at the ballot box isn’t really an option, much less the best option, when the question boils down to whether the ballot box will be stuffed.

Impeachment is therefore imperative, not only to protect the integrity of next year’s elections but to secure America’s continued democratic existence. If the House does its job, it will fall to Senate Republicans to reveal, in their decision to convict (or not), their preferred flavor of republic: constitutional or banana.

Mike Murphy, a Republican election consultant, recently remarked that “one Republican senator told me if it was a secret vote, 30 Republican senators would vote to impeach Trump.” Everyone understands that Mr. Trump is wildly popular with conservative voters, and that Senate Republicans would rather not invite primary challengers by alienating them. But when the legitimacy and preservation of our democracy are at stake, striving to keep a Senate seat safe through craven betrayal of the American people could come at a catastrophic price to the country.

It is now impossible to deny that Mr. Trump pressed Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to dig up dirt on Joe Biden while holding up congressionally appropriated military assistance intended to help Ukraine stave off Russian aggression. Mr. Trump loudly admitted it, and the summary of his July phone conversation with Mr. Zelensky and the whistle-blower report cast it in the worst possible light. If Mr. Trump’s willing to cop to this, all while promoting an Infowars-level conspiracy theory to justify it, the American public can reasonably suspect that he’s abusing the powers of his office in other ways to fix the election in his favor.

Mr. Trump has supplied American voters with overwhelming reason to doubt that any election he participates in can be fair. That’s why he can’t be allowed to run for any public office, much less the presidency, ever again.

</snip>

https://twitter.com/JohnJHarwood/status/1179087779055181824

John Harwood ✔ @JohnJHarwood

duh Roger Maris

Anthony Scaramucci ✔ @Scaramucci


Yup. That is my grandfather on the right. The question is who is the person on the left. And NO I didn’t inherit Nono’s chest hair!!

1:36 PM - Oct 1, 2019