For most of Friday night, the political world was roiled by the news that Donald Trump’s son-in-law and chief confidant, Jared Kushner, tried to open a secret communications channel between the Trump transition team and Russia–using Russian diplomatic facilities. According to a number of intelligence professionals, if this is true, this amounts to espionage, and would be a firing offense at best in a normal administration. Tellingly, as I write this on Saturday morning, we have yet to see any rage tweets from Trump about this, even though this was the lead story in the Saturday edition of The Washington Post.
However, just hours before The Post detonated this bombshell, former National Security Agency analyst John Schindler detonated one that could potentially be almost as large. In a column for the New York Observer, Schindler reported that his former employers at the NSA have compiled evidence that indicates Trump campaign operatives colluded with Russia in an effort to wreck the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Schindler learned that earlier in the week, NSA director Admiral Mike Rogers gave an address to his troops, which was broadcast to all NSA facilities around the world. He used it to address what transpired when he met with Trump earlier in the week along with Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. According to The Post and CNN, Trump asked Rogers and Coats to publicly knock down any claims of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. In effect, Trump was asking two of the most senior leaders in the American intelligence community to kneecap the FBI.
According to Schindler, a 10-year NSA veteran, such a request would be “inappropriate, unethical, and dubiously legal.” For that reason, Rogers and Coats both flatly denied Trump’s demand. But according to several NSA officials who listened to Rogers’ speech, Rogers went further than that. Rogers says that he told Trump, “I know you won’t like it, but I have to tell you what I’ve seen.”
Rogers went on to say that his agency has compiled signals intelligence–SIGINT, as it is called by intelligence professionals–that shows “evidence of election involvement and questionable contacts” with the Russians. While Rogers didn’t go into specifics, Schindler wrote that those in a position to know have an idea what he was talking about.
“Although Rogers did not cite the specific intelligence he was referring to, agency officials with direct knowledge have informed me that DIRNSA was obviously referring to a series of SIGINT reports from 2016 based on intercepts of communications between known Russian intelligence officials and key members of Trump’s campaign, in which they discussed methods of damaging Hillary Clinton.”
Wow. If this is accurate, Kushner, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Carter Page may not be the only people from the Trump campaign and Trump transition who better get lawyers on speed dial.
This may explain why we haven’t seen any rage tweets or cries of “(noun) (verb) FAKE NEWS!” from the Trump camp since the news of Kushner’s overtures to the Kremlin broke on Friday. Remember, folks, Kushner is now a person of interest in the Russian hacking investigation–and you literally cannot get closer to Trump without looking at Trump himself. If the FBI is already at the point of scrutinizing Kushner’s contacts with Russian operatives, the chances are very good that it is also closely scrutinizing other senior officials’ contacts with Moscow as well.
Schindler all but begged the House and Senate intelligence committees to have Rogers testify about that meeting with Trump. Such testimony would likely be as explosive as Comey’s planned testimony next week–especially since Rogers, like Comey, almost certainly kept notes of his meeting with Trump.
It goes without saying that if this is accurate, the NSA has evidence that could not only end Trump’s presidency, but also end any chance of Mike Pence ascending to the White House in the event Trump leaves the scene. After all, if there was extensive collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, the entire Trump-Pence ticket is tainted, and a Pence presidency would be completely illegitimate.
Earlier in the year, Schindler revealed that several active and retired intelligence professionals have declared war on Trump over his campaign’s apparent collusion with Russia. This announcement from Rogers could amount to the latest salvo in that war. On Twitter, Schindler hinted that there’s more to come from this group, which calls itself “The Lizard.”
FYI, this is just the first segment. The Lizard is bringing more very bad news for Team Trump soon….. https://t.co/tJhQVucluL
— John Schindler (@20committee) May 26, 2017
So you know, The Lizard is a group of current & former Western spooks dedicated to exposing the truth about Team Trump & #KremlinGate pic.twitter.com/UXlem6bFQF
— John Schindler (@20committee) May 26, 2017
The name comes from the Lizard Union (Związek Jaszczurczy), the first secret Polish resistance group against Nazi+Soviet occupation in 1939.
— John Schindler (@20committee) May 26, 2017
Pass the popcorn.
(featured image courtesy US Embassy Canada, available under a Creative Commons-BY license)
