Why?

Anybody concerned about national security?  I know we're ALL concerned about what the vengeful orange ogre might do.

UPDATE:

Can anyone even imagine?

Actually, I can imagine something VERY like that.

A former National Security Council official now slated to work for Attorney General Jeff Sessions explored ways to surreptitiously monitor the communications of White House staff for leaks or perceived political disloyalty to Donald Trump, according to three former Trump NSC officials familiar with the effort.

Ezra Cohen-Watnick, whom former national security adviser Michael Flynn brought onto the NSC as senior director for intelligence, sought technical solutions in early 2017 for collecting and analyzing phone and other data on White House colleagues for interactions with reporters. He portrayed his desired leak hunt as an “insider threat” detection effort, according to the ex-officials. Those who heard of it presumed it would focus on NSC staffers held over from the Obama administration.

[...]

The former officials noted the overwhelming technical and legal hurdles to doing so. One called it “wholly inappropriate” for Cohen-Watnick, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, to do anything of the sort, considering it a blatant attempt at intimidating his colleagues.

[...]

“This seemed designed to intimidate rather than protect national security,” said a different ex-NSC official familiar with the proposal.

[...]

Some staffers considered Cohen-Watnick’s insider-threat focus ironic, considering that Cohen-Watnick himself reportedly played a role in a Trump White House effort to leak intelligence reports to Devin Nunes, the House intelligence committee chairman. Nunes then subsequently used the reports in a failed attempt to reinforce Trump’s baseless accusation that Barack Obama had placed his camp under surveillance.

[...]

Cohen-Watnick is now re-emerging from a post-White House stint at the software behemoth Oracle to take a senior advisory role to Sessions, ostensibly about counterintelligence and counterterrorism.

  The Daily Beast

In fact, I can imagine another thing like that:

A source familiar with Black Cube’s outreach to the Kahls told NBC News that it was part of an effort to discredit Obama administration officials who had worked on the Iran nuclear deal – and, by extension, the deal itself. Black Cube sought evidence of nefarious behavior, such as financial or sexual impropriety, by the deal's architects, including Colin Kahl. Operatives hoped to obtain such evidence by befriending their targets or their targets’ associates.

[...]

The firm was founded by former Israeli military officers in 2011. It retains close ties to the Israeli intelligence community, and many of its recruits are former Mossad agents.

[...]

Also targeted was Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser under Obama, whose wife, Ann Norris, was approached by a Black Cube operative about consulting on a political drama for TV. Norris had previously worked at the State Department.

[...]

Black Cube made headlines last fall after revelations that it had been hired to intimidate and disparage accusers of Harvey Weinstein, as well as reporters investigating the Hollywood producer.

[...]

[T]he Iran operation was launched just days after President Donald Trump visited Israel in May 2017. The source said he was told that the work was being carried out “for Trump,” but there is no evidence that the Trump administration had anything to do with the operation, which may have been commissioned by an outside group or agency with no connection to the administration.

  NBC

Or one of Trump's many ass-kissers. Or Junior. Or Ivanka.

Strike "Commencment [sic] Address" and replace it with "Campaign Speach".

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

They still don't get it

A former National Security Council official now slated to work for Attorney General Jeff Sessions explored ways to surreptitiously monitor the communications of White House staff for leaks or perceived political disloyalty to Donald Trump, according to three former Trump NSC officials familiar with the effort.

Ezra Cohen-Watnick, whom former national security adviser Michael Flynn brought onto the NSC as senior director for intelligence, sought technical solutions in early 2017 for collecting and analyzing phone and other data on White House colleagues for interactions with reporters. He portrayed his desired leak hunt as an “insider threat” detection effort, according to the ex-officials. Those who heard of it presumed it would focus on NSC staffers held over from the Obama administration.

[...]

The former officials noted the overwhelming technical and legal hurdles to doing so. One called it “wholly inappropriate” for Cohen-Watnick, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, to do anything of the sort, considering it a blatant attempt at intimidating his colleagues.

[...]

“This seemed designed to intimidate rather than protect national security,” said a different ex-NSC official familiar with the proposal.

[...]

Some staffers considered Cohen-Watnick’s insider-threat focus ironic, considering that Cohen-Watnick himself reportedly played a role in a Trump White House effort to leak intelligence reports to Devin Nunes, the House intelligence committee chairman. Nunes then subsequently used the reports in a failed attempt to reinforce Trump’s baseless accusation that Barack Obama had placed his camp under surveillance.

  The Daily Beast

Maybe they shouldh have hired Michael Cohen for insights into the Trump administration.

Cohen-Watnick is now re-emerging from a post-White House stint at the software behemoth Oracle to take a senior advisory role to Sessions, ostensibly about counterintelligence and counterterrorism.

DOJers, you are warned. Including you, Elf.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Sessions is, in the end, still Trump's bitch

He's got a lot of bowing and scraping to do for recusing himself from the Russia probe.

President Donald Trump personally ordered the Department of Justice to hire a former White House official who departed after he was caught up in a controversy over the release of intelligence material to a member of Congress, according to people familiar with the matter.

Ezra Cohen-Watnick, who was forced out of the National Security Council last year, will advise Attorney General Jeff Sessions on national security matters.

  Bloomberg

Makes perfect sense in Trumpworld.

Bloomberg previously reported that former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster had Cohen-Watnick removed from the White House agency. A White House official confirmed Wednesday he was forced out.

[...]

>He left the White House in August for a job at Oracle Corp. following reports that he had shown House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes classified documents.

[...]

Cohen-Watnick’s attorney, Mark Zaid, said that reports of his involvement in the Nunes incident were erroneous. While Cohen-Watnick was working on unmasking issues at the NSC, Zaid said in an interview, “he never showed the documents to Nunes. He never met with Nunes. He had nothing to do with Nunes.”

Zaid said that Cohen-Watnick was not fired from the White House. “There was a decision that he was going to leave the NSC to go to another federal position and he resigned on his own accord to go to Oracle,” Zaid said.

Then why does he want a job at DOJ?

“Given Mr. Cohen-Watnick’s reported role in helping Congressman Nunes turn the House Intelligence Committee investigation into a partisan breeding ground for conspiracy theories, his new position with the Attorney General at such a sensitive time is deeply troubling,” Matt House, a spokesman for Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, said in a statement. “Mr. Cohen-Watnick must not come anywhere near the Mueller investigation, and Democrats will watch like a hawk to ensure that’s the case.”

[...]

Cohen-Watnick also previously worked with Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who resigned after he misled administration officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the U.S.

Nothing suspect about this at all.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Tibits everywhere

I miss some.

Who?

I had missed that connection. I did have a post back in August about Ezra Cohen-Watnick when he was fired from his job as the senior intelligence director for the White House’s National Security Council. This was well after Flynn had been dumped, and I didn't realize Cohen-Watnick had any connection to Flynn. 

Just another piece of wire connecting Nunes to the Trump cabal. (That wire, famously includes Nunes being provided intel reports by White House officials back in March.)

And now, I know the following, as well:

From November, 2017:

Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, attended a breakfast meeting in January that Michael Flynn, then the incoming national security adviser, and Mevlut Cavusoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, also attended.

The breakfast event, held on Wednesday, January 18, was closed to the press, and it is still unclear what exactly was discussed.

[...]

"Chairman Nunes was a speaker at that event, but it was a large breakfast event, not a small, private meeting as described in that article," the spokesman, Jack Langer, told the fact-checking website Snopes.

[...]

Nunes' attendance at the event is newly relevant amid revelations that the special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating a meeting that another congressman, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, took with Flynn in September 2016. Flynn had begun lobbying on behalf of Turkish government interests one month earlier.

  Business Insider

No wonder Nunes is busy obstructing justice. He's in the shit up to his eyeballs.

Nunes, meanwhile, has been at the center of a series of controversies since the House Intelligence Committee began investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 US election.

[...]

In June, Nunes angered the Democrats when he demanded more details from the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency about why Obama administration officials requested the unmasking of Trump associates last year. He also threatened in September to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director Chris Wray in contempt of Congress if they did not respond to a subpoena for documents relating to the Steele dossier.

From March 2017:

The day after Donald Trump fired him, Michael Flynn had no friends in Washington but one: Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House intelligence committee.

[...]

The now ex-national security adviser was “a soldier, not a politician”, Nunes said following Flynn’s downfall.

[...]

[I]f Flynn had made any mistake, Nunes suggested, it was in being too pure for politics.

[...]

Nunes’s affinity for Flynn has become an underappreciated subplot of a scandal that has now consumed the congressman’s own political fortunes. Nunes, the chairman of the House intelligence committee investigating Trump’s alleged ties to Russia – an allegation in which Flynn plays a substantial role – is now under fire for what his Democratic colleagues charge is collusion with the White House to obstruct the inquiry.

[...]

Since the inquiry began, Nunes has steered it away from the central question of Trump associates’ ties to Russia and toward the ancillary question of potential leaks of classified information against Trump’s team – the focus that Trump himself desires. Central to Nunes’s maneuver has been an emphasis on what he considers an injustice done to Flynn: the exposure of his contacts with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.

[...]

“I think the concern that the Trump administration has is, you know, were they actually using surveillance activities to know what they were up to, because we know that that happened with General Flynn. We know that his name was unmasked and we know that it was leaked out to the press.”

[...]

“There’s been one crime that has been committed, and that is the leaking of someone’s name,” Nunes told reporters.

[...]

Toward the end of his opening statement at the 20 March hearing, Nunes encouraged “anyone who has information about these topics to come forward and speak to the House intelligence committee”.

The next evening, according to the New York Times, Nunes received a call from his unidentified source, leading him to the White House, where he reviewed surveillance-relevant information compiled by Cohen-Watnick, Flynn’s former NSC and DIA aide. The next day, he revealed it in public, implying that he was alerting the White House to its existence.

  Guardian

The White House from which he got it in the first place.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Dropping Like Flies

Is somebody keeping a head count?

Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior intelligence director for the White House’s National Security Council, was fired Wednesday.

  TPM

"At National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster’s behest."

Cohen-Watnick was reportedly involved in the summary dismissal of the CIA’s liaison to the White House. Later that month, he reportedly played a role in providing House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) with classified intelligence reports purportedly demonstrating that Trump and members of his transition were incidentally caught up in U.S. surveillance of foreign nationals.

[...]

“General McMaster is confident that Ezra will make many further significant contributions to national security in another position in the administration.”

There might be a job opening at Energy.

Cohen-Watnick, dubbed “the man McMaster couldn’t fire,” was a protégé of ousted National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and ally of White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.

McMaster reportedly tried to fire him in March after replacing Flynn, but Bannon and Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, intervened in Cohen-Watnick’s favor.

General Kelly's in town now. However, McMaster had been cleaning house pretty thoroughly on his own.

McMaster [...] replaced Fox News commentator K.T. McFarland as his deputy in May, reportedly without seeking White House approval first. He also reportedly fired Rich Higgins, a staffer who worked in the council’s strategic planning office on July 21, after Higgins authored a memo claiming Trump was under attack by “globalists and Islamists” and “cultural Marxists.” McMaster also fired Derek Harvey, Trump’s top Middle East adviser, in late July.