michael ellis e s q
<div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/michael-ellis/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/michael-ellis/</a></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">no lnx</font></div><div>
</div><div> a move denounced by security and legal experts acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller has ordered the National Security Agency to install Michael Ellis, a Trump loyalist, <b>former chief counsel to GOP Rep. Devin Nunes, and Republican political operative, as the NSA's top lawyer.</b> The role is a civil service position, not one in which a political nominee is legally allowed to be placed.</div><div>
</div><div>Miller ordered the NSA chief, General Paul Nakasone, to install Ellis by Saturday at 6 PM. National security experts were relieved when it appeared Nakasone had refused, but on Sunday The Washington Post and CNN both reported Ellis will be the agency's general counsel.</div><div>
</div><div>"Mr. Ellis accepted his final job offer yesterday afternoon," the NSA said in a statement Sunday, the Post reports, which is just three days before Trump will no longer be president. "<b>NSA is moving forward with his employment."</b></div><div>
</div><div>Susan Hennessey, a former Intelligence Community attorney who is now a CNN National Security and Legal Analyst, on Saturday basted the Trump administration's 11th hour attempt to subvert the process and blasted Ellis himself as<b> "bad bad news.</b>"</div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><a href="https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/trump-installs-lawyer-who-worked-for-rep-nunes-and-don-mcgahn-in-key-nsc-role/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/trump-installs-lawyer-who-worked-for-rep-nunes-and-don-mcgahn-in-key-nsc-role/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">not vet no lnx twt</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>trump Installs Lawyer Who Worked for Rep. Nunes and Don McGahn in Key NSC Role</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">by Matt Naham | 10:53 am, March 3rd, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Donald Trump has continued to shuffle the deck at the National Security Council (NSC), where he installed a White House ally as senior director for intelligence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Attorney Michael Ellis started his new job on Monday and his immediate superior is White House lawyer John Eisenber</b>g, according to Politico. The development was described as latest instance of the Trump administration putting loyalists in key roles. Ellis will be privy to extremely sensitive information.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indeed, the reassignment of the brothers Vindman now seems a distant memory, but Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s testimony about Ellis and Eisenberg is worth singling out here. Per Politico:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Ellis also featured in the Ukraine scandal, according to testimony heard by the House Intelligence Committee during the impeachment investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a decorated Army officer who served as the National Security Council’s director for Ukraine, told lawmakers in October that Ellis and Eisenberg were the ones who decided to move the record of Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky into the NSC’s top-secret codeword system—a server normally used to store highly classified material that only a small group of officials can access.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In short: a person involved in limiting access to President Trump’s July 25 call with Volodymyr Zelensky was promoted. This is the call that sparked a whistleblower complaint and got the dominoes toppling toward impeachment. The people who testified about that call were reassigned.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What else do we know about Ellis? The White House included Ellis’s résumé when announcing his addition to the White House Counsel’s Office, when Don McGahn was running the show as of March 7, 2017:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Michael Ellis serves as Special Assistant to the President, Senior Associate Counsel to the President, and Deputy National Security Council Legal Advisor. Most recently, Mr. Ellis served as General Counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Prior to joining the U.S. House of Representatives, Mr. Ellis was a Law Clerk to<b> Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the Sixth Circuit Court </b>of Appeals and to Judge Amul Thapar of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky. Earlier in his career, Mr. Ellis served as an Associate Director in the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives. Mr. Ellis is also an intelligence officer in the United States Navy Reserve. Mr. Ellis earned his bachelor’s degree from<b> Dartmouth College and his J.D. from Yale Law School.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Some things to point out about this: 1) Ellis has intelligence experience; 2) he has experience working for Trump; 3) he was General Counsel for the House Intelligence Committee when it was chaired by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mike Sacks</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@MikeSacksEsq</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">REMINDER: Devin Nunes's committee counsel Michael Ellis went to work for <b>Flynn at the NSC, and then invited Nunes to the White House to see "evidence" of Obama admin "unmaskings" </b>so to</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> distract from the early pressure of the Russia investigation </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/30/us/politics/devin-nunes-intelligence-reports.html …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Representative Devin Nunes of California, a Republican and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, arrived for a meeting Tuesday on Capitol Hill.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2 White House Officials Helped Give Nunes Intelligence Reports</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The revelation fueled criticism that Representative Devin Nunes has been too eager to do the White House’s bidding, not run an independent investigation</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">nytimes.com</font></div><div>
</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">On that last point, the New York Times once identified Ellis as one of two White House officials who provided Nunes with “the intelligence reports that showed that President Trump and his associates were incidentally swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies.” That was reported on March 30, 2017. Notably, these Nunes sources were described as “whistleblowers”:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Since disclosing the existence of the intelligence reports, Mr. Nunes has refused to identify his sources, </b>saying he needed to protect them so others would feel safe going to the committee with sensitive information. In his public comments, he has described his sources as whistle-blowers trying to expose wrongdoing at great risk to themselves.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>That does not appear to be the case.</b> Several current American officials identified the White House officials as<b> Ezra Cohen-Watnick</b>, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a lawyer who works on national security issues at the White House Counsel’s Office and was previously counsel to Mr. Nunes’s committee. Though neither has been accused of breaking any laws, they do appear to have sought to use intelligence to advance the political goals of the Trump administration.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then-House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) repeated the “whistleblower” description during an interview.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“[Nunes] had told me that like a whistle blower-type person had given him some information that was new that spoke to the last administration and part of this investigation,” Ryan said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>During his time at Dartmouth, Ellis was the editor-in-chief of The Dartmouth Review</b>. After graduating, he actually appeared on Jeopardy! as a contestant. Several years ago, Ellis spoke about that experience during an interview with the publication he used to run. He also discussed how he came to advance Republican causes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Ellis said that when he was a college freshman, he volunteered for the George W. Bush–Dick Cheney campaign, ascended pretty quickly and ended up getting a job in the Bush White House after he graduated.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“My experience working on the Bush campaign in ’04 led to a position at the White House right after my graduation from Dartmouth. From March 2006 to February 2007, I worked in the Office of Strategic Initiatives, an office that actually no longer exists,” he said. “Obama shut it down once he took office, perhaps because he thought it was closely associated with Karl Rove. While I was working at the White House, I was involved in polling. It wasn’t the best year of President Bush’s administration, and especially since I was tracking public opinion, it was certainly a very humbling experience. But nonetheless, it was a great opportunity, especially for someone straight out of college, and I’m thankful that I was able to serve.”</font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/trumps-on-a-mission-to-corrupt-the-nations-intelligence-for-his-own-political-benefit"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/trumps-on-a-mission-to-corrupt-the-nations-intelligence-for-his-own-political-benefit</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wa mo</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump’s on a mission to corrupt the nation’s intelligence for his own political benefit</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by The <b>Washington Monthly March 7, 2020</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Flush with his impeachment acquittal victory, President Donald Trump has resurrected his nomination of Texas Congressman John Ratcliffe to become Director of National Intelligence. Ratcliffe’s initial nomination sank in July after it was revealed he had embellished his record as a U.S. Attorney by lying that he fought terrorism and rounded up hundreds of undocumented immigrants.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So, what motivates Trump to trot out the same damaged goods to head U.S. intelligence? This is, after all, a man whom former acting CIA director Mike Morell described as having “the least national security experience and the most partisan political experience of any previous director of national intelligence,” Even worse, Ratcliffe has peddled the conspiracy theory that “there may have been a secret society of folks within the Department of Justice and the FBI” in 2016 who were working to prevent Trump from becoming president.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>It’s not complicated. Trump prizes slavishness and intellectual dishonesty, or flat out derangement</b>. All the qualities Ratcliffe seems to possess in abundance. Post-impeachment, Trump feels empowered to push the envelope even further than he already has to corrupt and subjugate the government apparatus to his own ends, with a key focus on the intelligence community.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ratcliffe would succeed Vice Admiral Joseph Maguire, who was recently ousted as acting DNI by Trump after Maguire’s staff briefed the House Intelligence Committee on ongoing Russian election interference. To fill the gap, Trump has named one of his biggest loyalists, U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, as acting DNI.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Grenell’s Trumpist antics as U.S. envoy have already made him a pariah in Berlin</b>. But now, he has gotten the ball rolling in doing his master’s bidding and cleaning house: In just two weeks on the job, he has fired DNI principal executive and veteran CIA officer Andrew Hallman and hired<b style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> Kash Patel as “senior advisor.” Patel is an NSC staffer and former Devon Nunes aide </b>with little grounding in the intelligence community. Worse yet, Patel has already played a disgraced role in American history. He presented himself, falsely, as a Ukraine expert to the president and fed him disinformation that led to Trump’s impeachment-prompting attempt to extort Ukrainian president Zelensky. Grennell also dismissed chief of staff Viraj Mirani, continuing Trump’s purge of qualified and experienced IC officials.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Topping off Trump’s appointments of credentials-lite “yes-men,” is that of <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Michael Ellis, another Nunes acolyte,</span> as the NSC’s director for intelligence</b>. Ellis was behind the decision to bury the transcript of Trump’s infamous July 25, 2019 call to President Zelensky in a super-secret code word server. At the same time, Trump has imposed McCarthy-like loyalty-testing of federal employees through his hand-chosen grand inquisitor, 29-year-old John McEntee, the president’s former body man who was fired last year for a gambling addiction. Along with his deputy, a college student, McEntee is reportedly concentrating the hunt on allegedly anti-Trump political appointees. My contacts inside the government report the working level has not yet been targeted. “But our antennae are up,” said one national security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In other words, the president is turning paranoia into personnel policy. An expert in the politicization of intelligence, American University professor Joshua Rovner calls Trump’s moves “manipulation by appointment.” He told me in an interview that he worries that Ratcliffe “would perpetrate real damage to the intelligence community.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Stephen Slick, a 27-year CIA senior operations officer who now heads the University of Texas at Austin’s intelligence studies program, told me </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Trump’s bid to coerce political loyalty from government agencies and civil servants that are charged with pursuing the truth puts the country in danger. </span> “If the president succeeds in his project to diminish the fundamental non-partisan character of American intelligence and law enforcement, we will become increasingly vulnerable to miscalculation or catastrophic surprise,” he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course, we know the consequences of manipulated intelligence. George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein in 2003, based on faulty intelligence, led the country into a chaotic war that destabilized the Middle East. Thus far, that overseas adventure has cost more than $2 trillion and almost 4,500 American service members’ lives. Roughly 32,000 soldiers have been wounded.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Trump White House’s intimidation is already having a deleterious impact. Last month, agency chiefs declined to participate in briefing the House Intelligence Committee in the public segment of the annual Worldwide Threat Assessment hearing, fearing that doing so would attract the president’s ire.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s constant attacks against the intelligence community fit into his wider war on truth itself. His mission is twofold: to shield the public from intelligence that potentially could damage him politically, and to control the flow of information emanating from the agencies. That Trump’s goals fit neatly with those of Vladimir Putin could be a mere coincidence, or perhaps something more insidious. Eventually, that truth will come out.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, the Vichy GOP acts as Trump’s enabler. Based on the past behavior of Republicans in Congress, it seems obvious that they won’t stand up to the president now, even with the nation’s national security on the line.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Having served for many years as a State Department diplomat, and as a Pentagon intelligence analyst, I am of the conviction that Trump knows full well what he is doing. He may, typically, not have a detailed plan, but his ultimate objective is clear. And the country will be the worse for it.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/russia-is-interfering-on-trumps-behalf-again-and-hes-enraged-that-congress-now-knows-it-report/" style="font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/russia-is-interfering-on-trumps-behalf-again-and-hes-enraged-that-congress-now-knows-it-report/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">..</font></div>