A violation of the oath of office

A violation of the oath of office

by digby



This is how Emptywheel characterizes what Stone's indictment says today in nice plain English:

The indictment shows that Stone was asked to figure out what emails on Hillary Julian Assange had, and using at least Jerome Corsi and Randy Credico as go-betweens, Stone did so, providing information (most explicitly) to Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon. When Congress asked Stone about all this, he lied, first hiding any of his go-betweens, and then seemingly using Randy Credico to hide Jerome Corsi. Mueller provides a lot of the communications between Stone and his go-betweens and the communications from October 2016, as well as some of the ones from the cover-up period.

But she says that what's most interesting is what Mueller doesn't say. Click over and read the whole thing. There are a ton of mysteries.

It doesn't say with whom --- besides Steve Bannon in October -- at the Trump campaign Roger Stone spoke. But it's this passage that has gotten the most attention:

After the July 22, 2016 release of stolen DNC emails by Organization 1, a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign.

We don't know who that senior campaign official was. There weren't very many in the Trump campaign, especially during that period, while Manafort was still running the show and before Bannon and Conway came on board. It's hard to imagine who might be in a position to "direct" such a person aside from Trump himself. Of course, it could be "John Barron" or one of Trump's other alter egos so who knows?

We all know that Trump reveled in the Wikileaks disclosures. That's not a crime although it's mightly sleazy. And if they coordinated the releases for maximum damage to the Clinton campaign it's unclear just what statutes Trump would have violated. It's possible he's just a garden variety GOP scumbag in this instance.

But there is something more to this story which I think was well described by Jeremy Bash on MSNBC:
Asking whether the president broke the law isn't the right question. The right question is whether there is conduct by the president and the presidential candidate that violates his oath of office. Because at the end of all of these deals, these financial deals about Trump tower Moscow, these political deals about Wikileaks, was conduct by the president in which his end of the bargain was to enact the most pro-Russia, pro-Putin, obsequious deferential policy we've ever seen. If that's not a violation of his oath of office, I don't know what is.
Presidents of the United States are held to a higher standard than just not breaking the law. During much of the period that Trump was banging the drum for Wikileaks and even publicly exhorting the Russians to release hacked emails, he was receiving national security briefings telling him that the Russians were interfering in the election: 

Remember:
In the weeks after he became the Republican nominee on July 19, 2016, Donald Trump was warned that foreign adversaries, including Russia, would probably try to spy on and infiltrate his campaign, according to multiple government officials familiar with the matter.

The briefings were led by counterintelligence specialists from the FBI, the sources said. They were timed to occur around the period when the candidates began receiving classified intelligence, the officials said, which put them at greater risk for being targeted by foreign spies. Trump's first intelligence briefing as Republican nominee was Aug. 17, 2016, sources told NBC News at the time.

Trump was "briefed and warned" at the session about potential espionage threats from Russia, two former law enforcement officials familiar with the sessions told NBC News. A source close to the White House said their position is that Trump was unaware of the contacts between his campaign and Russians.

Here's what we've known about what was happening in that period:
June 12, 2016 - During an interview on British television, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says that the website has obtained and will publish a batch of Clinton emails.

June 14, 2016 - The Washington Post reports hackers working for the Russian government accessed the DNC's computer system, stealing oppositional research on Donald Trump and viewing staffers' emails and chat exchanges. The Kremlin, however, denies that the government was linked to the hack, and a US official tells CNN that investigators have not yet concluded that the cyberattack was directed by the Russian government.

June 15, 2016 - A cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC posts a public notice on its website describing an attack on the political committee's computer network by two groups associated with Russian intelligence. According to the post, two Russian-backed groups called "Cozy Bear" and "Fancy Bear" tunneled into the committee's computer system. In response, a blogger called Guccifer 2.0 claims that he alone conducted the hack, not the Russians. As proof, he posts internal DNC memos and opposition research on Trump. Furthermore, Guccifer 2.0 claims to have passed along thousands of files to WikiLeaks. Trump offers his own theory on the origins of the attack: suggesting in a statement that the DNC hacked itself to distract from Clinton's email scandal.

July 22, 2016 - Days before the Democratic National Convention, WikiLeaks publishes nearly 20,000 emails hacked from the DNC server. The documents include notes in which DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz insults staffers from the Bernie Sanders campaign and messages that suggest the organization was favoring Clinton rather than remaining neutral. Wasserman Schultz resigns in the aftermath of the leak.

July 25, 2016 - The FBI announces it has launched an investigation into the DNC hack. Although the statement doesn't indicate that the agency has a particular suspect or suspects in mind, US officials tell CNN they think the cyberattack is linked to Russia.

July 27, 2016 - During a press conference, Trump talks about Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state and calls on hackers to find deleted emails. "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," says Trump. Newt Gingrich, a Trump surrogate, defends Trump in a Tweet, dismissing the comment as a "joke."

August 12, 2016 - Hackers publish cell phone numbers and personal email addresses for Nancy Pelosi and other members of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
.
September 1, 2016 - During an interview with Bloomberg News, President Vladimir Putin says that he and the Russian government have no ties to the hackers. He says that the identity of the culprit or culprits is not as important as the content of the leaks, and ultimately the hackers revealed important information for voters.

September 22, 2016 - Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Adam Schiff, ranking members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, issue a joint statement declaring that based on information they received during congressional briefings, they believe that Russian intelligence agencies are carrying out a plan to interfere with the election. They call on Putin to order a halt to the activities.

September 26, 2016 - During a presidential debate with Clinton, Trump questions whether the DNC cyberattack was carried out by a state-sponsored group or a lone hacker. "It could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds."

October-November 2016 - Over the course of a month, WikiLeaks publishes more than 58,000 messages hacked from the account of John Podesta, Clinton's campaign chairman.

October 6, 2016 - DCLeaks, a self-described collective of "hacktivists" seeking to expose the influence of special interests on elected officials, publishes a batch of documents stolen from Clinton ally Capricia Marshall. DCLeaks is later identified as a front for Russian military intelligence.

October 7, 2016 - The Department of Homeland Security and the Office of National Intelligence on Election Security issues a statement declaring that the intelligence community is "confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of emails from US persons and institutions." According to the statement, document releases on websites WikiLeaks and DCLeaks mirror the methods and motivations of past Russian-directed cyberattacks.

.