"As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety," Trump wrote in a series of tweets. "
Various sources disagree: "The Post is withholding most plot details, including the name of the city, at the urging of officials who warned that revealing them would jeopardize important intelligence capabilities. “Everyone knows this stream is very sensitive, and the idea of sharing it at this level of granularity with the Russians is troubling,” said a former senior U.S. counterterrorism official who also worked closely with members of the Trump national security team. He and others spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the subject. (Note: this is a responsible newspaper acceding to requests not to disclose all the information relative to the story in the interest of national security." If only Trump took it that seriously.
Do you, "have the absolute right" Sir? Do you really? Or do you simply believe that any faux pas, lapse of judgment, or ill consider action is justified after the fact, simply by your having done it? You didn't think so some time back. As candidate you said:
"The secretary of state was extremely careless and negligent in handling our classified secrets."
"WikiLeaks proves even the Clinton campaign knew Crooked mishandled classified info, but no one gets charged? RIGGED!"
"What she did is a criminal act. If she's allowed to run I would be very, very surprised."
All the above were statements tweeted by candidate Trump, and much more specificity was evident in numerous campaign smear speeches. To be clear; I think Mrs Cinton's mishandling of classified information was wrong, but then I, as an active duty military member with a Secret clearance, never knowingly did so, let alone with a Russian, so perhaps my standards are higher.
Back to the original statement, however, which should have an "oops, my bad" immediately preceding it. Does in fact, the President have, as a sycophant Senator from Idaho alleges, such power that, if he does it, it's legal, period? Richard Nixon made this same allegation shortly before his resignation.
Here is some data to help us decide: all of it is from government sources, either agencies of US Code.
"Government policies dictate that any piece of classified information is “owned” by the Executive agency which created it (ed. note: This would be the CIA, who was blindsided by Trump's release of material, but moreover the source of it.) even if the record itself is no longer (or never was) in the custody of that agency. Agencies determine the ongoing sensitivity of their information, or “equity,” and mandate its protection accordingly. Declassification is a determination that information would no longer damage national security if released, and no longer warrants withholding from the public." Did you get that? "Agencies determine", not the President...!
Additionally, there are laws which specify that this shouldn't be a unilateral decision, made "on the fly" in the Oval Office:
The Intelligence Authorization Act for FY2013, S. 3454, 112th Congress, as reported by the Senate Intelligence Committee, contained a number of measures to address the disclosure of classified information by federal employees, whether authorized or not....... 85 Section 504 of the bill, as passed by both houses of Congress, requires "a government official who approves a disclosure of classified information... or to another person, (and since the nature of the discussion was "explained " by Trump, it was released to the media as well.) to first report the decision and other matters related to the disclosure to the congressional intelligence committees." Trump, who apparently disdains such things, failed to do so.
Section 4.1(g) requires agency heads and the Director of National Intelligence to “establish controls to ensure that classified information is used, processed, stored, reproduced, transmitted, and destroyed under conditions that provide adequate protection and prevent access by unauthorized persons.” If “transmitted” is read to include oral dissemination and “unauthorized persons” is read to mean persons who do not meet the criteria set forth in Section 4.1(a),72 then it would seem that agency heads who approve leaks could be in breach of their responsibilities under the Order.
The significance here, is that even if Trump alleges that he, as Executive Branch head, (a bastardization of the actual intent, since the DCIA is the Agency head in fact) he, Trump, is still in violation in the sense that he just did it, notifying no one of his intent.
So what does it all mean? Well, if it were anyone else, the following would almost certainly be underway: "section 53 Stiffer penalties—fines of up to $10,000 and imprisonment for up to 10 years—attach when a federal employee transmits classified information to anyone that the employee has reason to believe is an agent of a foreign government.........," unless of course we are to believe that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak aren't really "agents of a foreign government." It should also be noted that the law doesn't differentiate between those we like or those we don't trust.
Since the sources for the Israeli's angry reception of said news are, by the nature of the game, not publically named, Trump again gets to call it all "fake" news. It must be noted that recent actions of the Trump White House are so bizarre that it would be a fool's errand to attempt to "fake" items more outrageous than the day to day circus that currently shames our nation. If Donald Trump were a beginning teacher in Orange County, Florida, he'd have already been let go under the 90 day rule.
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