Think about it, the GOP set the terms, they made a huge deal out of a minor security kurfuffle. Make that level of outrage be the standard that sets the bar here. That was nothing compared to letting people who cannot for reason pass security clearance standards.
This as an investigation leads to a number of highly scandalous security issues, the worst being that those who didn’t have clearances did exactly what they can’t get a clearance for, they were involved in highly suspicious interactions with Russians.
The intelligence committees can’t help from touching toxic minefields of events every time they ask someone in intelligence what was known. We just found out in a reliable manner the other day that during the transition, a period where Trump and the transition staff should have had no interference in Obama’s foreign policy, that Flynn was called immediately after Russia’s ambassador found out about Obama retaliatory moves. Flynn reportedly telling him to calm down and ignore it, as soon as Trump takes office they will lift these sanctions and make it right.
Flynn may not have had a top level security clearance anymore, in fact I’m thinking it wouldn’t have been possible for him to get one. He was fired from the Obama administration for reasons that indicated instability in a security position where instability is not allowed (except with Trump). He had been interacting as a lobbyist with Russia and other countries being “watched”. My guess is that a top level security clearance for Flynn would have been DOA, too many reasons to keep him from having access to the holiest of secrets, especially in light of his well known ties. Had Trump been listening to intelligence I’m sure those doing the security clearance work were saying hell no to Flynn having access to Russia investigation intelligence.
This investigation, if it follows where the leads take it will reveal that Obama was getting intelligence about Russian ties, and so was Trump and staff, although in a cloaked manner because they were at the heart of investigations.
I’m not sure about Gowdy and how aggressive he gets with the GOP as far as damaging leads and following them up. It’s my opinion pertaining to Benghazi and email server issues he was steering investigation leads, avoiding that which undermined the mountain they were trying to make out of a molehill. Dems need to endlessly push any differences in how aggressively leads are followed, and fight dirty in terms of not allowing leads to be ignored.
I think that the national security breach optics on this are the place the GOP simply can’t and won’t go, Trump may get thrown under the bus because the level of security intelligence lapses is just too exposed now to go away. Patriotic duty calls for taking national security as the most serious thing.
This is not about a guy that punched and abused his wives (as big a deal as that is) that’s nothing compared to the breaches of security clearance protocol and the leaks to Russia it led to. It’s about a staff member with exposure to the highest levels of intelligence, who was flagged early on as having a clearance prohibitive history. The Trump staff can say he was on a provisional clearance all they want, but the bottom line is that when the early call is made that there have been flags found, it’s over, there will be no evidence that alters that early conclusion.
Same for Kushner, they find the things that prevent a clearance from happening early on (how many cases of failing to list Russian meetings?). This may be the first president in history that ignores everything intelligence tries to tell him. Any other president would be told that there is a problem with their staff member’s clearance, and it would be discussed what that is. When that is the conclusion it’s time to find another person who can be cleared.