Judicial Watch Sues Pentagon for Details of Alleged Conversation between CIA Employees Seeking to ‘Get Rid’ of then-President Trump


 

1. Any and all reports submitted by a US military officer assigned to the National Security Council to his superiors relating to a conversation he overheard circa January 2017 at an "all-hands" NSC staff meeting between CIA analysts Eric Ciaramella and Sean Misko regarding trying to "get rid" of then-President Trump, as discussed in a January 22, 2020 Real Clear Investigations article available at this link.
2. Any and all records relating to any investigations conducted by the Department of Defense and/or its sub-agencies and departments into the alleged conversation between Misko and Ciaramella referenced above, including but not limited to investigative reports and witness statements.
3. All emails and communications sent to and from members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff regarding the alleged conversation between Misko and Ciaramella and any related investigations.

Barely two weeks after Donald Trump took office, Eric Ciaramella – the CIA analyst whose name was recently linked in a tweet by the president and mentioned by lawmakers as the anonymous “whistleblower" who touched off Trump's impeachment – was overheard in the White House discussing with another staffer how to remove the newly elected president from office, according to former colleagues.

Sources told RealClearInvestigations the staffer with whom Ciaramella was speaking was Sean Misko. Both were Obama administration holdovers working in the Trump White House on foreign policy and national security issues. And both expressed anger over Trump’s new “America First” foreign policy, a sea change from President Obama’s approach to international affairs.

“After Flynn briefed [the staff] about what ‘America First’ foreign policy means, Ciaramella turned to Misko and commented, ‘We need to take him out,’ ” the staffer recalled. “And Misko replied, ‘Yeah, we need to do everything we can to take out the president.’”

Added the military detailee, who spoke on condition of anonymity: “By ‘taking him out,’ they meant removing him from office by any means necessary. They were triggered by Trump’s and Flynn’s vision for the world. This was the first ‘all hands’ [staff meeting] where they got to see Trump’s national security team, and they were huffing and puffing throughout the briefing any time Flynn said something they didn’t like about ‘America First.’”

He said he also overheard Ciaramella telling Misko, referring to Trump, “We can’t let him enact this foreign policy.”

Alarmed by their conversation, the military staffer immediately reported what he heard to his superiors.

“It was so shocking that they were so blatant and outspoken about their opinion,” he recalled. “They weren’t shouting it, but they didn’t seem to feel the need to hide it.”

[T]he legal and national interests at stake in any proceeding to determine whether a candidate should be barred from running for a national office like the presidency, either pursuant to Section 3 or for any other reason, are extraordinary. Those interests encompass the First Amendment associational rights of members of national political parties, as well as the rights of millions of voters to express their political preferences by voting for the parties’ candidates. Those interests also include the national interest in conducting elections perceived to be legitimate because they reflect the wishes of the voters.

[T]he impact of banning a national candidate like President Trump from the ballot in one state is felt nationwide, as his supporters, in every state, reassess his chances of winning and the value of turning out to vote for him. Accordingly, any proceeding to remove President Trump from the ballot in Colorado must account for the interests of millions of Republican party members and voters across the nation if it is to comport with the requirements of the Due Process Clause.

[T]he United States has an interest in being able to credibly maintain that national elections are decided by voters who are persuaded, for various reasons, to cast their ballots for particular candidates. Where this is so, the outcome of the election may be relied on to reasonably reflect what the American people want. But this claim is undermined when it appears that the machinations of partisans, bureaucrats, and lawyers are more important in determining the outcome of an election than the will of voters.

In a basically standardless legal discussion, charges of insurrection can be levelled by imaginative partisans on the basis of many different kinds of inflammatory political actions or speech. Consider:

1.      Vice President Kamala Harris promoted a bail fund that helped to free “those protesting on the ground in Minnesota” in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. The protests in 20 states following that murder were among the costliest in U.S. history, persisting in some cities for months, and resulting in at least 25 deaths. Protesters attacked federal property and set fire to a federal courthouse. Protests also caused President Trump to evacuate the White House to a secure underground location, as rioters assaulted police officers outside the White House gates.
2.      Discussing an anticipated abortion ruling, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told a rally on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court on March 5, 2020, “I want to tell you Gorsuch. I want to tell you Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” His comments were reproved by the Chief Justice of this Court as “dangerous.” Two years later a man was arrested for threatening behavior directed at Justice Kavanaugh.
3.      Recently a number of Republican officials have proposed retaliating for the instant lawsuit by seeking to remove President Biden from their state ballots for abetting an “invasion of eight million” at the southern border of the United States.
4.      On June 10, 2017, Sen. Bernie Sanders called President Trump “the worst and most dangerous president in the history of our country.” Four days later, one of his supporters opened fire on congressional Republicans at a baseball practice, wounding four, including Rep. Steve Scalise.

All of these facts are fodder for interested partisans seeking to disqualify opposing candidates. If the nation does go “down that path,” presidential elections in the United States will become a more ugly business. Legal maneuvers to remove President Trump from the ballots of various states, and the retaliatory maneuvers they provoke, will create a new, anti-democratic front in the partisan wars. To be blunt, “blue states” will apply Section 3 to harass “red” candidates, while “red states” will apply that provision to harass “blue” candidates.

The losers in this process, as here, will be the voters.

The Court should foreclose this kind of warfare now. Amici respectfully submit that the Court should refuse to ratify these maneuvers, and should instead adopt as its policy the observation that “[t]he cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.”

The violent Yemeni militant group that keeps attacking commercial ships—including American vessels—in the Red Sea and Suez Canal was removed from the U.S. terrorist list by President Biden at the request of the famously corrupt United Nations and other leftist humanitarian groups. The revocation, announced on February 12, 2021, of the terrorist designation stood even after the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned two key militants of the group, which lately is best known as Houthis but is also officially identified as Ansarallah or Partisans of God. OFAC identified the men as Mansur Al-Sa’adi and Ahmad ‘Ali Ahsan al-Hamzi and revealed that they were responsible for orchestrating attacks by Houthi forces impacting Yemeni civilians, bordering nations, and commercial vessels in international waters. The agency also revealed in its March 2021 sanction document that the Houthis have waged a bloody war against the internationally recognized Yemeni government using ballistic missiles, explosives, naval mines, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to attack bases, population centers, infrastructure, and nearby commercial shipping.

Predictably, the Houthis continue to commit terrorist attacks because it is what they do. Nothing has really changed there, though the high-profile nature of the Islamic group’s recent activities has captured global attention that shines a light on the Biden administration’s controversial decision to remove it from the government’s official terrorist list. Since the middle of November, the Houthis have hijacked a commercial ship and launched dozens of attacks with drones, missiles and speed boats on other vessels transporting goods through the Red Sea and Suez Canal, a critical passage that sees around 12% of the world’s trade. The attacks are forcing ships to take a much lengthier route around southern Africa and the U.S. as well as Britain and other allies have struck Houthi targets in Yemen with missiles. This week the U.S. Central Command announced that it struck and destroyed four Houthi anti-ship ballistic missiles prepared to launch from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen and presented an imminent threat to both merchant and U.S. Navy ships in the region.

The recent attacks are receiving lots of global media coverage, but no outlet has pressed the Biden administration for answers regarding its outrageous decision to revoke the Houthis’ terrorist designation. Afterall, Yemen is a hotbed of terrorism that serves as the headquarters of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which has appeared on the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations since 2010. Nevertheless, the international community and its leftist allies strongly opposed the Trump administration’s classification of the Houthis as a specially designated global terrorist entity, asserting that it would come with repercussions for humanitarian operations. President Trump did not cave in and properly classified the Houthis/Ansarallah a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group, writing in a Federal Register bulletin that the group has committed or has attempted to commit, or poses a significant risk of committing, or has participated in training to commit, acts of terrorism that threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.

When Biden became president, the left squeezed the administration to remove the Houthis’ terrorist designation and it was not long before the U.S. obliged. Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken explained that the decision was a recognition of the dire humanitarian situation in Yemen. “We have listened to warnings from the United Nations, humanitarian groups, and bipartisan members of Congress, among others, that the designations could have a devastating impact on Yemenis’ access to basic commodities like food and fuel,” Blinken said at the time without offering details to back up the claim. A year later the administration laughably denounced the Houthis’ “acts of terrorism” against “civil infrastructure” after it launched drones and missiles at civilian targets in Saudi Arabia, including energy and water facilities. Blinken strongly condemned the multiple attacks and Biden National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan confirmed that the unprovoked incidents were indeed acts of terrorism.