(05-15-2017 08:39 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(05-15-2017 08:06 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(05-15-2017 04:26 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  Ok OO, I don't know if this was intentional (as in a quid pro quo), but man, oh man, the hits keep coming with regards to Trump and Russia. Just one little thing after another.

Quote: President Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting last week, according to current and former U.S. officials, who said that Trump’s disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.

The information Trump relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.

The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said that Trump’s decision to do so risks cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State...

In his meeting with Lavrov, Trump seemed to be boasting about his inside knowledge of the looming threat. “I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day,” Trump said, according to an official with knowledge of the exchange.

Trump went on to discuss aspects of the threat that the United States only learned through the espionage capabilities of a key partner. He did not reveal the specific intelligence gathering method, but described how the Islamic State was pursuing elements of a specific plot and how much harm such an attack could cause under varying circumstances. Most alarmingly, officials said, Trump revealed the city in the Islamic State’s territory where the U.S. intelligence partner detected the threat...

At a more fundamental level, the information wasn’t the United States’ to provide to others. Under the rules of espionage, governments — and even individual agencies — are given significant control over whether and how the information they gather is disseminated even after it has been shared. Violating that practice undercuts trust considered essential to sharing secrets.

The officials declined to identify the ally, but said it is one that has previously voiced frustration with Washington’s inability to safeguard sensitive information related to Iraq and Syria.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/nat...839c174592

And I love this gem at the bottom:

Quote: U.S. officials said that the National Security Council continues to prepare multi-page briefings for Trump to guide him through conversations with foreign leaders but that he has insisted that the guidance be distilled to a single page of bullet points, and often ignores those.

“He seems to get in the room or on the phone and just goes with it — and that has big downsides,” the second former official said. “Does he understand what’s classified and what’s not? That’s what worries me.”

Quid pro quo. if i swap a bushel of oramges for a knife, that is quid pro quo. if I stupidly tell you I have a bushel of oramges on my back porch, not quid pro quo.

I wasn't asking for a definition of quid pro quo, I was commenting that I didn't know if the divulging of top secret information was part of a quid pro quo.

Even if it wasn't, this seems like a big ol' oops!

sorry about the brevity of my post. This deserves a longer response. I was working on an Ipad in a hot car during a short break from a meeting.

I can agree that this was a big oops. It seems like a poor way to deliver promised information in return for Russians hacking and publishing the truth, which is what collusion is all about. Now, if they had persuaded the Russians to do a little doctoring, now that would be a big quid. But I just can't see anybody saying, "help us out, Vlad - Publish the DNC emails but without any editing". Seems to me that the Russians with Wikileaks did the job that the NYT and other journalists are supposed to - dig for the hidden truth and publish it.

If it will help you, I will postulate that Trump is not the best person we could have elected president. Not even close. He was just the better of the final two.