While Trump Was Secretly Loading Up Documents, Mike Ellis Was Hoarding an NSA Document at the WH

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

From February

https://www.emptywheel.net/2022/02/11/while-trump-was-secretly-loading-up-documents-mike-ellis-was-hoarding-an-nsa-document-at-the-white-house/

The WaPo continues to own the story of the Archives’ efforts to reclaim documents removed from the White House by Donald Trump. Yesterday, they reported that some of the documents Trump absconded with were marked as classified, including Top Secret.

Some of the White House documents that Donald Trump improperly took to his Mar-a-Lago residence were clearly marked as classified, including documents at the “top secret” level, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The existence of clearly marked classified documents in the trove — which has not previously been reported — is likely to intensify the legal pressure that Trump or his staffers could face, and raises new questions about why the materials were taken out of the White House.

While it was unclear how many classified documents were among those received by the National Archives and Records Administration, some bore markings that the information was extremely sensitive and would be limited to a small group of officials with authority to view such highly classified information, the two people familiar with the matter said.

But the more interesting part of WaPo’s latest is a description of Trump packing up boxes without letting his closest aides look at them (I take this to mean the repacking at Mar-a-Lago).

It is not precisely clear who packed up the classified materials at Mar-a-Lago, or how they got there in the first place. Trump was very secretive about the packing of boxes that were retrieved from Mar-a-Lago last month, and did not let other aides — including some of his most senior advisers — look at them, according to people close to him.

As this story has been snowballing, I can’t get a detail from the IG Report on White House Counsel Mike Ellis’ aborted hiring as NSA General Counsel out of my head.

The DOD IG found that Ellis’ hiring itself wasn’t a problem. But it also found that NSA Director Paul Nakasone correctly responded by holding up the process when Ellis was involved in two security incidents in the days after January 6. In both cases, Ellis was treating NSA information improperly.

First Security Incident

An NSA employee received a controlled, classified NSA notebook of documents on January 7, 2021, from a Department of State official who was not authorized to access that information. An initial NSA review further found that several copies of the notebook had been produced without NSA authorization. This event raised concerns that other individuals possessed copies of these sensitive materials without NSA authorization.

[NSA Deputy Director George] Barnes told us that “[they] were spending the last week or so of the administration trying to find out who had them, where they were, and trying to get them back into positive control before the administration members left.” NSA officials received information on January 13, 2021, that Mr. Ellis either created or directed the copying of these notebooks of documents with compartmented, classified information without NSA knowledge, consent, or control.

Second Security Incident

On January 8, 2021, an NSA employee tried to retrieve an NSA document from Mr. Ellis that contained information of a classified, controlled, compartmented NSA program “of some of the most sensitive information that NSA possesses.” Mr. Barnes told us that Mr. Ellis refused to return the document, retained it for the White House archives, and, based on what the NSA employee saw, placed the document in a container that did not meet the security storage requirements for such a sensitive program. Mr. Barnes told us that he contacted Mr. Eisenberg on January 9, 2021, for help obtaining the document, and the document was returned to the NSA on January 14, 2021. Mr. Barnes said, “The White House people were all leaving so every day new members were leaving and so we were prioritizing on identifying our documents that needed to be brought under positive control and accounted for.” [italicized brackets and bold mine]

*snip*

[kentuck]

1. More on Ellis

(snip)
Ellis is notably a former aide to Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.), the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. Back in 2017, The Post, the New York Times and others reported that while serving in the White House, Ellis helped share intelligence with Nunes, who was then the committee’s chair, which showed Trump and his allies were swept up in foreign surveillance.

Nunes and the White House then used this information in an attempt to undermine the Russia investigation and to lend credence to Trump’s allegation that he and his team were spied on. This was despite them not being the targets of the surveillance. (Foreign actors are routinely surveilled, and those who speak with them can be swept up in what is known as “incidental” collection.)

(snip)
In 2017, Ellis' name first started appearing in national reports when he was accused of using his position in the White House counsel's office to feed sensitive information to then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).

Two years later, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman testified under oath that Ellis, a former Republican operative, was one of the officials responsible for transferring the infamous Trump/Zelensky call summary to the National Security Council's top-secret computer server.

https://www.trumpallstars.com/michael-ellis

[erronis]

2. Thanks, kentuck. This individual (Ellis) must have strong ties to some other anti-US countries

and individuals.

Hope he gets a proper roasting and then a very long stay in a 6x10 cell.