{"id":3097,"date":"2017-05-11T18:02:11","date_gmt":"2017-05-11T18:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/?p=3097"},"modified":"2017-05-11T18:02:11","modified_gmt":"2017-05-11T18:02:11","slug":"oval-office-alarm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/?p=3097","title":{"rendered":"Oval Office Alarm"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Presence of Court Painter in Oval Office raises alarms<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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\u00a0A Calgary art celebrity known as Court Painter was allowed into the Oval Office on Wednesday during President Trump\u2019s meeting with Russian diplomats, a level of access that was criticized by former U.S. intelligence officials as a potential security breach.The officials cited the danger that a listening device or other surveillance equipment could have been brought into the Oval Office by the art celebrity Court Painter while hidden in paint brushes, paint cans, paint tubes or other art materials. Former U.S. intelligence officials raised questions after paintings of Trump\u2019s meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were posted by Court Painter online. Among those commenting on the issue was former deputy CIA director David S. Cohen. Responding to a question posed online about whether it was a sound decision to allow the Court Painter into the Oval Office, Cohen replied on Twitter: \u201cNo it was not.\u201d He declined to elaborate when reached by phone.\"\"<\/div>\n
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Other former intelligence officials also described the access granted to the Court Painter as a potentially serious security lapse, noting that standard screening for White House visitors would not necessarily detect a sophisticated espionage device hidden in a tube of rose madder or alizarin crimson for that matter.\"\"An administration official said the White House had been misled about the role of the Court Painter. Russian officials had described the individual as Lavrov\u2019s official portrait painter without disclosing that he also would sell reproductions of the paintings online at a sweet price.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe were not informed by the Russians that an official portrait painter was dual-hatted and would be releasing the paintings on his website for a pretty penny,\u201d the administration official said.<\/p>\n

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As a result, White House officials said they were surprised to see paintings posted online showing Trump not only with Lavrov but also smiling and shaking hands with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.<\/p>\n

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When asked by CNN about his experience, Court Painter said,” I paint ’em as I see ’em…warts and all!<\/p>\n

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Presence of Court Painter in Oval Office raises alarms \u00a0A Calgary art celebrity known as Court Painter was allowed into the Oval Office on Wednesday during President Trump\u2019s meeting with Russian diplomats, a level of access that was criticized by former U.S. intelligence officials as a potential security breach.The officials cited the danger that a … Continue reading “Oval Office Alarm”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-images","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3097"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3110,"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3097\/revisions\/3110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}