Posted on 03/05/2017 7:37:56 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
This is becoming funnier by the minute. Yesterday morning, Trump’s assertion that he and his campaign had been the subject of a wiretap ordered by the Obama administration was being laughed at. By midday the story was a denial that Obama himself had ordered an wiretap on Trump’s personal phone. By afternoon a consensus had developed that Trump was, in fact, the target, directly or indirectly, of surveillance. This morning on the talk shows the existence of the wiretap is treated as “of course it happened.” And now we’re at the stage where “Trump did a very bad thing by talking about it.” Via ABC News With tweetstorm, Trump may have exercised exclusive declassification authority.
If – through his tweets – Trump revealed secret government information about surveillance, he exercised an exclusive privilege afforded only to the president as the ultimate declassification authority.
If any other government employee had single-handedly made such revelations they could see prison time for potentially damaging U.S. national security, a former official with intimate knowledge of the government secrecy policies told ABC News.
“It’s an extremely serious offense,” ABC News Contributor Matt Olsen, who is the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center and a former FBI counsel, explained.
“Anyone who would reveal the existence of a wiretap would violate federal law,” he said. “It is against federal law to disclose the existence of a wiretap, whether that wiretap is for criminal purposes or intelligence purposes.”
Right now the only people in the world denying that electronic surveillance took place of either Trump, himself, or his campaign are Republicans who hate Trump. And James Clapper. But this is James Clapper we’re talking about.
It is sort of touching to see a news agency that has trafficked in all manner of leaked classified information that would get the leaker a long prison term suddenly concerned about national security. But it is hard to take it very seriously. The real point of this is to try to make Trump’s mention of the wiretap an issue. Up until now the Obama people have had the best of both worlds. They were able to leak about Trump and felt very safe that their own vulnerabilities would remain hidden behind security classification. If Trump wants to know how this movie ends he need look no further than Bush refusing to declassify information about the existence of Iraqi chemical weapons and the fact that US troops had been injured by them while allowing the media and Democrats to continue to falsely claim that there were no chemical weapons in Iraq.
In fact, the only reason this whole Trump-Putin-Russia thing has metastasized is because the evidence and even the allegations are surrounded in secrecy. If Trump wants this to go away he’s eventually going to have to present the intelligence community with an ultimatum: either you make the evidence public, or I do. Because, as the article accurately states, Trump holds the authority to declassify anything that he wishes to declassify.
If this is the latest defense of Obama’s lawlessness, that it is unlawful to disclose that you were targeted by lawlessness by the government, then the media is forever lost.
I think he should and go back and look at Iraq while you are at it.
It would be epic justice if an editor and writer at the SLIMES went to prison for this.
Aw baloney!
If the government wiretapped me and I found out about it, I would shout it out to the world. The First Amendment of the Constitution says that I can.
“If any other government employee had single-handedly made such revelations they could see prison time for potentially damaging U.S. national security”
Unless he was a Democrat.
Perhaps Clapper denied it because he was not allowed to confirm. That appears to be the law. Only the Prez can declassify.
Your Vapors image just about wraps it up. That was a fun little piece. Appreciate the post, 2nd Division
I think we’ve reached the point where every political figure and media hack inside the Beltway would rather eat a swimming pool full of horse crap than admit that Trump was objectively truthful in one of his hilarious Twitter messages.
But, Hillary did that exact thing in her October 31 tweet.
Apparently President Trump is the only one that can expose the truth to the American People about Obama’s misdeeds as President!
OUR president needs to crack down very hard and very soon. No mercy.
That may be true, unless you signed the document required to work in the intelligence field.
The restriction applies to those who have security clearance. Even if they see a secret revealed in the media, they cannot confirm it or talk about it.
Hillary tweeted it on October 31 2016
By this logic she broke yet another law by disclosing the wiretapping on Trump and did so a week before the election in attempt to damage her opponent
Good thing Hillary never released any secret intelligence.
So let’s see: it’s OK if the media/deep state leaks inside, private, or classified info to the press... as long as you don’t mention the use of wiretapping. OK, got it!
Actually it was Hillary last year who tweeted out the existance of the wiretap...
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