Posted on 05/24/2019 4:51:57 AM PDT by EyesOfTX
Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends)
When real news intrudes on DC Kabuki Theater. – While most of the fake news media is focused on the back-and-forth childish insults between President Trump and San Fran Nan, actual important stuff just keeps happening. British Prime Minister Theresa May resigned overnight after making an utter disaster of Brexit planning. That’s kind of a big deal.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who styles himself as a journalist, was hit with 18 charges under the Espionage Act. Gosh, that probably raised the stress level of all the reporters in our fake national news media outlets who’ve spent the last three years trading sports tickets, expensive dinners and sex for classified material, don’t you think? After all, it is one thing for a journalist to “receive” national secrets like several did from Daniel Ellsberg in the famous Pentagon Papers incident, but it is quite another thing to obtain them via bribery or, as in the case of Assange, via hacking illegally into computers. Something to keep in the back of our minds as Attorney General William Barr moves forward with his investigation. More on this later, in fact.
And speaking of our real, actual, functioning Attorney General, the biggest overnight news – news that the New York Times will likely relegate to page 19 of section C – came in the form of a letter to Mr. Barr from President Trump authorizing him to start the process of declassifying documents related to surveillance of the Trump campaign by high officials in the Obama Administration during 2016.
Boom.
“Today, at the request and recommendation of the Attorney General of the United States, President Donald J. Trump directed the intelligence community to quickly and fully cooperate with the Attorney General’s investigation into surveillance activities during the 2016 Presidential election,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.
“The Attorney General has also been delegated full and complete authority to declassify information pertaining to this investigation, in accordance with the long-established standards for handling classified information. Today’s action will help ensure that all Americans learn the truth about the events that occurred, and the actions that were taken, during the last Presidential election and will restore confidence in our public institutions.” The full text of the memorandum can be found here.
This memo is very interesting for several reasons:
It confers Barr the full authority to conduct the declassification without involvement from Mr. Trump himself. This makes sense since Trump was the ultimate target of the illegal spying, and thus would have an inherent conflict of interest. It is very telling that the President was unwilling to confer such authority on former AG Jeff Sessions, but is now willing to give it to Barr. Giving Barr full authority to manage the process also makes sense given that it is being done in conjunction with the conduct of Barr’s own investigation, which is being led by Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham. It allows Barr and Durham the discretion to hold back any documents whose public revelation might harm their own inquiry. Note all the other high officials addressed in the memorandum. Note the presence of the Secretary of …. Energy??? Hey, what is the main function of the Department of Energy? Why, it is providing security for the nation’s nuclear facilities, both in the Defense Department – whose Secretary is also addressed atop the memo – and in the nation’s power generation sector. Hey, remember that time when the Obama Administration – led by then-Sec. State Pantsuit Princess – sold 20% of our nation’s uranium reserves to the Russians, right after the Russians had poured more than $150 million into the Clinton Crime Family’s Fake Foundation? Yeah…guessing the Coughing Crook soiled her newest fashionable table cloth smock when she saw this little item. Oh, yeah, look at who else is on that list – the Secretary of Treasury. Hey, remember that time when President Barack Hussein Obama his own self authorized the loading of $400 million in foreign currency onto a jumbo jet and had it flown over to Tehran to give to the Iranian Mullahs? Yeah, so do I. Oh, and look at the paragraph headed “Section 1. Agency Cooperation.” Look at how it says “The Attorney General is currently conducting a review of intelligence activities relating to the campaigns in the 2016 Presidential election and certain related matters.” What might those “related matters” be? Sure is going to be interesting finding out. [One more interesting note that comes from a friend] It is also “Interesting that it dropped on the Thursday night before Memorial Day weekend, when most of these swamp rats have already checked out for the long weekend, but while most Americans are still paying attention for another 12-18 hours.” Solid point. The timing of this memo is interesting for a number of reasons, one of which is the pending release of the report on abuse of the FISA process coming from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz. As I told host Greg Budell in a Tuesday interview on Montgomery, Alabama’s 93.1 FM, some parts of that report most likely won’t make much sense to the public at large unless certain documents are declassified either along with the IG’s report or shortly after its release.
My bet is that the timing of this memo means that we will be seeing that IG report very soon now, probably during the first half of June.
One final point, cycling back to the discussion above about Assange and “journalists” who illegally obtain classified documents: Keep in mind that news item we saw several weeks back indicating that Horowitz has been looking into incidents in which FBI and other DOJ officials had received illegal compensation in exchange for such information.
We have waited a long, long time for this declassification and the final Horowitz report. After several false starts and disappointments, it is well past time for both to be real.
That is all.
Follow me on Twitter at @GDBlackmon
You should read the EO's cited in the President's order to Barr.
I'm Oracling right now, or I'd track it down for you.
The Donald cited that for a reason. And wrote the EO for a reason too.
The Devil is in the details (fine print)
The letter is posted here on FR in several places. Good luck.
Folks, when our beloved President says he'll declassify everything, he doesn't mean everything.
He has directed intel agencies to do in accordance with standards.....which means sources and methods will be redacted.
Just be careful with expectations.— EconChick/IntelChick (@MikayesFiona) May 24, 2019
Can’t wait to read the FISA warrants and the stuff Gowdy said was game changing today! Oh wait, not one single piece of paper has been released yet.
The President has talked about this for months. There should have been a large stack of information ready to be released on day one, but there is not. Information dibbled out over long periods of months has only convince a small minority of people that there was and issue. Hell, a slight majority of people believe Trump is still a Russian spy. Hardly anyone believes Obama directed a spying operation or the true story of the leaks.
Or your too stupid to tell me why. We’ve been making these claims for years. So oh wise one, why not till now?
Go figure it out for yourself, moron. There's LOTS of information out on Free Republic why Trump wasn't able to do things on Day 1, if you'd only lift a lazy finger to find out.
Bless your heart!
Don't leave your sound equipment lying around on the floor, I ain't your maid.
This story is ALL OVER the news, exactly the same.
What makes some bloggers plagiarized version MORE true?
Just because you dislike the media's crap sandwiches doesn't
mean that some blogger's day-old crap hash is any better.
It's just packaged differently.
Mueller, nothing could be done until the Mueller investigation was over. Thank goodness Sessions is gone.
But this is what we’ve been waiting for.
I won’t let Debbie Downers ruin this for me. I’m enjoying the show.
Lol. While on the trains to (and stay at) the Death Camps, we’ll all have a good chuckle over our overly optimistic BOOM!!!’s
Why has it taken 2+ years to do this? It should have been ordered day 1.
It didn’t happen because Sessions recused and Rotten Rod wrote a biased “investigate only Trump” Mueller Coup scope memo to make sure it didn’t.
Was Hannity’s radio taped yesterday? The bit I heard he was talking about Whiskey. I think sometimes he bugs out early around holidays and plays a taped show.
We just have to be realistic not to be disappointed. Democrats and Never Trumpers like Romney types don’t care Obama spied on Trump. No Democrat is going to jail. The GOPe will never fight that battle.
This declassification is all about boosting Trump voter morale and GOTV for 2020. If it helps with that and gets POTUS reelected, great.
Actually, he has one of the more accurate blogs on the net.
Declassification is inside baseball for us nerds. The majority of the American people haven't a clue what it means. Walls and stopping illegal immigration is what will get DJT re-elected.
I erred. Trump didn't write the declas EO. That was the work of one Barak Hussein Obama. Which makes it even juicier that The Donald is using it to smack the derps.
I highlighted in red the EO citations. If you want to know the standards that Barr will be implementing for DECLAS, go check it out. I'm too busy to hunt those down too. And I'm really not that great a finder anyway.
Barr is motivated to DECLAS and is fixing to do it. For FISA, and later, even more.
Watch and see.
Once again, here on FR, some dork calls someone else “stupid” and doesn’t know how to spell the word “you’re”. So weird how common that is.
I can't say about this particular one, as I don't read his material.
Do you deny that this exact same story is available all over the news?
Or do you think that this blogger broke the news all by himself?
That seems to be what some do best. The left, OTOH, is registering new voters. That is the better Plan, and it's what DJT needs from us.
Truth can be found in the darndest places. One story can be similar to another, but there may be details in the one that the other doesn't have. Or a different editorial slant.
I like to read all versions of things and decide for myself. The more options the better.
We let the derps monopolize the signal for far too long, and look where that got us. Now that the derps have lost their information monopoly, we are better informed, and therefore, better armed.
Please don't take my bloggers away from me. The more voices the better, goodman.
Now I simply MUST get cracking on my work.
All play and no work makes Bag a dull boy.
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