Posted on 04/04/2017 4:25:58 PM PDT by ckinv368
Since last summer, we’ve witnessed a firestorm of nonstop media coverage about alleged Russian meddling in our election process. Questions arose regarding targets of Russian hacking and communications. Certain outlets (incorrectly) reported that Russia went so far as to hack voting machines and/or paper ballots in battleground states. A liberal shibboleth no less impressive than Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe has been quoted by the Washington Post as stating Trump’s presidency has been “rendered illegitimate by treasonous or otherwise unlawful manipulation.” While I completely disagree with Prof. Tribe’s assertions on presidential legitimacy, I think his mention of “treasonous or otherwise unlawful manipulation” is well-timed and worth further discussion. Because, frighteningly, the most profound and harmful manipulation of the US electoral process was not perpetrated by Russia at all, but instead appears to have been conducted by our own government.
Much of this story began in the early hours of March 4, when President Trump inartfully “tweeted” an accusation that the Obama Administration illegally “wire tapped” Trump’s campaign offices in Trump Tower prior to the November election. The Left went crazy, arguing that Trump must be delusional in making this “wholly unsubstantiated” claim. While Trump surrogates stood firm, a spokesman for former President Obama hedged his way around the substance of the claim, stating “Neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen.” Over the next two weeks, FBI Director James Comey, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper similarly danced around the core issue of whether Trump was subject to surveillance, stating that the Obama Administration did not conduct direct surveillance on Trump’s campaign offices. Smelling blood in the water, the media crowed with excitement at seemingly having caught Trump in a preposterous lie.
Then, on March 22, Congressman Devin Nunes, the Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, confirmed that the Obama Administration had “incidentally monitored” communications between the Trump campaign and foreign officials. However, the identity of the US citizens involved had likely been “masked” from disclosure, per standard procedure. This “masking” of Trump administration identities made this “incidental collection” of communications seem a trifle benign at the outset. After all, one should expect that conversations with foreign officials—just like those with customer service—“may be monitored.” Viewed through the lens of anonymity that “masking” was meant to guarantee, the matter seemed relegated to the realm of an unpleasant reality of the information age. The media certainly played it down, instead castigating Congressman Nunes for failing to discuss the matter with leading Democrats on his committee before briefing the President and making his announcement. But, as the story continued to unfold, and more facts became known, this “incidental collection” took on a much more sinister aspect.
We now know that senior Obama Administration officials—National Security Advisor Susan Rice being chief among them—perpetuated a scheme to politicize this “incidentally monitored” communication. According to Eli Lake at Bloomberg News, and the New York Post, Rice began to routinely request the “unmasking” of Trump sources as early as July of last year—a rare step generally only used when there is probable cause a crime has been committed. Rice flatly denied knowledge about the “unmasking” controversy a mere two weeks ago, telling PBS “I know nothing about that,” and stating she “was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that count.” However, today Rice admitted to MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that she had, in fact, requested the “unmasking” of certain individuals, but only so she could more fully understand intelligence reports. Rice went on to deny this information was ever used politically, stating that the “unmasked” information came to her only, and that “there’s no equivalence between unmasking and leaking.” But, that doesn’t seem to be the truth either.
News outlets are now reporting that the “unmasked” communications were widely disseminated within the highest ranks of the Obama Administration. Officials at the National Security Council, the Department of Justice, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA were all routinely given copies. And, the New York Post reports that the classification level of these highly-sensitive “unmasked” transcripts was significantly decreased within Obama’s last year in office, to allow them to be disseminated further afield within the government. Former Deputy Defense Secretary Evelyn Farkas admitted to such dissemination in a March 2 interview on MSNBC, stating she urged her “former colleagues [to] get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the administration.”
We now know this highly classified information was slowly leaked to the press by the Obama Administration throughout the final months of the presidential campaign, and even after the inauguration took place. Such disclosures continued to feed the media frenzy surrounding Trump’s alleged “Russia ties” in the final days of the election, cost General Michael Flynn his job as National Security Advisor, and threatened, on multiple occasions, to derail Trump’s presidential campaign. While these transcripts represented “a stream of information that was supposed to be hermetically sealed from politics,” Michael Doran, a former senior director at the National Security Council, believes that the Obama administration “blew a hole in the wall between national security secrets and partisan politics.”
The Watergate scandal began as a private break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters conducted by private citizens. President Nixon’s administration later attempted to cover up its involvement, leading to his very public resignation in disgrace. This “unmasking” scandal goes much further. When a presidential administration decides to use highly-classified signals intelligence to smear a political opponent and try to influence a presidential election—likely committing felonies in the process—you’re not looking at a mere Watergate-sized scandal. You’re looking at perhaps the most blatant and unlawful attempt to unduly influence an election in US history. It seems that when it comes to politics, we should all be much more afraid of our own government than we are of the Russians.
For more like this, please see: www.cameronkinvig.com
Great article and great explanation!
Lately libtard socialists and racist minorities are both running ahead of big brotherin terms of my potential concerns, right now.
Thanks!
I completely agree!
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