DONALD TRUMP GIVES WILLIAM BARR POWER TO DECLASSIFY INTELLIGENCE INFORMATION IN 'A CORRUPT

Full Title: DONALD TRUMP GIVES WILLIAM BARR POWER TO DECLASSIFY INTELLIGENCE INFORMATION IN 'A CORRUPT ACT OF POLITICAL RETRIBUTION,' EXPERTS SAY

Donald Trump has given Attorney General William Barr permission to declassify intelligence information about the origins of the Russia investigation, a move legal experts say is a gross abuse of power.

“In a corrupt act of political retribution, our president has ordered his utterly compliant attorney general to root out Deep State demons that exist only in the unhinged mind of our nation's leader,” Gene Rossi, a former federal prosecutor, told Newsweek.

The White House released a statement on Thursday announcing the declassification, claiming that it “will help ensure that all Americans learn the truth about the events that occurred” during the 2016 election.

Trump’s order also demanded that intelligence agencies fully cooperate with the Justice Department’s latest probe into the origin of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian election meddling and “surveillance activities” during the presidential election.

Bradley Moss, a national security law expert, told Newsweek that this represents “an unprecedented set of actions by the president.”

“It is virtually unheard of for the attorney general to have such expansive declassification authority,” Moss said. “That it is being provided to Barr here, in a politically-driven inquiry into the president’s adversaries, raises serious concerns that the power will be abused to allow for selective and cherry-picked declassifications.”

Trump’s latest order for declassification and cooperation from the intelligence community is a direct contrast to his approach to the congressional oversight into his administration and family business. He previously told his team not to cooperate with subpoenas or requests issued by House Democrats.

Newsweek is now published by Dev Pragad, and is independent of all previous owners, which include The Washington Post Company, the Daily Beast, and IBT Media (Independent Business Times).

IBT spun Newsweek out as a separate company in the midst of charges of financial corruption. The new CEO of Newsweek, Dev Pregad was also a part of the senior management team at IBT, so he may be implicated in the fraud that is alleged to have taken place there. The spin out was in 2018, as were the legal troubles.

Newsweek Media Group Splits Into Two Companies -- Newsweek & IBT Media

Where it gets weird is that IBT isn't as normal a publishing house as the name implies. In fact it's cult-linked. Here is an interesting and informative article about IBT circa 2014 from Mother Jones (yes, a Leftist source, but then Newsweek is also clearly a leftist source): Who’s Behind Newsweek?

Post the 2018 split here is the arraingement (per the previous article):

Dev Pragad leads Newsweek as Chief Executive Officer; Johnathan Davis becomes CEO of IBT Media. Pragad and Davis will be co-owners of Newsweek, but, the company said in a statement Wednesday evening, Davis has no operational role in Newsweek.

The most recent and interesting article I could find on the status of Newsweek was this one from a web magazine called "The Outline". What the hell is going on at Newsweek? and dates from Feb. 2018. It's a fun read.

Obviously this is a top news story today. You can pretty much pick your outlet to read about it. You can go establishment mainstream media, you can go Fox, you can go further left or right.

Fox News: Trump gives AG Barr authority to declassify documents related to 2016 campaign surveillance
Washington Post: Trump gives Barr power to declassify intelligence related to Russia probe
Chicago Tribune: Trump gives AG William Barr new powers to release highly classified information related to Russia probe

All of these would do a better job of reporting the basics of this story. The Newsweek article is particularly horrible, as it's almost 100% attack comments from anti-Trump hysterics. It's pure vitriol and propaganda.

Thanks for posting it for us.

At this point the most important advantage I see to the early release next week is that it may potentially allow I.G. Horowitz's report to be less redacted, and therefore more easily understood.

Mere declassification isn't enough to swing the political gagues one way or the other at this point. The combined viewership of ABC-NBC-CBS nightly news is about 24 million households a week. The viewership of Fox's top news program, Tucker Carlson Tonight, is about 3 million.

To get through the thick skulls of those 24 million MSM viewers something dramatic has to happen, 'declas' isn't it. It's such a he-said, she-said story that it probably dones't get even get air time.

What is needed are indictments, and indictments of either well known figures or at least people with high-ranking titles like "Director of" "Secretary" etc.

So, the most important person in breaking the whole scandal wide open remains the guy in Connecticut, who we hope acts like a real prosecutor and indicts people, and isn't just another useless placeholder, as U.S. Attorney Huber has (apparently) turned out to be. (Hope springs eternal).

Muiller put on a good show, and anytimte you watch the MSM try to downplay the Mueller report (that is all the time) they begin with "Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who convicted 11 individuals and indicted 23 Russians in his probe of Trump campaign collusion with the Russians ..."

Those convictions, even the truly pathetic ones like George Papadopolous's conviction and 12 night sentence for lying to the FBI are an important marker: Look bad things happened here!

The Manafort trial was covered in loving detail. The Cohen indictments and serial guilty plea, were likewise closely covered. The ridiculous over-the-top Roger Stone 5AM SWAT raid was the news Mr. and Mrs. Joe Sixpack woke to: "Oh, some of those Trump people are really bad"

So, it's pretty much up to John Durham arresting people, hopefully with the full force of the FBI in early morning raids that the Networks have been tipped off to, to create any change in the perception of many millions of ordinary Americans.

At some point the arrests have to become so traumatic that they can not be downplayed or avoided.

We have no way of knowing if Durham is going to do that. The Huber example is not a happy one. There is an institutional bias towards not going after "our own guys" by the Deep State, that is clear. And it's not just Dems who hold it, otherwise all the people who were telling us to "Trust Sessions" would not have egg all over their face today.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I'll love the "declass" and guys like Sundance at Conservative Treehouse will be able to tell us an even more accurate approximation of who did what to whom on what date --- but no arrests, no scandal.

Was he ever investigating anything besides graffitti on rocks in Utah? Not so far as anyone has been able to tell. A Republican senator said that looking for work-output from Huber on the Deep State Coup was like "playing where's Waldo".

Remember this sort of clutter? FR was full of it a year ago:

Belief in the efficiency and focus of long-time Washington politicians has been - misguided - to put it nicely.

ROUND TWO - Hope for better results this time:

Everything has been delegated to him, including the DECLAS - so, we will see what his aim is focused on, soon I hope.

US Attorney John Durham.

Let the subpoenas, search warrants, grand juries, indictments, plea bargains, and early morning SWAT arrests flow like water down the Mississippi.

Horowitz did his job, and he did manage to get Andrew McCabe fired, which demonstrates more clearly than any other single event why that's not enough. It had zero effect on the perceptions of the convincible middle, and was reported as yet another "he said, she said" story, where a solid attempt was made to claim that the firing was unfair and vindictive by the evil elf Sessions. Retribution of McCabe investigating Trump Russia. And, sadly, which we all put a lot of hope in the "referred for prosecution" it's been a year now and it appears nothing will come out of that referral. (Referrals - another thing that don't mean squat in setting aside the consensu reality).

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.