Posted on 03/22/2017 5:59:07 PM PDT by markomalley
The Obama administration worked in its final weeks in office to undermine the incoming Trump White and continues to do so, according to multiple sources both in and out of the White House.
Behind the effort, these sources say, are senior government officials who previously worked under President Obama and remain loyal to his agenda. These individuals leak negative information about the Trump White House and its senior staff to a network of former Obama administration officials who then plant this information in key media outlets including the Washington Post and New York Times.
Meanwhile, holdovers from the Obama administration are working to undermine the Trump administration's agenda through efforts to alter official communications, a number of administration officials confirmed in conversations with the Washington Free Beacon.
Multiple sources expressed concern over what they described as an unprecedented effort by the former administration to subvert President Donald Trump's team. These sources would only speak on background because they were not officially authorized to publicly discuss the situation, which is said to have fostered a level of discomfort and distrust in the West Wing.
The Free Beacon first reported on several portions of this effort earlier this year, including separate campaigns to undermine current CIA Director Mike Pompeo and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, both of whom were subjected to leaks aimed at undermining their credibility.
"We have members of the former administration at the highest levels who through their actions after January 20 have demonstrated their refusal to recognize the results of the general election," one senior administration official told the Free Beacon. "They have pursued, organized, and managed a comprehensive subversion of the new administration."
In one instance, Trump administration officials found evidence that the administration's executive order banning travel from certain Muslim-majority nations had been selectively altered to bring it more in line with Obama-era talking points.
Several hours before the orders were set to be signed by Trump, officials noticed that language concerning "radical Islamic terrorism" had been stripped from the order and replaced with Obama-era language about countering violent extremism.
West Wing staffers quickly scrambled to rewrite the order to bring it back in line with Trump's rhetoric, sources told the Free Beacon. The alteration of these directives is said to have spooked some senior officials working on the issue.
A series of targeted leaks also has fostered concerns that Obama administration holdovers are seeking to handicap the new administration.
Several weeks before his resignation, former national security adviser Flynn requested staff assemble an in-house phonebook that included contact information for senior White House staff. Before Flynn signed off on the effort, the phonebook was leaked to the press.
Additionally, the previous administration permitted staff to accrue substantial amounts of vacation time in its last year in office. As soon as team Trump entered the White House, it was obligated to pay out all of these hours. White House sources say the cost was in the millions of dollars.
The payout prevented the Trump White House from hiring key staff in its opening days due to insufficient funds, according to those familiar with the situation. Flynn, for instance, was able to hire only 22 people to work on the White House National Security Council, which topped around 420 staffers under Obama.
"They put landmines everywhere," according to one senior administration official.
Outside of the White House, meanwhile, a team of former Obama administration officials is working to subvert Trump's agenda.
Former Obama administration officials such as Ben Rhodes, the architect of Obama's pro-Iran press operation, and Colin Kahl, a senior national security adviser to former Vice President Joe Biden, have engaged in public efforts to "purge" the current White House of officials they disagree with.
Earlier this month, Kahl admitted on Twitter that he is seeking to provoke the firings of Trump's handpicked team "in the West Wing," including senior advisers Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Sebastian Gorka, and NSC leaders Michael Anton and KT McFarland.
As part of this effort, Kahl, Rhodes, and others have leaked damaging stories about these officials to allies in the media.
The latest target, Gorka, has been falsely accused of being a Nazi sympathizer and an Islamophobe. The campaign against Flynn unfolded in a similar manner and sources who spoke to the Free Beacon about the matter speculated that these leaks will continue.
"They have a network of journalists for whom they have served as sources and they have fed stuff to these journalists," one senior U.S. official told the Free Beacon. "That's what pretty obviously is going on. I've never seen this happen before. I've never heard of it happening throughout history."
Putting the current White House in a permanent state of defense is a key objective of this strategy, according to one senior Republican foreign policy operative who is close to the White House.
"Part of this campaign, of course, was the media operation of selective leaks, many of which were illegal and directly targeted the staff and officials of the incoming Trump administration," the source said.
Asked to address the issue, a White House spokesman told the Free Beacon the administration takes "these leaks very seriously."
This targeted media campaign is similar to the method used by Rhodes and others to push the Iran nuclear deal.
"You can tell what's clearly going on because many of the same media outlets who formed crucial parts of Ben Rhodes' Iran Deal ‘echo chamber' are springing to launch coordinated attacks on Sebastian Gorka today," said one longtime political consultant who is close to the White House NSC. "The way it works is, one highly partisan journalist goes out on a limb in dishonestly characterizing the target. That dishonest story is used to build on the next, in which the original lie is taken as fact, and then repeated in an echo chamber until it becomes conventional wisdom."
Update 2:37 p.m.: This post has been updated to reflect comment from a White House spokesman.
The U.S. Government needs a total fumigation. ASAP It’s suffering from a severe case of “body lice”.
I would urge the Justice Department to get warrants and start recording conversations. Perhaps they can get warrants and get access to past conversations.
Find out who is doing things against the duly elected president and throw them in prison for a couple of decades.
Today thyey were OUTED with Trump wire taps. Many will go to Jail!!
Maybe Hussain needs to follow Fletcher Christian’s lead and move from Tahiti to Pitcarin Island, where it’s safer to hide. And he needs to burn the boat he came in on (there ain’t no air fields to land a plane on there).
The will of the people be damned!
IF I were President, these underlings would be taken in and questioned.. obama included... the media would be shut out.. and the highest power/position would have a day with the rest of Washington.
I don’t care what anyone said... I’d have it out and settle this half baked left progressive liberals who are using every trick in the illegal book to do Trump in... it would stop or they’d be paying.
This that goes on and on and on has to have an end... and the end would be with my bad attitude which turned into an anger that they had not seen before.
Now, you peaceniks can pick this apart.. but I’m fed up with the enemy winning every day.. day in and day out with their lies and more lies. The media won’t report on this young girl being raped by illegals because “it would help Trump”... where in God’s name have we come from and to where are we going!!!
This is time for rebellion.. big time turnover of the powers that be to the powers that ARE!
Trump has left many, many high level Obama appointees in office. He could have appointed actings and brought in some of his people as Schedule Cs immediately to take over temporarily. He didn’t and now the internal war will go on for months. Even some very high level, reviled, appointees are still in office; like John Koskinen.
It does seem to me that this lingering shadowy Obama deep state government should rise to the interest of the president.
President Trump has not signaled even the slightest of concern
that subversion in the ranks is a problem for him, or isn’t okay. No tweets. No leaks. No jokes. Nada.
I believe he must surely and quietly be driving others, for some reason, to look at it, recognize it and correct it. It can not be that he doesn’t know what’s going on.
Strange, do they not know history, rhetorical question, the Islam believers were in bed with the Nazi's. So if Gorga were a Nazi then he would be with Islam.
They are ALL being protected and the president isn't being served well, by his advisers.
It's too late now....they ARE getting to Trump and his winning wasn't really "winning" at all; sadly.
And many of those whom he is listening to, are idiots, RINOS, and others ( his lefty daughter and her always a LEFTY DEM husband ) don't know their arse from their elbow.
At this rate President Trump is one and done. Washington DC is seemingly beyond hope even after the magnificent Trump win. The news everyday is so nauseating of the same wash, rinse ,repeat lies and deceit. Congress only has guts to fight Trump after being dormant for eight years of Obama. Our republic has seen better days and I wonder if they are all behind us.
Perhaps even he is now being quietly threatened? Blackmailed?
Pure evil. This is what 3rd worlds that Obama worships do.
Those 0 holdovers need to be kicked out.
Yesterday.
Well, it looks like the dems have gotten the message from that underground government obama has set up. They want to take out Trump... and at this point .. and with all the information that is coming out.. my guess is the swamp is so deep and wide... the corruption goes from bottom to top... and it’s all illegal... criminal... and they know it. They are trying to save their hides by getting Trump removed so they can continue their corruption.
The intelligence agencies are in on this... every dept of the government was compromised... was swamp deep in corruption.. and it’s worse than we even know at this point.
So they don’t just consider Trump what it has seemed for a time ... they are scared to death of him and have to get him out to save ALL their lives.. their jobs.. their families.. their livelihood... their future.. their everything that they have sold to join this swamp life in Washington.
God help our nation survive and keep President Trump safe!
Trump has left many, many high level Obama appointees in office.
Adam: Are the JournoList writers involved in this attack campaign? If so, I’ll print a list of them that is somewhere on my desk.
One of the worst is named Ackerman.
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