Patrick J. Buchanan:
Who is the real threat to the national security?
Is it President Trump who shared with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov the intelligence that ISIS was developing laptop bombs to put aboard airliners?
Or is it The Washington Post that ferreted out and published this code-word intelligence, and splashed the details on its front page, alerting the world, and ISIS, to what we knew.
President Trump has the authority to declassify security secrets. And in sharing that intel with the Russians, who have had airliners taken down by bombs, he was trying to restore a relationship.
On fighting Islamist terror, we and the Russians agree.
Five years ago, Russia alerted us that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had become a violent radical Islamist. That was a year and a half before Tsarnaev carried out the Boston Marathon bombing.
But upon what authority did The Washington Post reveal code-word intelligence secrets? Where in the Constitution or U.S. law did the Post get the right to reveal state secrets every U.S. citizen is duty bound to protect?
The source of this top secret laptop-bomb leak that the Post published had to be someone in the intel community who was violating an oath that he had sworn to protect U.S. secrets, and committing a felony by leaking that secret.
Those who leaked this to hurt Trump, and those who published this in the belief it would hurt Trump, sees themselves as the “Resistance” — like the French Resistance to Vichy in World War II.
And they seemingly see themselves as above the laws that bind the rest of us.
“Can Donald Trump Be Trusted With State Secrets?” asked the headline on the editorial in The New York Times.
One wonders: Are these people oblivious to their own past?
In 1971, The New York Times published a hoard of secret documents from the Kennedy-Johnson years on Vietnam. Editors spent months arranging them to convince the public it had been lied into a war that the Times itself had supported, but had turned against.
Purpose of publication: Damage and discredit the war effort, now that Richard Nixon was commander in chief. This was tantamount to treason in wartime.
When Nixon went to the Supreme Court to halt publication of the Pentagon Papers until we could review them to ensure that sources and methods were not being compromised, the White House was castigated for failing to understand the First Amendment.
And for colluding with the thieves that stole them, and for publishing the secret documents, the Times won a Pulitzer.
Forty years ago, the Post also won a Pulitzer — for Watergate.
The indispensable source of its stories was FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt, who repeatedly violated his oath and broke the law by leaking the contents of confidential FBI interviews and grand jury testimony.
When the left is damaging the government, the ends always justifies the means.
Pat Buchanan was Donald Trump before Donald Trump–2 or 3 “populist ‘ runs for POTUS with minimal success. Of course he ran against Bill not HRC–
@Richard Wheeler: ? So, leaking classified information is OK?
@Bill- Deplorable Me: NO.
Neither is obstructing FBI, Congressional or National Security investigations. Ageed?
@Richard Wheeler: Let me know when you see evidence (of the non-delusional imaginary variety) of any such obstruction, would you please?
This whole thing isn’t going to work for the Dems.
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-democratic-national-committee_23.html
@Bill- Deplorable Me: I’ll do that, as will the investigators. Guess you figure they’re all just wasting time.
@Richard Wheeler: As it turns out, yes, indeed they are. 7 months of hopeful digging has turned up not a scrap. Meantime, it hurts the nation. Are you comfortable with causing harm to the nation just to try and weaken a legally elected President (out of sore loser spite) that has committed no crimes?
@Bill- Deplorable Me: Moeller OTJ less than a week. See no harm to the nation in seeking the truth.
Trump should get out of the way–makes him look bad calling it a witch hunt–Repubs disagree with that.
@Richard Wheeler: Liberals are not going to accept the truth. It already faces you and you won’t accept it.
Hillary didn’t lose because Trump and the Russians ganged up on her. She lost because not quite enough of the country has been effectively propagandized enough to vote for such a criminal.
@Bill- Deplorable Me: You seem to know more than all these investigators Repubs and Dems alike.
You got special powers?
HRC was a lousy nominee–period.
Trump’s been sent home by the likes of “W” Mac, Mitt, Bill and Barack. Certainly his persistence and good fortune brought him Hillary.
Had Trump not shared highly classified information in a setting where it would be overheard and quickly passed on, there wouldn’t have been any story to report.
The issue isn’t declassification. The information wasn’t declassified. It was discussed in an insecure setting. The fact that it became public knowledge shortly afterward conclusively demonstrates that the setting was insecure. It wasn’t the Washington Post that allowed it to become so. It’s not their job to plug leaks that shouldn’t be there in the first place.
@Richard Wheeler: We currently have a government permeated with liberal moles who leak sensitive information when it suits the liberal agenda. So, were there any incriminating evidence, it WOULD be leaked and the Washington Post wouldn’t have to make it up.
In other words, I am intelligent and observant. It ain’t rocket science.
@Greg: Trump used the information properly. It’s not like he put it on an unsecured server in his bathroom or anything stupid like that. The only thing that made the setting insecure is the presence of some treacherous scum more loyal to socialism than to the United States.
@Bill- Deplorable Me: ” intelligent and observant” you say–maybe it’ll rub off on your Donald–we can hope.
All these damn moles–you still getting your alternative facts from Kelly–or are you tuned into Hannity. Even most Repubs are tuning out Sean’s conspiracies .What an alternative world you live in Bill.
I have a few words for you leftist who don’t need an investigation but simply has determined Trump guilty of anything the left says he is guilty of:
Misuse of federal funds; One Voice; Jeremy Bird; Israel
Now there’s an investigation I would watch.
@Richard Wheeler: No, wrong. Again. The liberals in government are leaking all the information they can get their hands on. Of course, we have learned over the past 8 years that liberals either don’t know what classified information is or simply don’t care. But, the end result is that the country is harmed so that liberals can exact revenge for pushing a very bad candidate and losing an election.
Brennan has said that they investigated Russian contacts with Trump team members… and that there is NO evidence of any collusion or cooperation. Know what that tells you? That these are people of integrity, not the money-whores Hillary and her associates are.
What is lost in all this is the great job Trump is doing already. Of course, this is the liberals’ biggest fear; a stark comparison of success to liberal utter failure.