Our Intelligence Community Is Meddling in Electoral Politics and the People Doing It Need to Go to Prison
Article by streiff in "RedState":
Sometime in January, Democrat presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders and key members of his campaign staff received a counter-intelligence briefing from Office of Director of National Intelligence. This is as it should be. And the Trump administration, unlike the Obama administration, did not seed the briefing with FBI agents who were charged with spying upon the candidate under the false pretense of rendering assistance. Yesterday, the day before the Nevada Caucuses, someone, probably Adam Schiff but certainly some Democrat member of the House Intelligence Committee, did a politically motivated leak to the Washington Post that resulted in this headline: Bernie Sanders briefed by U.S. officials that Russia is trying to help his presidential campaign.
U.S. officials have told Sen. Bernie Sanders that Russia is attempting to help his presidential campaign as part of an effort to interfere with the Democratic contest, according to people familiar with the matter.
…
It is not clear what form that Russian assistance has taken. U.S. prosecutors found a Russian effort in 2016 to use social media to boost Sanders’s campaign against Hillary Clinton, part of a broader effort to hurt Clinton, sow dissension in the American electorate and ultimately help elect Donald Trump.
…
The disclosure of Russian assistance to Sanders follows a briefing to lawmakers last week in which a senior intelligence official said that Russia wants to see Trump reelected, viewing his administration as more favorable to the Kremlin’s interests, according to people who were briefed on the comments.
In that closed hearing for the House Intelligence Committee, lawmakers were also told that Sanders had been informed about Russia’s interference. The prospect of two rival campaigns both receiving help from Moscow appears to reflect what intelligence officials have previously described as Russia’s broader interest in sowing division in the United States and uncertainty about the validity of American elections.
What these leaks seem to have in common is this. Campaigns are briefed by ODNI staff, it seems that a woman named Shelby Pierson, who allegedly is directing efforts to prevent interference in the 2020 campaign by foreign powers, is at ground zero here. During that briefing the warning is given that the Russians are helping the campaign. There is no specific threat or activity or indication of activities mentioned in the briefings, that is, it is ‘the Russians are helping you guys.’ And then that briefing is revealed to a gaggle of Democrat politicians so it is ensured that it will leak. The press then picks up on the fact that a briefing was given as a way to legitimize the allegation. We all recognize this strategy. James Clapper and James Comey conspired to ensure that President-elect Trump was briefed on the more salacious parts of the fraudulent Steele dossier, in particular the part dealing with hookers peeing on the Obama’s bed in Moscow. When the briefing was given, Comey, with near mathematical certainty, knew the allegation was total crap. But he briefed Trump and then leaked to CNN the fact that he had briefed him which allowed Jake Tapper to make a breathless report that the allegations in the dossier were so important that the head of the FBI had to do a personal briefing of the new President.
Not to point fingers, but the counter narrative that emerged yesterday was that the ODNI briefer, Pierson, overstated the value of the intelligence behind her warning and produced zero evidence to substantiate a politically damaging statement. You have to ask yourself why that would be the case? How could such malpractice even come to be? Why would someone who has spent their entire career in the intelligence community overstate an intelligence assessment on a subject that is so politically charged that it resulted in a three-year investigation of the Trump campaign and administration? How is ‘the Russians want to elect you’ useful information to any campaign in protecting itself from Russian meddling?
None of this is innocent. None of it is accidental. This is meddling in our democratic processes with much greater impact than the $100,000 in Facebook ads that the left and NeverTrump claim catapulted Donald Trump into the White House.
The hit against President Trump last Wednesday was calculated to breathe new life into tired, debunked and discredited allegations that were planted and nurtured by the Clinton campaign in 2016 and kept alive by the #Resistance. It is directly related to the 2020 election and trying to prevent President Trump from being reelected. The hit against Bernie Sanders was calculated to knock him out of the race and clear the way for someone the non-partisan professionals in the intelligence community think is more pliable and amenable to letting them run a shadow government.
While we can rightfully criticize Adam Schiff and his cronies for being more than willing to reveal classified information that helps our enemies for temporary political advantage, that is not a shock. That is what Democrats do. It is what they have done when out of power since the last term of the Reagan administration. What is increasingly obvious is that the Intelligence Community, particularly since it was consolidated into one swirling ball of duplicity after 9/11, sees itself as an independent political player with its own “equities” and prerogatives to protect. It was sort of inevitable that once James Clapper and John Brennan coaxed the Intelligence Community across the Rubicon into political activism in 2016–in fact, coaxed them damned close into a rather gay and half-assed form of Praetorianism with their participation in the soft coup attempt against President Trump over Ukraine–that they would start seeing themselves as kingmakers, as the elite charged with ensuring that the unwashed masses didn’t go apesh** and elect the wrong guy.
Our society and our form of government can’t survive this kind of meddling by people whose stock in trade is deception and double-dealing acting with impunity and unlimited budget. It is very obvious that the Intelligence Community now only serves the national interest to the extent that the national interest aligns with what the Intelligence Community judges to be the best course of action. Even our media have bought into this because they report with bated breath and righteous indignation whenever President Trump dares to challenge the collective wisdom of the IC. They are no longer merely disloyal servants, they are actively attempting to become our masters. It has to stop. The most important task ahead of the next Director of National Intelligence is a thorough purge of the Intelligence Community of anyone who is even tangentially connected to any of the Resistance activities and political intrigue that bureaucracy has been involved in. It is not sufficient that they be reassigned or even fired. People need to go to prison so that the people still employed will understand what their correct role is in a constitutional republic.
https://www.redstate.com/streiff/2020/02/22/787580/
Post a Comment