Nunes and the leaks
Every scandal that comes down the pike is given the “gate” suffix these days. But this one really deserves it, because it involves evidence of the Obama administration spying on political rivals and then leaking information obtained in that effort:
Mr. Nunes earlier this week got his own source to show him a treasure trove of documents at a secure facility. Here are the relevant details:
First, there were dozens of documents with information about Trump officials. Second, the information these documents contained was not related to Russia. Third, while many reports did “mask” identities (referring, for instance, to “U.S. Person 1 or 2”) they were written in ways that made clear which Trump officials were being discussed. Fourth, in at least one instance, a Trump official other than Mr. Flynn was outright unmasked. Finally, these documents were circulated at the highest levels of government.
To sum up, Team Obama was spying broadly on the incoming administration.
And yet the MSM seems oddly uninterested in this aspect of the story. What is the press interested in? The way in which Nunes received the information:
Meantime, few things match the ludicrous furor over Mr. Nunes’s source-meeting place, or his visit to brief Mr. Trump. Congress members must view most classified material on executive-branch grounds, since that’s the only way to access it physically. Having discovered the former administration’s surveillance of Trump officials, Mr. Nunes had a duty to let the White House know. (Imagine if he’d sat on it.) He could hardly let Democrats know first, since their only interest these days is in leaking and twisting stories. And the reason he held press briefings before and after his meeting with Mr. Trump was to be transparent about his purpose.
Hint to the press corps: If Mr. Nunes wanted to tip off the White House about his Russia probe, it’d be a lot easier to speed-dial Steve Bannon secretly from his office.
The left professes to care about government abuses of power. That’s only when the government is on the right.
“And the reason he held press briefings before and after his meeting with Mr. Trump was to be transparent about his purpose.
Hint to the press corps: If Mr. Nunes wanted to tip off the White House about his Russia probe, it’d be a lot easier to speed-dial Steve Bannon secretly from his office.”
This.
Or set up an email account under a false name to evade FOIA etc. OR build your own server. Or..
Oh wait — there weren’t any scandals during Obama’s tenure. My bad.
And it is utterly coincidental that Barack Obama remains on “vacation” in French Polynesia, which has no extradition treaty with the United States.
“To sum up, Team Obama was spying broadly on the incoming administration.” – Neo’s quote of Strassel
Couldn’t read the whole article in the link (it is blocked), so not sure how she is able to make this conclusion, nor if it is correct, but Strassel is one of the better contributors to WSJ, and she usually does a good job of arguing with leftists on the Sunday shows.
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That said, if we were to turn the tables and assume it was Rep Schiff who did this with an obama WH, wouldn’t we think it an incredibly unusual set of events, even if the questions were “valid”?
(We already have a analog for our reaction to “unusual” behavior that looks suspicious and lamely explainable – AG lynch’s “chance” meeting with former POTUS clinton on the Phoenix tarmac in June last year).
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If the WH has such “clear evidence” to support trump’s claims, what in the world would lead them to pursue this approach rather than just releasing it to the investigating committees (or to the leadership of those)?
Why such a roundabout way to deal with this?
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Here’s a good rundown of the big picture of issues swirling around this whole set of “investigations”:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446339/donald-trump-russia-2016-election-controversy-explained
We have seen the enemy, and it is the (untruthfully colored) blue Left.
Some of us here see the drift to Civil War 2 as inescapable.
A lot of people need to be stood against a wall and shot. Political cleansing, not ethnic. Otherwise, they will enslave us. Every day, it’s a-getting closer (with thanks to Buddy Holley, though this is not about love, but hate).
Mr Nunes is a patriot IMHO , Obama & his minions were up to their old despicable behaviors. playing dirt ball behaviors to any entity that threatens their power. Loathsome.
Frog that was the late Bobby Vee s song too !
Trump is not a conservative but the current left is communist. Trump may not be a perfect conservative in your eyes but he is at worse a Bill Clinton type moderate. By not supporting Trump just because he is not perfect will create an opportunity for the left to take over the government and transforms this country into complete communist in the near future. Don’t help the left destroy a good moderately conservative president just because he is not a perfect old school conservative, the alternative would be a lot worse, the next Lenin is waiting in the corner at 2020.
Don’t be stupid conservatives, don’t destroy something good just because it is not perfect and help the left in the process please. America will be over if we have another Obama in the office again, if you stubborn anti-Trumpers don’t come around and realize that its all over.
David:
I have no idea who you’re addressing in this thread. It doesn’t seem to follow from anything anyone wrote here.
I don’t know if it was here or at Althouse, but a few weeks back I wrote that when it all comes out, and it will, we are likely to discover that the surveillance was very comprehensive and started not long after Trump was the likely winner of the Republican nomination. I have for some time thought the entire Russian story was pushed by the administration as an excuse for the surveillance after the fact. I write this because it was taken from a pedestrian 5 mph to warp speed after Trump won on November 8th- before then, I think everybody in the administration just assumed Hillary! was going to win, like most other people did. After Trump won, I think a some in the administration realized that they might not be all that safe from legal sanctions.
sometimes i feel that these extreme conservatives who promote the no compromise, all or nothing form of conservatism are agents sent from the other side with a goal to eternally divide the conservatives so we can never united together to fight the left. liberals are nothing like that, even extremists like Bernie Sanders are willing to compromise, toll the party line when needed. Bernie Sanders has never criticized the DNC for rigging the primary against him.
“extreme conservatives who promote the no compromise, all or nothing form of conservatism are agents sent from the other side with a goal to eternally divide the conservatives” – David
Remember those “extreme conservatives” were very afraid of the label “RINO!!!” that would get applied when they merely entered into any “negotiation” with a dem.
We kind of trained them. (Well, maybe we could say it was the “conservative” media that did the training).
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A good lesson on how politics works is from Reagan: “I’d rather get 80 percent of what I want than go over the cliff with my flags flying.”
If anyone is frustrated with the AHCA failure, they should keep in mind that only about 17% of the public was on board. Nor, IMHO, did it look much like a “Repeal” nor a “Replacement”.
The bill needed to be killed, as it was well short of the “80%” mark, didn’t even much abide by the principles many (most?) in the GOP Congress ran on, and lacked public support for it.
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I believe a much broader bill is possible to pass, but it takes a very different approach from GOP Congressional leaders and trump to write and sell.
They cannot leave it as is (unless they were lying to us about the “death spiral”), as they will also “own” the consequences of that too. They will have to do “something”.
It would be a mistake to leave it completely alone and only address in a crisis – increases the likelihood of getting a worse bill.
@David – should add – what does that all have to do with Nunes’ behavior?
Andrew Klavan’s theorem regarding the media s spot on:
“When the right is implicated in a scandal, the story is about the scandal.
When the left is implicated in a scandal, the story is about how the information leaked out and attacking the people disseminating the information.”
Yancey Ward,
I think you’re right, but I’m still waiting for the truth about Obama’s College transcripts to come out.
To everything there is a season (Turn! Turn! Turn!)
A time to hold fast; a time to give in.
I don’t think anyone always refuses to compromise. People aren’t always anything as far as I can tell.
People have different standards and different rules they apply to their standards in different situations. Most political choices emerge from not-simple calculations.
Over the years I’ve heard a lot of never-compromise-conservative rhetoric from Rush Limbaugh and some other right-wing talk show hosts. Yet last year Rush and several others dumped never-compromise-conservatism for Trump.
It seemed odd to me and still does. I don’t know where it leads. We’re in new territory. I doubt we can get back to old conservatism and I doubt Trump will leave much coherent behind that others can build on.
Yancey Ward: I agree whole-heartedly with you, and I think it’s going to come out. “Obama spied, Media lied.” When it does, Democrats will be running for cover. If the Gorsuch vote was held after this story breaks, there’d be no need for nukes.
Big Maq: “AG lynch’s “chance” meeting with former POTUS clinton on the Phoenix tarmac in June last year.”
Let’s imagine a bank robber, arrested and charged with grand larceny. The chief prosecuting attorney meets with the spouse of the accused robber in what seems to be an assumed “secret” location for a private meeting. We are told the subject is golf and grandchildren, neither of which pertains to the prosecutor. I would think the police and other prosecutors would be up in arms about the impropriety of such an action. I am still amazed that the hoopla over the Lynch and Mr. Clinton serendipitous meeting was decried only by the right.
@Susan – Your analogy is a rather stretched, but, yep.
The msm ignores the “unusual” behavior on the left, the “conservative” media ignores that of the right.
Each highlights the other’s as suspicious and calls out the bias in the media.
Maybe being suspicious of both is a better stance, rather than automatically siding with one or the other, and ignoring their behavior?
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The thing that disturbs us greatly is how examples like the one I pointed out get ignored by the left and those biased in the msm.
Yet, are we going to get anywhere doing the very same thing?
Seriously!
Who’s going to believe US thereafter when we say our ideas are better, that our motives are honest?
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As I said at the top of the comments re – Nunes’ and the WH’s behavior:
“If the WH has such “clear evidence” to support trump’s claims, what in the world would lead them to pursue this approach rather than just releasing it to the investigating committees (or to the leadership of those)?
Why such a roundabout way to deal with this?”
Sure is strange, don’t you think?
Just reach across the aisle to the Left, Big Maq. You’ll lose your hand.
You seem to think both sides are equally bad, if I understand you correctly. But you are wrong.
You think Trey Gowdy is wrong in style, in substance, or both? Jeff Sessions?
And the democrat John McCain
The same thing happened with Snowden. No one seemed to care what was uncovered, but how and where the info came from. It’s the same thing all over again.
The ‘thing’ is not the ‘thing’ because they have declared the ‘thing’ to be the ‘thing’.
@Big Maq
To me it looks pretty straight forward;
1. Surveillance of Trump team exposed to Nunes by whistleblowers before Trump inauguration and Trump’s claim of surveillance on March 4th.
2. Nunes given serial numbers of documents by whistleblowers.
3. Nunes requests documents from agencies. Agencies stonewall.
4. Nunes sends request for the retrieval of the documents to NSC staffers with the required authority.
5. They retrieve documents and make them available Nunes on advice of White House Counsel.
6. Nunes goes to secure facility (SCIF) in White House to view documents in question. NOTE: It appears House and Senate intelligence chairmen have regularly gone to White House offices to see raw intelligence in the past.
7. Nunes briefs President and Speaker. Gives Press Conference.
Seems very aboveboard if unusual; the White House didn’t provide the documents to Nunes – instead he used White House channels to get them for him, confirmed their existence per his whistleblower contacts, then went ahead to inform the Speaker and the President.
He might have kept his cards close to his chest both to shield his whistleblowers and for partisanship. As it is now, he seems to have pulled the rug right out from under his opposite number.
They also aren’t concerned when stolen information is leaked to them, so long as the target is Republican. But heaven help the republic when it’s the other way around (CNN: “Don’t read those Podesta emails! They’re stolen!)
It’s obvious that the people who did the surveillance and unmasking thought that an incoming Hillary administration was a sure thing, and that they would suffer no consequences.
Now that Trump is President, you’d think that they’d be running scared. But, perhaps, they think that they’re “too big to fail,” or to be prosecuted and jailed.
I wonder if they’re casting about for some lower level scapegoat, that they can leave holding the bag.
“Some of us here see the drift to Civil War 2 as inescapable.
A lot of people need to be stood against a wall and shot. Political cleansing, not ethnic.”
Holy cr@p
To quote someone else (who I think ended up getting on the Trump train anyway) : I didn’t join the conservative movement to become a fascist.
From, once you have gotten your wish and constitutional protections have been done away with while you exterminate political enemies, consider what you’ve “won” and what’s really been lost.
*Frog*, not “From”. Darn fatfingering
Test to see if this is working.
@Bill – wrote the following before you posted, but it would not post then… trying again…
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“A lot of people need to be stood against a wall and shot. Political cleansing, not ethnic.” – Frog
…But in re-evaluation, based upon the above statement, it will no doubt fall on deaf ears, seeing that he’s evidently given up on any serious debate, and democracy itself..
Guess we are supposed to take him “seriously” not “literally”.
What folks who repeat this meme (usually as an excuse) don’t understand is that when they say such outlandish things, they get taken neither seriously nor literally, but foolish.
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“Just reach across the aisle to the Left, Big Maq. You’ll lose your hand.” – Frog
You missed my point.
It is not just blindly “reaching across the aisle” for no purpose.
It is about preparing the ground beforehand.
It is about making the case for our ideas.
It is about respecting what our democractic system was founded on.
It is about building broad support for our ideas and legislation.
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IF we can only cheerlead our side and not see how uncritically doing so affects our ability to get our message out and convince those who can be, then we will not get very far whatsoever.
IF we want a “WIN!!!” we need broad support. There are no two ways around that fact! (That is, if we are interested in retaining a democracy).
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As the AHCA failure shows, you cannot just try to quickly force something through the system, with very little prep work for getting support.
As obama and the dems now must realize, relying on executive action or party line votes alone, to bypass the deliberative process, does not provide lasting change.
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I agree with the HFC that the AHCA was far from what the GOP were campaigning on, in implication and in principle.
However, I don’t agree that one has to have 100% of their ideal before reaching agreement on legislation. It can never be 100% ones own way in a democracy. This is very much what Reagan was addressing in the quote I provided above.
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But, I also think that we must be far more strategic about how we behave.
Cruz’s filibuster on the debt increase is spot on for principle, but a failure tactically. There was no real prep done.
trump’s frequent tweets are worse than distractions. It sets attention on what he says, yes, but it matters greatly what that attention is about.
IF we all know that the msm are against trump and the GOP, is it “smart” whatsoever to give them the kind of issue that they can spin at will for a great length of time (cough… obama wiretap… cough) – i.e. without providing a clear explanation and reasonable amount of (if not irrefutable) proof? Especially when it is in your own power, as POTUS, to do so if you have it?
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Back to my questions with this Nunes stuff:
“If the WH has such “clear evidence” to support trump’s claims, what in the world would lead them to pursue this (bass ackwards) approach (with Nunes) rather than just releasing it to the investigating committees (or to the leadership of those)?
Why such a roundabout way to deal with this?”
This doesn’t make much sense – that is, assuming IF one wants to provide clarity and prove one’s case.
And, if that is the wrong assumption, what purpose does this whole issue serve? Is there something to hide?
Why not talk about issues we want to move forward on instead? And, build support for them?
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So, Frog, rather than setting up a strawman about “reaching across the aisle”, etc, why not reflect on these questions?
Or, can trump do no wrong in your eyes?
Or, is your answer to it all really f**k democracy and principle, I want what I want!?
It looks like Trump people were not spied on directly, but their were pretty clearly spied on indirectly. If they were also unmasked during that indirect spying, then it is pretty much the same as direct spying.
@richard – we don’t know the full facts.
It is far too broad to say direct = indirect, and then again too broad to assume/imply indirect and intentional = incidental and unintended.
I’d like it to be investigated, as I wouldn’t put it past the obama administration (maybe not obama himself).
However, we need proof.
BUT, given this roundabout nonsense, it sure seems team trump is stretching to make his tweets based in some minimal reality.
Big Maq:
The NYTimes and Bloomberg News both knew days ago that Susan Rice had instructed the un-masking of the names of Trump personnel whose conversations were recorded on fishing expeditions that had nothing to do with Russia. But they sat on the stories because they hate Trump.
At what point are you going to admit that Trump’s tweet was, for all practical purposes, correct?
More importantly, at what point are you going to recognize that the prior administration, and its hold-over minions who are still in the intelligence services, have been spying on American citizens for political purposes?
It increasingly appears that the deep state is a criminal conspiracy, run at the highest levels, which will stop at nothing to gain power — and you want us to “talk about issues we want to move forward on instead … and build support for them?”
“It increasingly appears that the deep state is a criminal conspiracy, run at the highest levels, which will stop at nothing to gain power – and you want us to “talk about issues we want to move forward on instead … and build support for them?”
The GOP controls the government at the “highest levels”. How about governing? You’ve got it all and the window is closing way earlier than it should.
I’m persuaded Trump’s tweet was generally correct. Given how the Obama administration weaponized the IRS and the DOJ, I’m hardly surprised.
However, making such an accusation at 4:30 AM in several 140-characters-or-less tweets with “wire tapping” in quotes is a bizarre way to go.
Given Trump’s history of polemics, conspiracy-mongering, and vindictiveness, it seems he is practically begging not to be taken seriously.
But maybe that’s me. Does anyone think Trump’s tweet-from-the-hip approach is working now that he’s President? My impression is he is wasting time and losing momentum with it.
“But maybe that’s me. Does anyone think Trump’s tweet-from-the-hip approach is working now that he’s President? My impression is he is wasting time and losing momentum with it.”
The idea of reaching the people directly with Twitter is a good one. The way Trump does it just appears to be an early morning vent for all the petty vengeance, cruelty and pique that marinates his awful character. He should stop and put his twitter account into the hands of someone who at least knows what “Presidential” sounds like.
The idea of reaching the people directly with Twitter is a good one.
Bill: It’s an interesting thought experiment to imagine how FDR, JFK or Reagan would have handled Twitter.
When Obama-mania was at its peak and his oratory constantly celebrated, I looked up some of FDR’s fireside chats and listened to them. There was a communicator. He didn’t drone on and on either. The chats were mostly 9-15 minutes long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B02snWuq4E