By Joe Morris and Nancy Thorner -
Reporters have always been dependent on unnamed sources for their scoops. That is especially the case in Washington where whistleblowers are afraid that if they come out of the shadows, their corrupt superiors will exact revenge on them.
But, clearly, things have gotten out of hand ever since Donald Trump was inaugurated. Those people are no longer in the business of trying to do the honorable thing for the sake of the nation. Both they and their partisan allies in the media and the corridors of Congress have no other agenda other than to stop Trump in his tracks and thus destroy Trump's presidency, at a time when Islamic terrorism must be confronted, and health care and tax reform must be addressed in order to grow this economy and create jobs.
In a hugely anticipated congressional hearing that captured the country's attention (into the broad matter that goes under the mainstream media's headline of "collusion with Russia") former FBI Director James Comey asserted on Thursday, June 8, in front of a Congressional committee, that President Donald Trump fired him to interfere with his investigation of Russia's ties to the Trump campaign, bluntly accusing the White House of spreading "lies, plain and simple." Comey also revealed that he'd orchestrated the public release of information about his private conversations with the president in an effort to further the investigation.
No Collusion or Obstruction
When all was said and done, it became obvious that there was no collusion between Trump and Russia; except for:
– those who, such as the recently-indicted rabid Clinton-supporting Reality Winner, leaked classified information in efforts deliberately intended to injure the United States (or Donald Trump), and
– those persons, as-yet-unfingered, who (to score political points against Mr. Trump) "unmasked" people, such as General Flynn, whose names turned up in passing in surveillance and other counterintelligence reports.
As an aside, where are the SNL skits about the time when "Reality Winner met Carlos Danger"? It is reasonable to expect that if, after the divorce from Huma, Anthony married the indicted leaker, she'd be Reality Weiner? Reality (by which I mean the real reality as opposed to the Hillary-crazed Reality) is often far funnier than the imaginations of Stephen Colbert's gag-writers.
With almost certainly it can be predicted that the claim Donald Trump and his campaign "colluded" with Russians — whether Russian Presidents, Russian spies, or Russian hackers (hereinafter collectively referred to by the Russian word that embraces and means them all, "Putin") — to affect the outcome of the 2016 election will find no support in the evidence. But the lack of evidence won't stop breathless conjecture, of course; Trump Derangement Syndrome feeds, it seems, on whatever it is that breathless leftists exhale, which certainly isn't carbon dioxide as that would violate the Paris accords.
What the evidence shows
But the evidence already shows, among other things:
(1) Julian Assange, Bradley / Chelsea Manning, the Wikileaks crowd, and others fed tons of highly-damaging, life-endangering information to thugs the world over, including the Putin team.
(2) The Putin team made serious, although seeming unsuccessful, efforts in 2015 and 2016 to hack into the electronic systems of American electoral agencies including the Illinois State Board of Elections (where "hack" traditionally means something altogether different).
(3) The Chinese government, meanwhile, successfully hacked into, and stole the entire contents of, the databases of the United States Office of Personnel Management. (That may seem boring, except that they thereby obtained tons of personal identifier, address, background, financial, health insurance, and retirement data on every employee and every retiree of the United States Government — including intelligence personnel, among them clandestine agents such as the Interior Minister of Ikidyounotistan whose actual employment as an American agent would come to light only when it it noted that he has an OPM retirement account and an OPM life insurance policy the benefits of which, alas, will soon have to be paid out to his widow and children once the Chinese have tipped the news to certain Ikidyounotistani gunmen. I write this [Joe Morris], mind you, as the former General Counsel of OPM, mindful that this obscure agency, treated by the last administration as an unimportant backwater, is responsible for all oversight of executive branch security and suitability investigations and determinations, and keeps the records on pretty much every non-military employee of Uncle Sam, including the secret ones.) Is the Chinese government also a Putin subsidiary? No; far from it. But they do collaborate and they do have a common Number One enemy: the U.S.A. Joseph A. Morris is a Partner in the law firm of Morris & De La Rosa, with offices in Chicago and London. He maintains an active practice conducting trials and appeals in the areas of constitutional, business, labor and international law.
Leaking and Hacking on Obama's watch
Now, the evidence also shows that all this leaking and hacking took place on the watch of one President Barack Obama who, the evidence further shows:
- Failed to protect the U.S. Government's personnel records against foreign thieves.
- Took no measures to assist American State and local electoral agencies to "harden" their digital systems against Putin's hacking; heck, he didn't even warn them.
- Belittled his 2012 challenger, Mitt Romney, for insisting that Russia was a threat — in fact, Mr. Romney asserted, the "greatest threat" — to the United States; in one of the 2012 debates Mr. Obama descended from Olympus to dismiss Mr. Romney's concerns about Russia with the sarcastic line, "The 80's are calling. They want their foreign policy back."
- Was caught on a hot mic in March 2012 confiding to Mr. Putin's stand-in President / Prime Minister / all-purpose puppet, Dimitry Medvedev, that he should tell Vlad, "This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility."
- Was not much concerned about the impacts that the Assange, Manning, and other leaks, and the Russian and Chinese hacking were having upon the United States until it became apparent, during the 2016 campaign, that some of the disclosures accurately, if unlawfully, showed Mrs. Clinton, her campaign, and the Democratic Party in very bad lights.
- When leaving office granted clemency to Chelsea Manning, a fabulous parting gift, thus sending a message about the (wink wink) gravity of leaking and hacking against the United States, a message that no one seems to have noticed — except, perhaps, Vladimir Putin and Reality Winner.
Now, given what the evidence on the record already establishes, which President is more likely to be guilty of "colluding" with Russians?
