Showing posts with label leaks to New York Times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label leaks to New York Times. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Mitt Romney: A Perfect Foil In The Democrats’ Witch Hunt

Eight months before the presidential election of 2016 Romney gave a speech at the Hinckley Institute at the University of Utah torching then-candidate Trump.

Here are some pull-quotes.  You can read the full transcript here.
“…If we Republicans choose Donald Trump as our nominee, the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished.” 
[SKIP] 
“First, the economy: If Donald Trump’s plans were ever implemented, the country would sink into a prolonged recession.” 
[SKIP] 
“His proposed 35% tariff-like penalties would instigate a trade war that would raise prices for consumers, kill export jobs, and lead entrepreneurs and businesses to flee America. His tax plan, in combination with his refusal to reform entitlements and to honestly address spending would balloon the deficit and the national debt. So even as Donald Trump has offered very few specific economic plans, what little he has said is enough to know that he would be very bad for American workers and for American families.” 
[SKIP] 
“A person so untrustworthy and dishonest as Hillary Clinton must not become president. But a Trump nomination enables her victory.” 
[SKIP] 
“Here’s what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He’s playing the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat.” 
“His domestic policies would lead to recession. His foreign policies would make America and the world less safe. He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president. And his personal qualities would mean that America would cease to be a shining city on a hill.”
Mittens AKA Pierre Delecto spoke with Obama Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about becoming President Trump’s Secretary of State.

Twenty-one days after the 2016 election, President-elect Trump invited Pierre Delecto to dine with him at the Jean Georges Restaurant in Trump Tower.  They were there to discuss who he would pick as his Secretary of State.

Richie Duchon of NBC News characterized the meeting this way, “Trump made a spectacle of dining with Romney as he weighed his choice for Secretary of State, only to give the job to Rex Tillerson.”

To say Mittens, a treacherous RINO, is still bitter about being turned down for the job he begged for would be a monumental understatement.  I have concluded the sole reason he sought a seat in the Senate was to exact revenge for the humiliation of that dinner at the Jean Georges Restaurant.

Sen. Delecto (Romney) said Monday the revelations from the soon-to-be-released Bolton book make it “increasingly likely” he and three other wafflers would want to compel his testimony in the President’s Senate trial.

The well-coiffed patrician who rarely ventures beyond his gilded barricades to mix with the little people is intellectually incurious about Bolton’s intemperate allegations.  No one has seen the manuscript.  We only have the word, God help us, of the failing New York Times whose carefully orchestrated “leak” was timed to hurt the President during his impeachment trial.

This is treachery.



Friday, June 8, 2018

A Wolfe At The Door

News broke late Thursday evening that a former Democrat staffer on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) is expected to be indicted for making false statements to special agents of the FBI during the course of an investigation into the unlawful disclosure of classified information to reporters.

Wolfe had worked under leadership of both parties since 1987, before abruptly departing the Senate panel at the end of 2017.

Over the past year, as the Committee's Russia inquiry heated up, Wolfe was responsible for escorting high-profile witnesses into the committee's secure spaces (SCIF), including Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner.

The Justice Department alleges that, as SSCI Director of Security, Wolfe “was entrusted with access to classified SECRET and TOP SECRET information provided by the Executive Branch, including the U.S. Intelligence Community, to the SSCI. In this position, Wolfe was responsible for safeguarding all classified information in the possession of the SSCI.”

Wolfe had a romantic relationship with New York Times reporter Ali Watkins.  Watkins also worked for BuzzFeed and Politico during her three-year-long relationship with Wolfe.

They exchanged tens of thousands of text messages.

According to the indictment, “Despite WOLFE’s statements, WOLFE had, in truth, engaged in extensive contact with multiple reporters, including conveying to at least two reporters information about MALE-1. WOLFE used his personal cell phone, his SSCI-issued electronic mail account and anonymizing messaging applications, including Signal and WhatsApp, to exchange electronic communications with reporters.”

According to the New York Times, Mr. Wolfe’s case led to the first known instance of the Justice Department going after a reporter’s data under President Trump. The seizure suggested that prosecutors under the Trump Administration will continue the aggressive tactics employed under President Barack Obama. [emphasis mine]

The Obama Administration had repeated tangles with journalists such as James Rosen of Fox News, including secretly subpoenaing phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors during a 2012 leak investigation into a story about a bomb plot. 

It appeared that the FBI was investigating how Ms. Watkins learned that Russian spies in 2013 had tried to recruit Carter Page, a former Trump foreign policy adviser. She published an article for BuzzFeed News on April 3, 2017, about the attempted recruitment of Mr. Page in which he confirmed the contacts.

The Washington Times notes, “The Justice Department claims Mr. Wolfe regularly met in secret with two of the reporters the FBI questioned him about as well as other journalists. Those meetings were often held in places unlikely to be discovered by others, including secluded areas of the Hart Senate Office building, restaurants, bars and private residences, prosecutors alleged in the indictment.”

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr and ranking member, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), said in a joint statement: “While the charges do not appear to include anything related to the mishandling of classified information, the committee takes this matter extremely seriously. We were made aware of the investigation late last year, and have fully cooperated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice since then.”