Oh sorry, misunderstood. I agree it is way too early and not nearly enough information yet to jump to worst thing since Benghazi! Watergate.
I’ve seen quite a bit of that from conservatives.
The liberal side was screaming impeachment blah blah before we knew anything at all. Kind of like when the right was calling for Obama’s impeachment, even though he hadn’t done anything. That’s just stupid people on both sides not knowing what impeachment actually is more than anything. It doesn’t mean “I don’t like em!”
NY Times is calling for a congressional investigation.
Nah, they’re gonna investigate the leaks, instead.
It’s absolutely insane that so much noise is being made about the leaks compared to the actual possibility that treason has been committed. Fox and the GOP seem only focused on that - how is that even possible? I can’t believe these people are actually cool with not knowing what happened during the election just because their guy was the benefactor.
Trump is going to be fine.
He already threw his fall guy under the bus, whom absolutely nobody believes was working without Trump’s approval, if not direction. The republicans will fall in line behind him and do nothing, which they have done since day one of his administration.
The republican party sold their soul. They will do absolutely anything Trump says as long as they have hope that one day Trump will give them their big ticket issues.
“Want” doesn’t have much to do with it. The decision point about creating a massive intelligence apparatus that runs under its own momentum was back in the 1950s; the same is true with the military.
Eisenhower, who certainly knew both sides of the coin, told us straight out what the deal was. Every President since then has had to wonder whether he was running the system or the system was running him. But none has been stupid enough to force the issue - until now.
[quote]Washington is at the precipice of a scandal unlike anything seen since Watergate. Indeed, KremlinGate promises to be much seedier and more troubling than anything proffered by President Nixon.
Here the inevitable comparisons to Watergate fall short. Tricky Dick committed domestic crimes, and paid the price for them, but Nixon was in no way beholden to a foreign power—much less one which has several thousand nuclear weapons pointed at the United States. Neither did Nixon collude with that foreign power’s spies to arrange his own election to the presidency.
We are now discussing things worse than mere impeachment. If members of Trump’s team colluded with Russian intelligence, the Espionage Act comes into play, and we’ve entered uncharted waters, presidentially speaking.[/quote]
The big worry in the IC is that a lot of very good career intel analysts and agents are about to be purged by Trump’s congressional allies in this leak investigation.
It’s… really something… that different branches of our government now feel compelled to reassure us that, unlike some other branches, THEY aren’t collaborating with foreign governments against us.
Chaffetz isn’t half as popular - or half as smart - as Joe McCarthy. And recall what happened to McCarthy when he decided to take on the military-industrial complex.
All IC personnel, like the military, swear to uphold and defend The Constitution, not the President. If the President or his inner circle are engaging in illegal acts that threaten the country, the IC has a duty to The Constitution to act.
That said, no one (and that includes most IC folks) want the IC to be actively working against the POTUS. Like the other parts of the government, the IC agencies just want to do their job and don’t want to be bogged down in political fights. Their job isn’t to “attack and depose” the POTUS. Their job is to give the relevant information to the right people as defined in their operational orders. If any of the IC has data on Russian spy links in the White House, they damn well should turn that over to the legislature and the judiciary.
Unless they’re convinced the legislature can’t or won’t do anything about it. Then they should leak it to the press, which appears to be what they’re doing.
I’m convincing myself that Russia hacked the RNC too and uncovered some truly scandalous shit, and they’re blackmailing the entire party. The Democrats were just being dicks to Bernie Sanders, you can’t really blackmail the party with that.
Well, that’s more of a grey area honestly. Nowhere in IC or military orders is it legal to leak information to the press. That’s why it’s an anonymous “leak” and not an official press briefing.
Leaks are not illegal unless they are leaking classified data.
McCarthy did it publicly, on television and radio.
Chaffetz and King will do it quietly, by getting intel leadership installed by Trump to reassign assets and analysts and stripping funding from certain programs deemed to be especially leaky.
Well, actually, in the military it would be illegal. It’s a violation of UCMJ and you can be prosecuted and jailed. (Doubtful it would happen over a traditional “leak” as in talking to a journalist about someone higher-up in command doing something damaging to the country, but it is technically illegal.) I’m not strictly aware of specific laws for IC, so I’ll concede that half of the point.
Wait, you’re expecting Chaffetz and King to act subtly, slyly, and effectively?
Yeah subtle isn’t in King’s wheelhouse.