If you could pick your political opponents, President Trump could have done no better than to pick the bumbling Keystone Spooks in the misnamed U.S. “Intelligence” Community.
It’s like watching a “Pink Panther” film festival, with Brennan, Clapper and Comey all vying for the role of the clueless Inspector Clouseau. It appears they left all the evidence of their Deep State plot against Trump scattered in plain sight across Europe, Australia and D.C. Then when it looked like Attorney General Barr was closing in on the truth about their coup, they decided to enlist some additional Clouseaus in the form of the original still-unnamed Ukrainian call whistleblower and the Intelligence Community Inspector General, Michael Atkinson.
We found out right away that the whistleblower’s lawyer-manufactured complaint did not match the facts of the president’s phone call, but there was much more to follow to prove that the CIA was ginning up the case against Trump to try to remove him from office. I’ve already reviewed the extensive evidence of wrongdoing in the whistleblower process that has been unearthed by Paul Sperry, Catherine Herridge and Sean Davis.
Davis first discovered that the whistleblower complaint form had been conveniently revised by Atkinson to allow second-hand complaints to proceed. Herridge reported on the fact that the whistleblower had contacted the House Intelligence Committee prior to filing an actual whistleblower complaint, and that Rep. Adam Schiff has lied about those contacts. Sperry has reported that the whistleblower is a registered Democrat and may have actually worked in Ukraine collecting dirt on Paul Manafort and/or Trump, thus establishing a possible CYA motive for turning on Trump now. A bit later it was revealed that the whistleblower has some sort of relationship with a Democratic presidential candidate. Remember when Nixon used some ex-CIA and FBI agents to spy on his political opponents at the Watergate Hotel? That’s gonna look like child’s play when we get to the bottom of this assault on Trump in WhistleblowerGate.
There have been several developments on this story since my last post, and I wanted to bring you up to date. Inspector General Atkinson testified behind closed doors on Friday before the House Committee on Intelligence, and we learned hat he made more news by what he refused to say than by what he actually testified to. In particular, as Sean Davis reported at The Federalist, Atkinson “refused to disclose why his office backdated secret changes to key whistleblower forms and rules in the wake of an anti-Trump whistleblower complaint filed in August.”
Atkinson, the intelligence community inspector general, told HPSCI lawmakers during a committee oversight hearing on Friday that the whistleblower forms and rules changes were made in September, even though the new forms and guidance, which were not uploaded to the ICIG’s website until September 24, state that they were changed in August. Despite having a full week to come up with explanations for his office’s decisions to secretly change its forms to eliminate the requirement for first-hand evidence and to backdate those changes to August, Atkinson refused to provide any explanation to lawmakers baffled by his behavior.
When pressed on the curious changes and attempts to obscure the timeline of his revisions, Atkinson refused to explain why the forms were backdated to August even though they were not made until September.
In the wake of Atkinson’s testimony, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, wrote a letter to Atkinson demanding that he answer the question about the changes to the whistleblower form by this coming Friday, Oct. 11.
“Your disappointing testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee on September 26 was evasive to the point of being insolent and obstructive… Despite repeated questions, you refused to explain what you meant in your written report by ‘indicia of an arguable political bias on the part of a rival political candidate. This information is, of course, unclassified and we were meeting in a closed setting. Yet you moralized about how you were duty bound not to share even a hint of this political bias with us.”
“But now I see media reports that you revealed to the House Intelligence Committee not only that the complainant is a registered Democrat, but also that he has a professional relationship with a Democratic presidential campaign. I’m dissatisfied, to put it mildly, with your refusal to answer my questions, while more fully briefing the three-ring circus that the House Intelligence Committee has become.”
It should also be noted for good measure that Atkinson intentionally misread the plain language of the law controlling whistleblower complaints, which are only supposed to be used when the complaint is about someone in the “Intelligence Community.” Unless being spied upon makes you part of the Intelligence Community, then President Trump is not covered by this provision. Atkinson knew that because it was pointed out to him by the Department of Justice and the Director of National Intelligence, but his job was presumably to make sure the “dirt” about Trump saw the light of day, and he fulfilled his Deep State mission dutifully if not admirably.
UPDATE: The Washington Examiner reported on October 10 that the presidential candidate whom the whistleblower had a relationship with is none other than Joe Biden. This makes perfect sense since the whistleblower had supposedly been assigned to work in Ukraine, and Biden had operational control over theUkraine portfolio for the Obama administration. It also makes sense that the whistleblower would have taken umbrage at Trump’s characterization of Biden and his son as corrupt. Add it all together and what we have is proof that Sen Chuck Schumer knew what he was talking about when he warned President-elect Trump not to rattle the CIA’s cage. Schumer colorfully told Rachel Maddow, “Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” Roger that.
WHO WE ARE
Frank Miele has spent four decades in the news business and now offers conservative commentary to counter the left-wing bias in the national media. If you enjoy reading these daily essays, I hope you will consider purchasing one of my books. They are available at Amazon in paperback or Kindle editions. My new book — “The Media Matrix: What if everything you know is fake?” — shows that Fake News has been around for years. The “Why We Needed Trump” trilogy tackles the politics of the last two decades: Part 1 is subtitled “Bush’s Global Failure: Half Right.” Part 2 is “Obama’s Fundamental Transformation: Far Left.” Part 3 is “Trump’s American Vision: Just Right.” Also consider subscribing to Heartland Diary on YouTube by clicking here for News Every Conservative Can Use.
