Trump,
Declassification, and Leverage, By Mark Wauck,
10/10/18, American Thinker
.
There's a reason why President Trump has not unilaterally
declassified the documents exposing perfidy against him:
leverage. As the whole Russia hoax is beginning to come into some
sort of global perspective – quite literally, as we'll see – the extent of the
advantage he now maintains by holding back declassification as a threat
outweighs the benefits of transparency. Recent posts by observers
who write from widely varying perspectives give us the ability to discern the
current state of play.
Let's start with the domestic front of the Russia
hoax. Sundance at Conservative Tree House has an excellent post
up: "President Trump and DAG
Rod Rosenstein – "No Collusion", No Immediate Worries.."
The overall theme is one that's dear to Sundance's heart:
leverage. The state of play is this: the congressional investigation
has progressed to the point that it's clear beyond cavil that the entire Russia
narrative is, in fact, a hoax and fraud – both on the American people in
general and on our legal system.
This is to say real criminal liability exists for the key players
who developed the plot against Trump. John Solomon summarizes what Congress has
discovered in succinct fashion: There is
now a concrete storyline backed by irrefutable evidence: The FBI allowed itself
to take political opposition research created by one party to defeat another in
an election, treated it like actionable intelligence, presented it to the court
as substantiated, and then used it to justify spying on an adviser for the
campaign of that party's duly chosen nominee for president in the final days of
a presidential election.
And when, nine months later, the FBI could not prove the
allegation of collusion between Trump and Russia, unverified evidence was
leaked to the media to try to sustain public support for a continued
investigation.
But Sundance spells out very specifically where the greatest risk
– and therefore the greatest leverage – lies:
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein created the special counsel
under fraudulent pretense. That origination material (Ohr 302's,
FISA pages, origination EC, and Page/Strzok messages) is now a risk to the
Deputy AG.
There are many other players, in addition to Rosenstein, who are
at serious risk. But from the perspective of leverage, Rosenstein is
the key because he created the special counsel part of the hoax and because –
as a result of A.G. Sessions's recusal – he remains in charge of the special
counsel operation. Rosenstein can exercise as much or as little
control over Mueller as he wants. Trump's threat of declassification
of the "origination material" gives Trump complete leverage over
Rosenstein and therefore over Mueller.
Trump's leverage ensures that Rosenstein will very much want to restrain
Mueller. If Rosenstein wants to restrain Mueller, Mueller will be restrained. This
may explain why we are now seeing key members of Mueller's team leaving and
returning to their old jobs. The importance of this is that Mueller
has posed the greatest threat to the Trump administration, the greatest
annoyance. That threat is now defanged for the immediate
future. If Mueller steps out of line,
boom! Declassification. By putting declassification on
hold, Trump maintains his leverage. And Congress continues to
investigate and slowly reveal the truth.
The benefits of this leverage via threat-of-declassification
extend well beyond the Russia hoax to other practical political
matters. I believe we saw that at play in the Kavanaugh nomination
battle. Rod Rosenstein, as DAG, directly supervises the FBI
director, Christopher Wray. To say the FBI acted with alacrity and
efficiency in exposing the machinations behind the accusations leveled at
Kavanaugh would be an understatement. But consider: Sundance himself
was distinctly alarmist during the Kavanaugh hearings, alleging a plot of Deep State FBI-DOJ insiders to
torpedo the nomination. As we've seen, however, exactly the opposite
occurred. The FBI leaped to Kavanaugh's defense, and I attribute
that to Trump's leverage over the DOJ-FBI through Rosenstein.
How will this play out for the midterm elections? Will
Trump at some point declassify that crucial "origination
material"? While Trump stressed that his hold on
declassification doesn't change his commitment for transparency sooner rather
than later, I believe that the Kavanaugh nomination has given Trump and his
newly committed GOP allies the issue they need for the
midterms. Polling has repeatedly shown that Supreme Court
nominations are a hot-button issue for Republican voters, and it has the
advantage of being readily comprehensible. Trump used his leverage
to get his nominee confirmed while energizing "normals"
for the midterms. After the election, declassification could play a
significant role in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.
Let's turn to that global perspective now.
Justin Raimondo at Anti-War.com has a blog post up that
complements Sundance's "leverage" perspective quite
nicely: "The Final Truth of Russia-gate: As the
hoax unravels, the real story of 'foreign collusion' comes out."
Raimondo focuses on the role of foreign "allies" in the
plot against Trump. As on the domestic front, there were multiple
players: Australia, Ukraine, Estonia, Israel. The key player was
undoubtedly the U.K. Without massive intelligence involvement by the
U.K., the entire Russia hoax would likely never have gotten off the
ground.
Here, Raimondo encapsulates that involvement sufficiently for our
purposes (much more could be
said):This entire episode has Her Majesty's Secret Service's fingerprints all
over it. Steele's key role is plain enough: here was a British spook
who was not only hired by the Clinton campaign to dig up dirt on Trump but was
unusually passionate about his work – almost as if he'd have done it for
free.
And then there was the earliest approach to the Trump campaign,
made by Cambridge professor and longtime spook Stefan Halper to Carter
Page. And then there's the mysterious alleged "link" to
Russian intelligence, Professor Joseph Mifsud, whose murky British-based think tank
managed to operate openly despite later claims it was a Russian covert
operation.
It was Mifsud who orchestrated the Russia-gate hoax, first
suggesting that the Russians had Hillary Clinton's emails, and then
disappearing into thin air as soon as the story he had planted percolated into
plain view. Some "Russian agent"!
Leverage, anyone? Declassification would expose all
these foreign players, but the heaviest hit by far would be against the U.K.
and its Australian poodle. And so we learn that "key
allies" "begged" Trump not to declassify that "origination
material." Raimondo notes:
Trump's decision to walk back his announcement that the key
Russia-gate intelligence would be declassified tells us almost as much as
if he'd tweeted it out, un-redacted. For what it tells us is that
public knowledge of the contents would constitute a major break in relations
with at least one key ally.
Yes, Trump smoked them out and got them begging for mercy, as
reported by the major media in all too transparent detail. Trump
ends up with all the leverage he needs over "Her Majesty's
Government" for as long as that leverage is useful. Well played, Mr.
President!
Mark Wauck is a retired FBI agent who
blogs on religion, philosophy, and FISA at Meaning in History.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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