One day after the New York Times published an anonymous op-ed alleging that a cabal of “resisters” within the White House is actively subverting the Commander in Chief, President Trump threatened to declassify documents which might uncover “Additional Corruption,” right as his GOP allies on Capitol Hill are calling on him to use his Presidential authority to declassify and release reams documents related to the DOJ’s Russia probe.
“The Deep State and the Left, and their vehicle, the Fake News Media, are going Crazy – & they don’t know what to do,” Trump tweeted Thursday morning, adding: “The Economy is booming like never before, Jobs are at Historic Highs, soon TWO Supreme Court Justices & maybe Declassification to find Additional Corruption. Wow!”
The Deep State and the Left, and their vehicle, the Fake News Media, are going Crazy – & they don’t know what to do. The Economy is booming like never before, Jobs are at Historic Highs, soon TWO Supreme Court Justices & maybe Declassification to find Additional Corruption. Wow!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 6, 2018
In particular, Republican Reps. Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz and Lee Zeldin have asked Trump to declassify more of the heavily redacted FISA surveillance warrant on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page in late 2016. They also want Trump to release all of the official notes filed by twice-demoted DOJ official Bruce Ohr, whose cozy relationship with former UK spy Christopher Steele has come under intense scrutiny in recent weeks.
The GOP legislators are also seeking the declassification of “other relevant documents” according to Zeldin’s office.
The GOP lawmakers intend to formally announced [sic] their push on Thursday at a press conference. Trump has long backed his allies’ complaints that the Justice Department has withheld sensitive documents that might expose bias behind the Russia probe, which was launched in July 2016 by the FBI. In January, he agreed to declassify a memo crafted by GOP staff of the House Intelligence Committee that officially confirmed, for the first time, the existence of the Page surveillance warrant. That document had been reported in media but not formally acknowledged by the FBI. –Politico
Wednesday’s anonymous Op-Ed, which the Times claims was written by a “senior official in the Trump administration,” has drawn harsh rebuke from both sides of the aisle and appears to be backfiring spectacularly. While Trump and his supporters have naturally rejected the Op-Ed as everything from “fake news” written by a “coward” (and possibly an outright fabrication by the Times), the editorial has received surprising pushback from notable left-of-center figures.
As we noted Wednesday night, Jessica Roy of the Los Angeles Times responded to the NYT Op-Ed within hours, writing: “No, anonymous Trump official, you’re not ‘part of the resistance.’ You’re a coward” for not going far enough to stop Trump and in fact enabling him.
If they really believe there’s a need to subvert the president to protect the country, they should be getting this person out of the White House. But they’re too cowardly and afraid of the possible implications. They hand-wave the notion thusly:
“Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis.”
How is it that utilizing the 25th Amendment of the Constitution would cause a crisis, but admitting to subverting a democratically elected leader wouldn’t?
…
If you’re reading this, senior White House official, know this: You are not resisting Donald Trump. You are enabling him for your own benefit. That doesn’t make you an unsung hero. It makes you a coward. –LA Times
Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald – the Pulitzer Prize Winning co-founder of The Intercept, also called the author of the op-ed a “coward” whose ideological issues “voters didn’t ratify.”
Greenwald continues; “The irony in the op-ed from the NYT’s anonymous WH coward is glaring and massive: s/he accuses Trump of being “anti-democratic” while boasting of membership in an unelected cabal that covertly imposes their own ideology with zero democratic accountability, mandate or transparency.“
The irony in the op-ed from the NYT’s anonymous WH coward is glaring and massive: s/he accuses Trump of being “anti-democratic” while boasting of membership in an unelected cabal that covertly imposes their own ideology with zero democratic accountability, mandate or transparency
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 5, 2018
So with the left, right and center all calling the anonymous op-ed a coward, and President Trump suggesting everything from a pure fabrication to the “Deep State” using their “Fake News Media” vehicle against him, one has to wonder exactly what’s stopping him from releasing the very documents which would expose more of what many are convinced has been nothing more than a charade.
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