A nation torn apart

Over the weekend, Andrew McCarthy wrote a compelling piece highlighting the differences between the Trump Russian collusion investigation and Hillary’s email server investigation. It’s worth reading: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453659/mueller-paul-manafort-investigation-hardball-tactics

President Trump went off on his favorite tangent, lambasting political hacks in our intelligence community, over the weekend.  Of course, the mainstream media rushed to condemn his comments and predictably, former top intelligence officials, James Clapper and John Brennan, took to the Sunday shows to berate him and blabber on about how Trump can easily be played by the Russians.

I’ve debated how to explain the problems I see with both sides in this flame-throwing.  First, off Clapper, Brennan and Comey are all tied up in the infamous Trump dossier business, which is tied up with GPS Fusion, which was hired and paid by Clinton and the DNC to destroy Trump.  Those three briefed Trump, before his inauguration, on the dossier and they rolled out a report on Russian interference in the election at the same time.  That report was just recycled information from previous reports, yet those three top intelligence officials spun that in the media as if it was new information, bolstering the Clinton camp’s “Russian collusion” hysteria.   Clapper, Brennan and Comey played a key role in working to delegitimize Trump.  That’s the truth.

When Comey was fired he leaked his FBI notes to the media, through a friend, and later reports indicate those notes did contain classified material, yet the media glossed over that and ran full throttle on the Russian collusion storyline.  It’s easy to understand why Trump doesn’t trust anything Comey, Brennan, or Clapper say.  During the Obama years, a lot of intelligence was mishandled. Hillary’s private email server became the public target of Republicans, but the Obama administration, starting with President Obama, who used a private gmail account to communicate sensitive information with staffers, mishandled sensitive information – he emailed Hillary using that gmail account at her private server email address.

There are many “experts” who rush to say, the president can handle sensitive information however he wants and it’s “legal”, but that misses the entire point about sensitive information.  “Legal” doesn’t really matter if the actions compromise sensitive information, because what matters is that everyone entrusted with handling sensitive information do his/her best to insure that information is handled with due diligence.  Protecting the information is what matters; not parsing over legal technicalities.

Hillary’s server jeopardized highly sensitive information in many, many ways.  Top Obama officials, including President Obama, were involved in the email chains, containing classified information.  Every insecure email account, not just Hillary’s homebrew server, put that information at risk.  The most amazing aspect of Comey’s bizarre statements on Hillary’s server, was how he underplayed the possibility that the classified information was accessed by hostile intelligence.  The moment sensitive information is mishandled, like being stored on an insecure homebrew server, with people managing the email system, who do not possess security clearances, that information was definitely considered compromised.  Hillary used primarily her blackberry to send and read emails.  She had 13 blackberries that she “misplaced” or couldn’t locate and NONE of them were turned over to the FBI.

The entire media/Clinton/DNC #Resist effort has been a year-long sorest loser temper tantrum to take down Trump.  That is the truth. The other truth is Trump has placed fighting the #Resist effort above his duties as President. America is suffering from this ongoing 2016 election debacle.  It is also true that Trump is unfit to be president and he does not care to learn about policy or pay attention to details.  It is also true that Hillary, with her callous and deliberate abuse of her position and grossly negligent handling of highly sensitive information is unfit to be president too and she should not have a security clearance ever.  However, I think she still has her security clearance, despite the piles of classified information she mishandled, the files under subpoena her lawyers destroyed, and despite not turning over any of her 13 blackberries and some of her laptops to the FBI.  The media glossed over Hillary’s email scandal and Comey did too, because to prosecute Hillary would have taken down the Obama administration.  So, instead, Obama caved to the Clinton pressure and the Obama Justice Department gave cover to Hillary Clinton.

The mainstream media can collude to just not cover certain stories or to give a quick report, then bury the story. When Clinton flacks say, “it’s time to move on”, the mainstream media takes that marching order and does damage control for the Clintons.

Into this mix, it’s increasingly obvious the Trump campaign was extremely corrupt too and considering Trump prided himself on being a great crony capitalist, this should not surprise anyone.  Once Donald Trump, Jr. admitted he went into that meeting with the Russian lawyer, expecting to get Russian government dirt on Hillary, President Trump’s denials of “Russian collusion” fell apart.

America had two totally corrupt candidates, who are determined to fight to the bitter end to destroy each other.  America is caught in the media crossfire of this brutal information war of attrition. There won’t really be any winners at the end of this, just a nation torn apart by relentless partisan fighting.