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Thursday, May 23, 2019

UPDATED: Trump Delegates Full Declass Authority To AG Bill Barr

I'll just paste in the statement:

President Trump: “Today, at the request and recommendation of the Attorney General of the United States, President Donald J. Trump directed the intelligence community to quickly and fully cooperate with the Attorney General’s investigation into surveillance activities during the 2016 Presidential election. The Attorney General has also been delegated full and complete authority to declassify information pertaining to this investigation, in accordance with the long-established standards for handling classified information. Today’s action will help ensure that all Americans learn the truth about the events that occurred, and the actions that were taken, during the last Presidential election and will restore confidence in our public institutions.”

This seems good. It tells one and all that the President has full confidence in Barr and that Barr is fully in charge of the investigations.

UPDATE 1: Just watched Sara Carter discussing impact of the coming declass. She made a major point that, while attention is focused on the exculpatory evidence that the FBI withheld from the FISA court, she is expecting very major revelations regarding Samantha Power's unmaskings. Sara pointed, by way of comparison, that when John Bolton was the Ambassador to the UN he unmasked 3 persons. In 2016 alone Power unmasked 300. Sara also stated that the name will be the names of very important persons. This is hitting close to the Obama inner circle.

UPDATE 2: Thomas Lifson makes several additional points related directly to the declass process:

I strongly suspect that AG Barr and his staff will be working through the holiday, as will those commanded in the presidential memorandum (see below) to “promptly provide” the assistance and information Barr will demand.

... Barr almost certainly has seen or will see the IG Report before it is released. He can declassify information that the IG Report needs to reveal, even before the report is released.

[Trump has put] Barr fully in charge, as the language “shall promptly provide…” requires their cooperation and information.  Barr, not the DNI, is in charge.

Clearly, Trump and Barr have an understanding of where this going. And it is going very far. 

7 comments:

  1. Sundance has a good article about the declassification authority and the process that will play out. I assume that he knows what he is talking about, as his reasoning seems logical.

    I know that it is important to protect America's capabilities in order to keep our enemies in the dark. However, keeping the American people in the dark about wrongdoing by those to whom we entrust the Nation's security strikes me as just as grave a mistake. If we lose our constitutional freedoms and right to be informed of what our government is doing, we have weakened our very foundation.

    I tend to think that Barr will get everything that he needs.

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    1. I think the important thing is that Barr has been given full authority. Everything I've been told about his personality--and in addition to what I've read, I know people who worked for him in the past--tells me that he will not tolerate anyone trying to slow him down or obstruct him. He will go after them.

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    2. Good, because time is of the essence. Due both to the possibility that DJT is not reelected and due to statute of limitations. While I think the President will be reelected, it is crucial to not let anyone stonewall AG Barr.

      A question for you regarding your 371 theory. Could the blatantly corrupt immunity deals given to Mills and Abedin be overturned? This was also defrauding the US Government from its duty to seek justice. Same for Clinton's computer man who wiped the hard drives clean and James Wolfe.

      A lot of these people got off scot-free or too lightly.

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    3. "time is of the essence"

      We've seen how he hit the ground running at DoJ, got Durham to work months before the outside world even knew, etc.

      Re immunity deals, I simply don't have the expertise to hazard a guess how that could be dealt with. Sorry. It was a pretty unprecedented situation to begin with. OTOH, if collusion between the prosecutors and witnesses/defendants were shown ...

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  2. One more observation on my part that I will share here. Rush Limbaugh was off on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. He returned to the airwaves today. This could be pure coincidence, but given his relationship with the President, I wonder if Rush was tipped off that he might want to take a few days off before the storms hit. Because Rush is going to be really busy from now on.

    This is conjecture on my part, I have no basis and could be way off.

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  3. I previously suggested Dems' airing of the "idea of impeachment" as a media counter-strategy to give their talking-head co-religionists material to flog "to keep hope alive." It appears media savvy Trump is going to water torture Dems with the drip, drip, drip of declassification disclosures.

    The clown car act of Adam Schiff has been reduced to exclaiming Trump and Barr are conspiring, politicizing, and weaponizing. I'd say Schiff is out of ammunition before Barr and Horowitz have sighted a target, much less fired a shot.

    I don't watch the Sunday gabfests, but it'll be interesting to see who the nets line-up to "color" this story, the "angle" taken--it's as much about what's not covered, as what is.

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    1. They're frantically stomping on the brake pedal, but nothing is happening--their clown car continues to careen toward the cliff.

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