‘I want to see front and center what he [Trump] is saying, no matter how ridiculous some of the press conference commentary ebbs into…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) “The View” co-host Meghan McCain claimed on Monday that a “totalitarian” President Donald Trump might use the coronavirus pandemic to push “draconian” measures “akin to the Patriot Act” passed shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
But McCain also called into question equally dictatorial left-wing demands that sought to silence the president entirely while accusing him of spreading disinformation and playing politics in his now-daily press briefings.
“There is an argument being made by some people in media that the press conferences shouldn’t be being covered,” McCain said on The View.
“My argument for keeping the press conferences is I think we’re at a place where President Trump, he’s always been a sort of totalitarian president, in a way that we’ve never historically seen before.”
The daily briefings conducted by Trump alongside the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force maintain accountability, which is important now more than ever since Trump could exploit this crisis for his own gain, McCain continued.
“I want to see front and center what he [Trump] is saying, no matter how ridiculous some of the press conference commentary ebbs into,” she said.
Her “fear” with the press briefings, she continued, is that Trump “is going to play on the American public’s fears in a draconian way and possibly do something akin to the Patriot Act going forward where he uses this moment in time to play off our fears for his own benefit.”
The Patriot Act, passed during former President George W. Bush’s administration with broad support at the time, significantly expanded government surveillance powers.
Civil liberties advocates have since come to question the benefit of the anti-terrorism measures following revelations of substantial abuse by the FBI and other intelligence agencies.
A recent renewal of some of the post-9/11 provisions was able to garner only enough support in Congress for a temporary stopgap as the secretive FISA court undergoes what are expected to be significant reforms in the warrant process.
McCain also blasted Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, calling him “inept.”
“I, for one, became even more fearful of what was happening when I saw how inept Jared Kushner was,” she explained. “So, while he [Trump] has a team of doctors like Dr. [Anthony] Fauci that we are all in agreement is doing a great job, my fear is that this is a moment in time that can be manipulated by our powers and the government in place.”
Collins’s internal polling has incumbent trailing both him and Democratic candidate…
Doug Collins / IMAGE: CSPAN via Youtube
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Georgia GOP Rep. Doug Collins holds a significant lead over Sen. Kelly Loeffler in the intra-party competition for Loeffler’s Senate seat, according to a new internal poll conducted for Collins’s campaign.
The Battleground Connect survey, conducted for Collins’s campaign, found that 36% of likely voters preferred Collins for Georgia’s 9th District Senate seat.
Loeffler was appointed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp following the resignation last year of former Sen. Johnny Isakson.
Loeffler, with only 13% support, trails Collins and their Democratic opponent, pastor Raphael Warnock, who registered at 16%, according to the poll obtained by Politico.
The Senate GOP tried to discourage Collins from running for Loeffler’s seat, accusing him of selfishly hurting Georgians and other Senate Republicans.
Now, it seems, Collins’s support is growing in the state, especially as Loeffler faces sharp criticism in the media over questionable stock trades she made right before the coronavirus outbreak.
Loeffler sold off millions of dollars of stocks right before the markets crashed, although she has denied any wrongdoing.
Collins has made it clear she must be held accountable.
People are losing their jobs, their businesses, their retirements, and even their lives and Kelly Loeffler is profiting off their pain? I’m sickened just thinking about it.
Loeffler has agreed to cooperate with the Senate Ethics Committee, insisting that criticism of her stock trades is “ridiculous” and “baseless.”
This is a ridiculous and baseless attack. I do not make investment decisions for my portfolio. Investment decisions are made by multiple third-party advisors without my or my husband’s knowledge or involvement.
— Senator Kelly Loeffler (@SenatorLoeffler) March 20, 2020
‘With all due respect to Dr. Navarro, whose expertise is in other areas, he is woefully unqualified for this task…’
Peter Navarro / IMAGE: Fox News via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Once again, a left-wing attempt to spin an anti-Trump narrative from the coronavirus response was debunked after President Donald Trump’s longtime economic adviser was revealed to have done a better job than media darling Dr. Anthony Fauci at predicting the pandemic’s toll.
Peter Navarro, the newly appointed policy coordinator for the Defense Production Act, has faced repeated smear attacks from the Left over his qualifications to join the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, in a bid to install a more favorable coronavirus response ‘czar’ and continue the sustained attack on Trump’s handling of the health crisis, openly questioned Navarro’s qualifications in a letter to the president last week.
“With all due respect to Dr. Navarro, whose expertise is in other areas, he is woefully unqualified for this task,” Schumer wrote.
The New York Democrat then resurrected a common trope—previously used in left-wing efforts to discredit Trump’s Ukraine policy during recent impeachment proceedings—that the president’s disdain for bureaucratic “deep-state” policy-makers had prompted him to establish a “shadow” government of his hand-picked advisers.
“The existence of a separate ‘shadow’ effort elsewhere in the White House has made the Administration’s response even more confused and uncoordinated,” Schumer claimed.
Schumer’s liberal media allies also picked up the narrative, particularly after Navarro was reported to have clashed with top disease expert Anthony Fauci, of the National Health Institutes, over the use of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat the coronavirus symptoms.
Outlets like CNN rallied behind Fauci, whose open disagreement with Trump has conveyed leftist folk-hero status onto him during the crisis, regardless of whether his stewardship has helped or compounded the crisis.
During a heated exchange on Monday, CNN’s John Berman rehashed the questions over Navarro’s qualifications.
Navarro defended his own expertise as a social scientist with an expertise in statistical analysis. He then rebuffed Berman’s attempt at creating a “false dichotomy” between the task force experts.
Navarro said members of the task force were in unanimous agreement about allowing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to make the disputed drug more available in virus hot-zones.
But at the same time as some on the Left were continuing to cast aspersions on Navarro’s expertise, others were serving up a hefty plate of crow—acknowledging that Navarro had, in fact, been one of the key forces in encouraging Trump’s early response to the virus.
Both the New York Times and Axios conceded that Navarro had warned of the severity of the outbreak and its cost in a pair of memos while most policymakers—including Fauci—remained in wait-and-see mode.
The first memo, dated Jan. 29, estimated half a million American lives lost and a cost of close to $6 trillion. A few days after the memo, Trump closed down travel to and from China and first convened the Coronavirus Task Force.
Navarro—whose criticism of China in other areas has been well documented—issued a second memo in late February in which he ramped up the estimated death toll to 2 million. Shortly thereafter, Trump assigned Vice President Mike Pence to directly coordinate the virus response beyond medical preparations.
Meanwhile, a look back at the record revealed that Fauci—who supposedly issued prescient calls about the coronavirus outbreak that had gone unheeded by the administration—had, in reality, promoted little more than uncertainty about the dangers in late January.
“This is an evolving situation, and it’s tough to predict ultimately where it will go,,” he said, according to a CNN report on the efforts underway to find a vaccine. “…Is it a continual spread? Is it sustained? We’re not quite sure yet.”
‘He is the only person who has the power to make it a priority…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Democratic Michigan state Rep. Karen Whitsett said she believes hydroxychloroquine allowed her body to defeat the coronavirus.
She spoke with media including Fox News’ Laura Ingraham to thank President Donald Trump for publicly suggesting COVID-19 patients seek treatment from the commonly-prescribed drug.
Whitsett tested positive for the coronavirus in March and immediately sought treatment. She began taking hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug, on March 31.
“Less than two hours later,” Whitsett said, she began to experience relief from the virus’s symptoms, she told the Detroit Free Press.
She said she would not have thought to ask for it, and her doctor would likely not have prescribed it had Trump not touted the drug’s potential therapeutic effects.
“It has a lot to do with the president … bringing it up,” Whitsett said. “He is the only person who has the power to make it a priority.”
When asked whether she thinks Trump helped saved her life by informing the public about hydroxychloroquine, Whitsett said: “Yes, I do. I do thank him for that.”
Trump took to Twitter to congratulate Whistett for her speedy recovery.
Congratulations to State Representative Karen Whitsett of Michigan. So glad you are getting better! https://t.co/v6z46rUDtg
The use of hydroxychloroquine in the fight against COVID-19 has been a heavily debated topic over the past few weeks as left-wing activists and media outlets have sought to discredit it following Trump’s endorsement.
Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro was reported to have clashed recently with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, who has downplayed the drug’s lifesaving potential.
Fauci has said publicly that he agrees with the “substance” of Trump’s claims but encouraged more restraint until the drug could undergo further clinical tests.
Even if the drug has no downsides for coronavirus patients, he claims a run on it could create supply shortages for those who use it to treat diseases such as lupus.
Echoing Trump’s prior enthusiasm, Navarro allegedly confronted Fauci over his hesitance to endorse the drug, arguing that the anecdotal evidence in support of the drug’s use should be enough to recommend it under the dire circumstances.
However, Navarro, who was recently appointed the national Defense Production Act policy coordinator, also pushed back on the reports that Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force disagrees on the subject.
“The media is trying to blow it up as a big big debate, but I can tell you that within the room the decision was a sound one, and it was unanimous,” Navarro said.
“If it saves lives, that’s a beautiful thing … I think history will judge who’s right on this debate. I’d bet on President Trump’s intuition on this one.”
‘The Inspector General Community will continue to conduct aggressive, independent oversight of the agencies that we oversee…’
Michael Horowitz (screen shot: ZeroHedge Janitor/Youtube)
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Contrary to left-wing claims, President Donald Trump may have been entirely justified in his firing of former Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson last Friday.
But Trump may, nonetheless, face some real fallout for the move, perceived to be part of an ongoing score-settling in the wake of House Democrats’ impeachment effort, for which he was acquitted in February.
Specifically, the move elicited a rare—if not unprecedented—rebuke from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, whose reports exposing FBI misconduct during their anti-Trump “Crossfire Hurricane” probe into Russian collusion have been largely beneficial to the president.
On Saturday, Horowitz released a statement condemning Atkinson’s dismissal, using the letterhead of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency.
Horowitz not only defended his colleague as a man of “integrity, professionalism and commitment to the rule of law,” but he also seemed to suggest menacingly that Atkinson’s dismissal would lead to even greater scrutiny of the president’s future actions.
“The Inspector General Community will continue to conduct aggressive, independent oversight of the agencies that we oversee,” Horowitz said in the statement.
“This includes CIGIE’s Pandemic Response Accountability Committee and its efforts on behalf of American taxpayers, families, businesses, patients, and health care providers to ensure that over $2 trillion dollars in emergency federal spending is being used consistently with the law’s mandate.”
A Useful Weapon
Adam Schiff and Jerrold Nadler / IMAGE: CNN via John Cornyn, Youtube
Thus far, Horowitz’s revelations about FBI abuse of the FISA warrant process have been an inconvenient nuisance for House Democrats including Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler, who has blatantly avoided calling him to testify.
Horowitz’s high-profile findings include a December report that identified 27 critical errors in the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” handling and a recent audit of 29 different FISA applications in eight different FBI field offices had showed all had failed to properly submit the required documentation.
But the invocation of coronavirus oversight in Horowitz’s statement hinted at a possible leftward pivot for the nonpartisan watchdog.
Democrats are currently attempting to use Trump’s handling of the pandemic crisis as their next political bludgeon.
And House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ringleader of the Ukraine impeachment scheme, has called for a post-hoc blue-ribbon committee to investigate the early handling of the virus response, claiming it would be similar to that enacted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks that probed how the massive intelligence failure had occurred.
Trump’s handling of the health crisis has been somewhat effective in helping the U.S. to maintain a relatively low mortality rate, despite the ravages of the highly contagious virus in a few Democrat-run hot zones like New York City and New Orleans, both of which failed to adequately prepare.
As of April 7, just under 3 percent of confirmed U.S. diagnoses resulted in death, compared with a global average of 5.6 percent.
Nonetheless, leftists have predictably exploited the crisis to attempt further collateral damage on Trump’s public approval—largely without success—and to advance a number of agenda items on their radical progressive wish list.
Horowitz, as an independent integrity watchdog, could prove a useful weapon against Trump if Democrats were to turn him.
Similarly, they were able to weaponize the whistleblower process and exploit Atkinson’s firm believe in preserving anonymity, using his integrity against him during the Ukraine conspiracy.
Trump, who had hired Atkinson in November 2017 to fill the post, said he no longer had the “fullest confidence” about the ICIG in his letter Friday notifying Senate Intelligence leaders of the removal.
Trump, likewise, would have the authority to dismiss Horowitz at his pleasure, but doing so could impede the ongoing criminal investigation into FBI misconduct while further alienating some of his allies within the Justice Department.
One silver lining, however, was that Horowitz’s statement pointedly focused not on the handling of the coronavirus response, but rather on the dispersal and appropriate use of emergency stimulus funds.
The $2-trillion package that was recently passed on a bipartisan basis, adding considerably to the nation’s debt, may be an equal-opportunity liability for both sides of the aisle if misappropriated.
As many U.S. taxpayers awaited a $1,200 relief check, Congressional leaders already had entered into discussions on another trillion-dollar package to follow in short succession.
‘I may be called on to rule whether he should be compelled to answer a question…’
Christopher Steele / IMAGE: Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Three Russian oligarchs who were falsely implicated in the Steele Dossier are suing ex-British spy Christopher Steele and demanding he publicly renounce the debunked claims.
With an impeachment trial and a global pandemic in the intervening months, the Russia collusion scandal that consumed the public’s attention for much of President Donald Trump’s early presidency now seems miles away.
But the Democratic-funded “opposition research” that triggered the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane operation and the resulting Mueller investigation continues to work its way through the legal system in the United Kingdom, said the Daily Mail.
Peter Aven, Mikhail Fridman and German Khan—all wealthy leaders in Europe’s finance and energy sectors—are seeking damages in a London court, as well as an official disavowal from Steele, who accused them of doing the bidding of Russian leader Vladmir Putin while trying to extort the Trump campaign.
After being leaked to left-wing news outlets like BuzzFeed, Steele’s salacious accusations went public shortly before Trump took office, threatening to undermine the legitimacy of the election.
Subsequent investigations revealed, however, that he had been flagged as a partisan extremist who was desperate to smear Trump by any means necessary—which had led the British MI6 and the FBI to distance themselves from him—and that his sources within Russia were unreliable.
Congressional inquiries also revealed that the company funding his so-called research, Fusion GPS, had been commissioned by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. They used an indirect pipeline through Bruce Ohr, an associate deputy attorney general high up in the Justice Department, to convey the material directly to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe via thumb drive.
Corrupt FBI agents, including Peter Strzok, then used the dossier’s claims in a series of critically flawed warrant applications with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to get permission to spy on Trump adviser Carter Page and other campaign officials.
Although a Justice Department criminal investigation into the matter is ongoing, with the possibility of implicating several high-up members of the Obama intelligence community, Steele has been largely unavailable and held unaccountable throughout the saga.
During a March hearing for the London trial, he relinquished his own responsibility by saying he had simply reported on what he was told; however, he refused at the same time to reveal the sources of the information, claiming it could endanger them, reported WND.
Unlike American defamation law, in which the burden falls largely on the victims to prove the information is false, the judge presiding over the London trial, Justice Warby, said that Steele would likely have to prove that the claims made against the Russians were truthful under the circumstances.
Given Steele’s refusals thus far, “I may be called on to rule whether he should be compelled to answer a question,” Warby said.
‘Because elected Dems are pro-abortion, they are abusing their power—in a one-sided way—to silence pregnancy counselors…’
(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) Police officers in North Carolina arrested eight pro-life Americans on Saturday after they refused to leave a Charlotte-area abortion clinic, WBTV reported.
Police also cited 12 people for violating the state’s recently implemented quarantine orders in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, weighed in on the arrests on Twitter.
2/x WATCH: This is an unconstitutional arrest. @BenhamBrothers exercising core First Amendment rights. PEACEFULLY. In a way fully consistent w/ public safety. Because elected Dems are pro-abortion, they are abusing their power—in a one-sided way—to silence pregnancy counselors. https://t.co/at4UxQrXBU
Police said a group of about 50 people violated Mecklenburg County’s stay-at-home order, but one of the protesters said his group was obeying the state’s commands, WBTV reported.
Cities4Life President David Benham, who was arrested, said he did not participate in a “gathering” as the police described it.
He said three members of Cities4Life were offering counseling services outside A Preferred Women’s Health Center, but that other citizens were there to pray for the unborn children.
Benham posted videos of the conversation with the police and the arrest.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department cited a state law in defense of their officers’ arrest.
Yet, Mecklenburg County’s stay-at-home order exempts “organizations that provide charitable and social services.”
“You see it right there, public charities providing social services are clearly essential,” Benham said.
Members of LoveLife, a Greensboro-area pro-life group, were also arrested and cited outside the Charlotte abortion clinic.
On March 28, three LoveLife members were arrested and one was cited outside a Greensboro abortion clinic.
They filed a lawsuit in a North Carolina’s US District Court after warning Greensboro officials that their actions were unconstitutional.
‘The pro-Trump media is trying to bury the Trump White House’s failures to fully protect and prepare the country from this pandemic…’
Brian Stelter Photo by nrkbeta (CC)
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) CNN’s Brian Stelter claimed on Sunday that the Trump administration’s response to the Wuhan virus pandemic has been a “9/11-level failure.”
The federal government’s “delays and dysfunction” in addressing the health crisis were similar to the intelligence failures that neglected to detect the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Stelter argued.
“[Trump] is still getting lots of facts wrong at these briefings,” Stelter ranted.
“One day, he said scarves work better than masks. One day he said airplane and train travelers are being given very strong tests for the virus before departure and after arrival. It’s not true,” Stelter continued. “Maybe it should be true, but it’s not.”
The “State of the Union” host, who is CNN’s chief media correspondent, also accused those who support the Trump administration of pushing “a whole lot of revisionist history,” unlike his own network.
“The pro-Trump media is trying to bury the Trump White House’s failures to fully protect and prepare the country from this pandemic,” Stelter said.
Quoting an Associated Press headline that stated the U.S. “wasted months” before preparing for COVID-19, Stelter said the media needs to start asking what went wrong just like it did back in 2001.
Stelter was referencing a 2004 report from an independent, bipartisan commission, which found that government agencies failed to act on intelligence before the terrorist attacks. Democrats have tried to accuse Trump’s administration of this same kind of neglect.
House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., has even demanded that Congress establish another “9/11-style commission” to investigate how much the Trump administration knew about the COVID-19 outbreak and what it did to prevent it.
“After Pearl Harbor, September 11, and many momentous events in American history, independent, bipartisan commissions have been established to provide a complete accounting of what happened, what we did right and wrong, and what we can do to better protect the country in the future,” Schiff said in a statement.
“Though we are still in the early days of the Coronavirus crisis, there is no doubt that such a comprehensive and authoritative review will be required,” Schiff continued. “This is not an exercise in casting blame or scoring political points, but something that the American people should rightly expect from their government as an exercise in accountability.”
Trump’s conservative defenders, however, have noted two important mitigating factors that helped contribute to the “months” of delayed response, both of which have been downplayed by the Left and its media allies.
Although the virus is estimated to have originated in China around November 2019, the country’s communist government rebuffed any efforts for international support and falsely tried to minimize the potential pandemic concerns. It was supported in this cover-up by the United Nations-backed World Health Organization, which only declared a global pandemic in mid-March. The first confirmed U.S. case arrived in Washington state in January.
Moreover, Trump’s own attention was diverted by the Schiff-led partisan impeachment effort that ended with his acquittal in early February. Even afterward, while allowing Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar to oversee the Coronavirus Task Force he created on Jan. 31, the president remained suspicious of left-wing attempts to use the virus as an excuse to further undermine his presidency.
Liberty Headlines’ Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
‘The reality is that the former vice president is in a terrible position in the sense that he doesn’t have a platform…’
Charles Schumer & Nancy Pelosi/IMAGE: YouTube
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Congressional Democrats are struggling to show voters that they are also leading the fight against the coronavirus pandemic as President Donald Trump takes the lead and directs the country’s efforts.
Many Democrats fear that Trump’s leadership throughout this crisis will be more impactful in the long-run. As a result House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., are scrambling to find ways to compete.
Dozens of Democratic congressmen have sent letters to the Trump administration in an attempt to publicly hold Trump accountable on various issues. House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is even trying to create a 9/11-style bipartisan commission to investigate why Trump’s administration was “unprepared” for the coronavirus pandemic.
But for the most part, Pelosi, Schumer, and the other congressional Democrats are relying on the media to maintain a national presence. Pelosi has appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Presidential candidate Joe Biden—currently considered to be the presumptive nominee—has also been making the rounds from his basement in Delaware.
Biden is in a much worse position than Pelosi and Schumer, according to liberal pundits. The congressional Democrats can at least use congressional spending and oversight to their advantage.
Biden, on the other hand, has been largely sidelined and unable to speak without blundering his way through an interview. The result has been “high” levels of “frustration” among the Biden campaign, according to MSNBC’s John Heilemann.
“The reality is that the former vice president is in a terrible position in the sense that he doesn’t have a platform,” Heilemann said last week. “He doesn’t have real standing in this crisis.”
‘The man is a disgrace to I.G.s. He’s a total disgrace…’
Michael Atkinson/PHOTO: DNI.gov
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) President Donald Trump’s Friday night dismissal of former Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson provoked a new wave of misleading claims and revisionism in the recent left-wing impeachment saga.
But the president’s critics predictably ignored the many ways in which Democrats bore responsibility for compromising the IG’s neutrality, leading Trump to lose his “fullest confidence” in Atkinson, as stated in his notification letter to the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Liberal media like the New York Times reported on Atkinson’s firing in the most hyperbolic of terms, using words like “purge” and “massacre” to describe it.
“The president’s under-cover-of-darkness decision late the night before to fire Michael K. Atkinson … swept away one more official deemed insufficiently loyal as part of a larger purge that has already rid the administration of many key figures in the impeachment drama,” the Times claimed.
Politico noted in its reporting on the firing that there was precedent in former President Barack Obama’s 2009 firing of Gerald Walpin, the then-inspector general of the Corporation for National and Community Service, who at the time had been investigating one of Obama’s prominent supporters.
Nonetheless, Trump-bashers pounced on the move in their ongoing crusade to smear the president, suggesting that he should not be doing anything else but focusing on the coronavirus pandemic during its indefinite stranglehold on the country.
“Mr. Trump’s hunt for informers and turncoats proceeds even while most Americans are focused on the coronavirus outbreak that has killed thousands and shut down most of the country,” seethed the Times.
“The president’s determination to wipe out perceived treachery underscores his intense distrust of the government that he oversees at a time when he is relying on career public health and emergency management officials to help guide him through one of the most dangerous periods in modern American history,” the newspaper charged.
A Loss of Confidence
Contrary to the Times’ assertions, Atkinson’s dismissal may have been the least secretive thing related to his involvement in House Democrats’ recent impeachment effort.
Trump, himself, was characteristically candid about the reasons he no longer trusted Atkinson, whom he had appointed to the position in November 2017.
During a Saturday press conference, Trump said, “I thought he did a terrible job, absolutely terrible. He took a fake report and he brought it to Congress,” reported the Times.
Barack Obama and Eric Ciaramella / PHOTO: WhiteHouse.Gov
Trump went on to rail over the impeachment process, which was initiated last August after presumed CIA whistleblower Eric Ciaramella, a widely acknowledged partisan who was working by special appointment in the White House, filed an IG complaint in consultation with Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the chair of the House Intelligence Committee.
Despite the fact that Atkinson’s boss, then-acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, determined that the complaint did not meet the “urgent” criteria used to justify reporting to Congress, Atkinson took it upon himself to do so.
He first changed the whistleblower policies to allow Ciaramella to report second-hand information. He also allowed the so-called whistleblower to correct inaccuracies in his complaint and then circumvented Maguire, his boss, to deliver it to Schiff.
“The man is a disgrace to I.G.s,” Trump said Saturday. “He’s a total disgrace.”
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who also has been caught in political crossfire over his investigations of FBI corruption and abuse in the related Russia collusion hoax, subsequently released a statement defending Atkinson’s integrity.
But the outpouring of support for Atkinson’s supposedly “by the book” handling of the Ukraine allegations against Trump ignored several ways that Atkinson’s reliance on his own discretionary judgment had undermined his apolitical posturing.
Deep State Ties
Like Ciaramella, who had a close friend hired by Schiff’s office around the same time that he filed the whistleblower complaint, Atkinson’s own conflicts of interest soon became apparent.
Among the unsavory links revealed was Atkinson’s stint working closely at the FBI with anti-Trump ‘resistance’ agent Kevin Clinesmith and others who were involved with the baseless Deep State conspiracies waged against Trump.
Underscoring their cozy rapport, Atkinson released his statement in response to Trump’s firing via Schiff, who tweeted it out with his own smear-attacks framing the dubious narrative.
A powerful message from Inspector Gen. Atkinson after his retaliatory firing:
“The American people deserve an honest and effective government. They are counting on you to use authorized channels to bravely speak up…
Atkinson attempted in the statement to justify overstepping his authority by ignoring Maguire and by extending his own oversight to the office of the presidency—which was not part of the intelligence community that he was tasked with monitoring under the 2010 Intelligence Authorization Act that established the office.
“As an Inspector General, I was legally obligated to ensure that whistleblowers had an effective and authorized means to disclose urgent matters involving classified information to the congressional intelligence committees, and that when they did blow the whistle in an authorized manner, their identities would be protected as a guard against reprisals,” Atkinson claimed.
“Inspectors General are able to fulfill their critical watchdog functions because, by law, they are supposed to be independent of both the Executive agencies they oversee and of Congress,” he continued. “Inspectors General are not involved in policymaking; they are not partisan.”
While noble sounding, Atkinson’s decision to insert himself into the middle of the partisan proceedings effectively belied his claims of neutrality.
Adam Schiff / IMAGE: CSPAN via Youtube
Meanwhile, those same whistleblower protections he so vocally extolled may have resulted in his own undoing after he was complicit in helping partisan Democrats to weaponize them against the president.
During the secretive House investigative hearings, Schiff selectively leaked snippets from many of the impeachment witnesses in an effort to build his case with the public. Those whose testimony supported House Democrats’ efforts were later brought forth in public hearings.
However, Atkinson’s testimony was the only one that remains classified under lock and key—ostensibly to protect the identity of the so-called whistleblower, although Ciaramella’s name was widely reported and never disputed or denied.
That the IG’s role is inherently one of transparency, shedding light on government corruption, seemed to contradict the insistence that his own account of his politically impactful actions be kept shrouded in secrecy.
Watching the Watchdogs
While it is possible there was other, unreleased classified information in the whistleblower complaint that would have directly involved his office’s oversight of the intelligence community, Atkinson’s insistence that the sole reason for secrecy was to protect Ciaramella fails to explain why he would have involved himself in the first place unless partisan forces were at play.
Chuck Schumer / IMAGE: Maddow Blog via Twitter
A March 18 letter Atkinson sent to Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-NY, two weeks before his dismissal, may have offered the best window into his own motives.
He thanked Schumer effusively for supporting his Ukraine decision, and offered an apparent swipe at the Trump defenders who dared to question his judgment and impartiality as an independent government auditor.
“Those repeated assurances of support for whistleblowers in ordinary matters are rendered meaningless if whistleblowers actually come forward in good faith with information concerning an extraordinary matter and are allowed to be vilified, threatened, publicly ridiculed, or—perhaps even worse—utterly abandoned by fair weather whistleblower champions,” Atkinson wrote.
Even so, Atkinson failed to address the central objection waged by his detractors: that this particular whistleblower was acting in bad faith and that no accountability mechanism was thus in place for protecting a duly elected leader against his dishonest political adversaries.
Atkinson also hinted in the letter at the possibility of more collusion with Schumer to extend his IG purview to monitoring the White House, despite there being no legislative authority for him to do so.
At Schumer’s request, Atkinson reassured him that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which requires the full trust of the president during sensitive and confidential deliberations, would support further efforts to undermine Trump by using the anonymous whistleblower process to deliver dirt to his political opponents.
“[I]n your letter, you requested that I seek and provide to Congress written certification from the General Counsel of the ODNI that he will not permit retaliation or reprisals against anyone who has made, or in the future makes, protected disclosures of presidential misconduct to Congress or Inspectors General,” Atkinson wrote. “Pursuant to that request, I am providing a copy of your letter and this response to the Acting General Counsel for the ODNI.”
