Vin Suprynowicz

If the FBI can prove I robbed a bank at gunpoint, and its agents then interview me and I deny I did any such thing, would it make more sense to charge me with bank robbery . . . or only with lying to FBI agents?

I’d think armed robbery should be the more serious offense, wouldn’t you? If prosecutors can’t bring and prove that charge — but still charge me with lying about it — something smells.

Yet while the headlines report James Wolfe, the former top staffer of the Senate Intelligence Committee busted this week, was charged with sneaking secrets about Carter Page and the probe of the Trump presidential campaign to the young reporter who was warming his bed at night (or playing bouncy with him in the afternoons, or whatever), that’s simply not true. Read the indictment. All he’s charged with is lying to the FBI about what he did.

( https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/06/07/senior-senate-staffer-james-a-wolfe-arrested-for-leaking-classified-documents-to-multiple-media-outlets-indictment-pdf-below/ .)

This is stupid on the part of the DOJ, because a) courts have been known to look very skeptically at the charge that a suspect “lied” when in fact all he did was utter the “exculpatory ‘no’” -– something most of us tend to do, at least at first, when asked if we’re guilty of ANYTHING. And (more importantly) b) because the public is gradually waking up to what FBI agent Peter Strzok was talking about when he told his lawyer pal Lisa Page that Hillary was lucky they didn’t show anyone the FBI’s REAL written “302” reports from their interviews with her re. destroying her subpoenaed emails.

(Sept. 10, 2016, Strok to Page: “. . . thing is, there were VERY inflammatory things in the 302s we didn’t turn over to Congress (because they weren’t relevant to understanding the focus of the investigation) that are going to come out in FOIA and absolutely inflame Congress. . . .”)

It’s also slowly dawning on the public that FBI Deputy Director Andrew “Handy Andy” McCabe likely altered or substituted the written “302” reports concerning the Bureau’s interviews (Strzok again) with Gen. Michael Flynn (who pleaded guilty to — yep — “lying to the FBI” only when they’d run him out of money for lawyers and they threatened to go after his son), with the aim of manufacturing/supporting the “Flynn lied” narrative.

( https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/06/08/senate-investigators-suspect-fbi-documents-were-manipulated-by-deputy-director-andrew-mccabe/#more-150317 .)

In short, it won’t be long before no American juror drawn from anywhere outside a group home for the retarded is ever again going to convict anyone of anything based on “302s” from the FBI (the gang that assassinated Vicky Weaver; the gang that held the fire engines a mile away while they incinerated the women and children in the church at Waco, the most despised and discredited agency in the federal government, which is saying something) claiming “the subject lied.” (See soon-to-be-pardoned “Martha Stewart.”)

Unless, of course . . . The DOJ is holding the potentially far more serious charge of leaking Classified or Secret information with the seditious intent to overthrow a duly elected presidency — while filing only the lesser charges, for now — to see whether Mr. Wolfe will cooperate and name some more names, of Senate staffers and even Senators themselves, who richly deserve to join him in an orange jumpsuit and leg chains. . . .

Meantime, from http://dailycaller.com/2018/06/08/exclusive-buzzfeed-confirms-it-knew-about-ali-watkins-relationship-with-indicted-senate-official/

“EXCLUSIVE: BUZZFEED CONFIRMS IT KNEW ABOUT ALI WATKINS’ RELATIONSHIP WITH INDICTED SENATE OFFICIAL

“Questions remain over whether BuzzFeed News acted ethically with a former employee, Ali Watkins, who had a romantic relationship with an indicted former security director for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

“Watkins told her BuzzFeed editors about her relationship with the individual, James Wolfe, who the Department of Justice has charged with lying to investigators during a leak probe, according to The New York Times, where Watkins now works as a national security reporter.

“BuzzFeed Editor-In-Chief Ben Smith said he would ‘not comment at all on a reporter’s sources in the middle of an unjustifiable leak hunt’ when The Daily Caller News Foundation asked about the extent the organization knew about Watkins’ behavior to corroborate The Times’ reporting.”

As Jeff Giesea says, “To review Ali Watkins’s work is to watch the Trump collusion narrative develop in slow motion.”

What we DON’T know, at this point, is whether the New York Times knew that reporter Watkins was getting these great, one-sided, targeted anti-Trump stories out of the Senate committee by having sex with Senate staffer Wolfe, some 30 years her senior -– and told her she was expected to continue that method of “research” now that they’d found a vacant crib for her there on 42nd Street. The state-socialist propaganda organ certainly hired her away from Buzzfeed in the hope and expectation of getting more of those “great scoops” -– all damaging to Donald Trump and his presidency, of course -– no doubt about that.

Did they just say “Please don’t tell us how you’re getting that stuff — we’d rather not know”?

It’s commonly held that -– while government officials who leak classified information to the press are breaking the law and can be prosecuted and jailed -– the reporters who print the stuff are immune from prosecution, because of the “freedom of the press.”

Yes, fortunately we live in a country where reporters aren’t arrested just for reporting facts the government finds embarrassing or inconvenient, even if the FBI, the most discredited pack of government goons in America (I was going to add “and the most despicable,” but we do still have the IRS, after all), DOES redact all kinds of stuff from official government documents -– funded by and therefore belonging to taxpayers and voters -– precisely for no reason other than their being embarrassing or inconvenient to our bureaucratic masters — see Handy Andy McCabe’s $70,000 conference table.

( https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/fbi-redacted-cost-mccabes-office-conference-table-70000 .)

But responsible editors and publishers should still be expected to ask “Why are we publishing this — who does it help and how does that outweigh any potential harm to the nation?”

(As Jeff Giesea says: “To review Ali Watkins’ work is to watch the Trump collusion narrative develop in slow motion.”)

In that context, I’m not so sure the statement above -– that reporters and publishers are always immune -– is universally true. It’s a question of degree. If a reporter printed the sailing time of a troop ship, and an enemy submarine waiting outside the harbor resultantly sank that troop ship, the reporter, her editor, and the newspaper’s owners couldn’t be indicted and successfully prosecuted for treason, death resulting? Are you sure?

In this case, the secrets Mr. Wolfe was laying on Ms. Watkins’ pillow like a morning breath mint obviously had a cash value, measured in paid subscriptions and advertising sold.

So even if Ali Watkins and the New York Times can’t be prosecuted for printing the classified secrets Wolfe handed over to his junior bedmate between humpings, if the New York Times hired her BECAUSE of what she promised to keep trading Mr. Wolfe for his secrets . . . can’t a corporation that maintains a stable of Young Ladies of Easy Acquaintance in the furtherance of larding its bank account in this way be charged under the same statute as Sidney Biddle Barrows, the “Mayflower Madam”?