{"id":6448,"date":"2018-06-08T21:57:16","date_gmt":"2018-06-09T04:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/?p=6448"},"modified":"2018-06-09T08:28:16","modified_gmt":"2018-06-09T15:28:16","slug":"a-curious-indictment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/?p=6448","title":{"rendered":"A curious indictment"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

I\u2019d think armed robbery should be the more serious offense, wouldn\u2019t you? If prosecutors can\u2019t bring and prove that charge — but still charge me with lying about it — something smells.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s simply not true. Read the indictment. All he\u2019s charged with is lying to the FBI about what he did.<\/p>\n

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

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 \u201clied\u201d when in fact all he did was utter the \u201cexculpatory \u2018no\u2019\u201d -\u2013 something most of us tend to do, at least at first, when asked if we\u2019re 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\u2019t show anyone the FBI\u2019s REAL written \u201c302\u201d reports from their interviews with her re. destroying her subpoenaed emails.<\/p>\n

(Sept. 10, 2016, Strok to Page: \u201c. . . thing is, there were VERY inflammatory things in the 302s we didn\u2019t turn over to Congress (because they weren\u2019t relevant to understanding the focus of the investigation) that are going to come out in FOIA and absolutely inflame Congress. . . .\u201d)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s also slowly dawning on the public that FBI Deputy Director Andrew \u201cHandy Andy\u201d McCabe likely altered or substituted the written \u201c302\u201d reports concerning the Bureau\u2019s 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 \u201cFlynn lied\u201d narrative.<\/p>\n

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

In short, it won\u2019t 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 \u201c302s\u201d 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 \u201cthe subject lied.\u201d (See soon-to-be-pardoned \u201cMartha Stewart.\u201d)<\/p>\n

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. . . . <\/p>\n

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

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“EXCLUSIVE: BUZZFEED CONFIRMS IT KNEW ABOUT ALI WATKINS\u2019 RELATIONSHIP WITH INDICTED SENATE OFFICIAL<\/p>\n

\u201cQuestions 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWatkins 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cBuzzFeed Editor-In-Chief Ben Smith said he would \u2018not comment at all on a reporter\u2019s sources in the middle of an unjustifiable leak hunt\u2019 when The Daily Caller News Foundation asked about the extent the organization knew about Watkins\u2019 behavior to corroborate The Times\u2019 reporting.\u201d <\/p>\n

As Jeff Giesea says, \u201cTo review Ali Watkins\u2019s work is to watch the Trump collusion narrative develop in slow motion.\u201d <\/p>\n

What we DON\u2019T 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 -\u2013 and told her she was expected to continue that method of \u201cresearch\u201d now that they\u2019d 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 \u201cgreat scoops\u201d -\u2013 all damaging to Donald Trump and his presidency, of course -\u2013 no doubt about that.<\/p>\n

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

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s commonly held that -\u2013 while government officials who leak classified information to the press are breaking the law and can be prosecuted and jailed -\u2013 the reporters who print the stuff are immune from prosecution, because of the \u201cfreedom of the press.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes, fortunately we live in a country where reporters aren\u2019t 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 -\u2013 funded by and therefore belonging to taxpayers and voters -\u2013 precisely for no reason other than their being embarrassing or inconvenient to our bureaucratic masters — see Handy Andy McCabe’s $70,000 conference table.<\/p>\n

( https:\/\/www.cnsnews.com\/news\/article\/michael-w-chapman\/fbi-redacted-cost-mccabes-office-conference-table-70000<\/a> .)<\/p>\n

But responsible editors and publishers should still be expected to ask \u201cWhy are we publishing this — who does it help and how does that outweigh any potential harm to the nation?\u201d<\/p>\n

(As Jeff Giesea says: \u201cTo review Ali Watkins\u2019 work is to watch the Trump collusion narrative develop in slow motion.\u201d)<\/p>\n

In that context, I\u2019m not so sure the statement above -\u2013 that reporters and publishers are always immune -\u2013 is universally true. It\u2019s 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\u2019s owners couldn\u2019t be indicted and successfully prosecuted for treason, death resulting? Are you sure?<\/p>\n

In this case, the secrets Mr. Wolfe was laying on Ms. Watkins\u2019 pillow like a morning breath mint obviously had a cash value, measured in paid subscriptions and advertising sold.<\/p>\n

So even if Ali Watkins and the New York Times can\u2019t 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\u2019t 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 \u201cMayflower Madam\u201d?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019d think armed robbery should be the more serious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[89,52,46,22,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-election","category-crime","category-law-enforcement","category-media","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-1G0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6448"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6461,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6448\/revisions\/6461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}