A CLASSICAL CONVERSATION

I do not know if Republicans are also guilty of this, but Democrats certainly have a history of using classified information as a political weapon. A relative recent example was when Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, asked James Clapper, in open session, if the NSA was monitoring phone records. Wyden already knew the answer; this was part of the Patriot Act and was being used to capture terrorists.  He also knew that this was classified information, so Clapper was caught between a rock and a hard place. He could say no, which would be a lie, or he could say yes and compromise a highly classified program that was catching terrorists.

Here is a clip from that exchange:

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=clappers+lies+about+spying+on+american+citizens&view=detail&mid=75CB7863D71B316BAFAB75CB7863D71B316BAFAB&FORM=VIRE

It is easy to see that Clapper is frustrated by the question and ultimately chooses to lie and save the program. Few in the media noticed that the real jerk in this exchange is not Clapper, but rather Wyden who was pulling a cheap political stunt. This is one reason neither Republicans nor Democrats are interested in charging Clapper with perjury.

This also happened during the Bush administration. Democrats knew that there were classified documents that proved the Bush administration was telling the truth about the intelligence on the WMD in Iraq. They also know that if the Bush administration declassified those documents, it would do grave harm to national security. So they made deliberately false accusations secure in the knowledge that the Bush administration would put the country first, even at the expense of facing false accusations.

Now, Jerry Nadler, reading from the same disgusting playbook, has demanded release of the full Mueller report, with no redactions, assuming Trump will not release classified information. However, he missed something important. Trump is already on record as being willing to declassify the Mueller Report. That is significant because Trump knows exactly what is in there and Nadler does not. In fact, the full unredacted report was made available to congress and Nadler never even sent anyone over to read it.

I think Trump is likely to call Nadler’s bluff and just declassify the whole thing, resulting in the release of information that does little or no damage to Trump but which is devastating for a lot of high ranking Democrats. Trump wanted to do that before, but was talked out of it. Perhaps William Barr asked him to hold off giving him more time to finalize some criminal investigations. If Barr gives him the go ahead, Trump is likely to just declassify the whole thing. The result will be Jerry Nadler sitting there with a world class amount of egg on his face. All Nadler will have achieved is to make the release of these documents even more devastating for Democrats. Even the MSM cannot ignore what is in these documents when Nadler has been so loudly demanding their release. Remember, Trump said he was holding off release until the impact was more powerful.

This could be a beautiful thing and no one would deserve the appropriate recognition more than Jerry Nadler.

TDM