In Donald Trump’s America, everything, up to and including national security, is sacrificed on the altars of ego, payback and self-preservation.
This week, the president ordered the Justice Department to unredact — meaning, make public all previously blacked-out, sensitive portions — 21 pages of the FBI’s initial 412-page classified foreign surveillance warrant application for Carter Page, a Trump campaign foreign policy aide.
Trump also ordered the release of text messages of current and former FBI officials he deems political enemies, including fired ex-Bureau boss James Comey.
And in an interview with The Hill posted Tuesday night, Trump smeared what he sees as the perversion of the FBI as “a cancer in our country,” the exposure of which will be the “crowning achievement” of his presidency.
He also took his most desperate swipe at Jeff Sessions, declaring, like a mafia boss speaking of a consigliere who’s turned state’s evidence, “I have no attorney general.” Sessions, you see, committed the unforgivable sin of appropriately recusing himself from the Russia probe, a chain of events that led to the tapping of Robert Mueller as special counsel.
The selective declassification is deviously designed to buttress a counternarrative of congressional Republicans: that the FBI launched an investigation using tainted evidence, in this case the dossier compiled by a former British spy. Problem: The FBI relied on significantly more than just that document, including information provided by another Trump aide, George Papadopoulos. And renewed its secret warrant multiple times, based on subsequent intelligence.
Haphazard declassification of an ongoing investigation, though, risks real damage, potentially burning sources who might be helping upend attempts to interfere in this year’s election.
The president of the United States could care less. He has a propaganda war to win. The reputation of American law enforcement, the sanctity of intelligence sources and the security of our elections are necessary casualties.
Editorial by the New York Daily News
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