The stinking, fetid Washington swamp got even more unbearable for the vast majority of Americans after a White House Correspondent’s Dinner went off the rails thanks to the disgusting “comedy” of another Hollywood reprobate, Michelle Wolf, formerly of “The Daily Show.”
As President Donald J. Trump, who skipped the event for the second time in two years, spent the evening with real Americans in Michigan, scattered among the tasteless, degrading, debasing ‘humor’ directed at his White House entourage who attended in his stead was an “award” given to CNN for reporting the fakest of fake news.
As reported by investigative journalist Sara A. Carter, the network was given “a prestigious journalism” prize for its role in publicizing a briefing given to then-President-elect Trump by intelligence officials in January 2017.
In its original report, CNN noted that the briefing “included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about” Trump. But the entire ordeal was a set-up.
Details of the meeting were subsequently leaked (surprise!) to CNN — and “by one of the same senior Obama administration officials who orchestrated the briefing” in the first place: Then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
Months later, in August 2017, Clapper would wind up being hired by CNN as a paid ‘intelligence analyst.’
Carter notes further:
Some are questioning now if this was ethical –a pay for play of sorts –as it raises serious questions about the role and responsibility that U.S. intelligence officials have when taking on paid positions as analysts for news organizations, while still retaining their high-level security clearances. It also raises similar questions about news organizations and their role of remaining objective and not paying their sources.
CNN reporters Jake Tapper, Jim Sciutto, Evan Perez and Carl Bernstein won the Merriman Smith Award for broadcast work and reporting on the debunked, unproven “Russia dossier” — which was the focus of that January 2017 brief given to the president-elect. (Related: Perjurer Clapper says Trump, Sessions were NOT under Obama admin surveillance, in direct opposition to published accounts.)
But as Carter notes, Clapper is the intelligence official suspected by Congress of leaking details of the briefing to CNN in the first place, as a way getting the dossier story ‘out there.’
Consider:
— The dossier had been circulating in Washington and New York media circles throughout the summer of 2016, but no one ran with it because not a single thing in it could be verified (especially one of the most salacious parts that Trump hired hookers to urinate on a bed once used by Barack and Michelle Obama when they were in Moscow).
— The briefing was a way to get the dossier story into the public’s eye without anyone actually having to publish it (though Buzzfeed eventually did — and is now being sued over it). What’s more Clapper, Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan all knew that the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign paid for the dossier.
Enter CNN: The network essentially reported that Trump was briefed about ‘all this salacious stuff that’s out there’ and even though it’s unsubstantiated, ‘here’s what is being said,’ yada, yada.
But all along the network — and Clapper, and former FBI Director James Comey, and anyone connected to the piece-of-trash dossier — used it as a means of undermining the Trump presidency, which has been non-stop since he took office.
And when CNN hired Clapper, naturally it did not disclose that he was believed by some in Congress to have been the source of the briefing leak after he asked Comey to give it to Trump in a ‘private’ setting on Jan. 6, 2017.
As Carter notes, “News agencies and reporters never disclose their sources, it would be unethical, but isn’t it also unethical to pay sources for information or give sources jobs as analysts for your news outlet after they’ve been illegally leaking classified information?”
The answer is yes.
We have a conflict with our “system” here. We have statutes that prohibit the leaking of classified information but we have no laws punishing those who publish classified information. Until that conflict is resolved, the leaks will continue and our republic will always be in a state of compromise by petty Left-wing Deep Staters with an ax to grind.
See more Deep State compromising of Trump at DeepState.news.
J.D. Heyes is also editor-in-chief of The National Sentinel.
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