Donald Trump Calls For Investigation Of Intelligence Report Leak

Last evening a secret report allegedly showing that Russia intervened in our election with the express purpose of electing Donald Trump was leaked to several media outlets. This is significant. Not only was the report, at least in the leaked version, a dog’s breakfast of non-sequiturs and wild assertions, it was leaked to the press before it was shown to Trump.

Not surprisingly, Trump was not amused.

How did NBC get “an exclusive look into the top secret report he (Obama) was presented?” Who gave them this report and why? Politics!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

I am asking the chairs of the House and Senate committees to investigate top secret intelligence shared with NBC prior to me seeing it.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

First out of the chute with denials is the Obama administration:

UPDATE: White House says it is confident did not leak material referred to by Trump in NBC report on hacking. https://t.co/u59ySonSrb

— Reuters Politics (@ReutersPolitics) January 6, 2017

I don’t have a problem with this. As a matter of common courtesy, Trump should have been briefed on the report before leaking started. In fact, there is only one reason why the report was leaked before Trump and his people saw it… other than to just piss him off. That reason would be set in place a narrative that there was actual proof of Russian intent in the report rather than a string of factoids woven into a fabric of nothingness. If they had waited until Trump’s people saw the report, the media would have had to deal with reconciling or and least reporting on separate narratives.

The irony here is that the same media that will now raise a stink over Trump demanding an investigation… and I think he should have gone one step farther and announced that when he is inaugurated that the highest priority of the FBI will be to find the source of these leaks… only have themselves to blame.

If Donald J. Trump decides as president to throw a whistle-blower in jail for trying to talk to a reporter, or gets the F.B.I. to spy on a journalist, he will have one man to thank for bequeathing him such expansive power: Barack Obama.

Mr. Trump made his animus toward the news media clear during the presidential campaign, often expressing his disgust with coverage through Twitter or in diatribes at rallies. So if his campaign is any guide, Mr. Trump seems likely to enthusiastically embrace the aggressive crackdown on journalists and whistle-blowers that is an important yet little understood component of Mr. Obama’s presidential legacy.

Criticism of Mr. Obama’s stance on press freedom, government transparency and secrecy is hotly disputed by the White House, but many journalism groups say the record is clear. Over the past eight years, the administration has prosecuted nine cases involving whistle-blowers and leakers, compared with only three by all previous administrations combined. It has repeatedly used the Espionage Act, a relic of World War I-era red-baiting, not to prosecute spies but to go after government officials who talked to journalists.

Under Mr. Obama, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. have spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records, labeled one journalist an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case for simply doing reporting and issued subpoenas to other reporters to try to force them to reveal their sources and testify in criminal cases.

Maybe if the left gets a dose of what it is like to have a thin-skinned egomaniac siccing law enforcement on them when the mood strikes they’ll have more sympathy for the way gun owners and conservative groups were treated by Obama. But I doubt it.

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