What Is President Trumps Insurance Policy Agains Comey Mcable and Lisa Page
What would the intelligence community'southward 'insurance policy' against Trump wait similar?
Let'due south begin in the realm of the fanciful.
Assume, for the sake of argument, that powerful, connected people in the intelligence community and in politics worried that a wildcard Trump presidency, different another Clinton or Bush, might expose a decade-plus of questionable practices. Disrupt long-established money channels. Reveal secret machinations that could arguably country some people in prison house.
{mosads}What exactly might an "insurance policy" against Donald Trump look like?
He would accept to be marginalized at every turn. Strategies would embrace politics, the courts, opposition research and the media. He'd have to get mired in lawsuits, distracted by allegations, riddled with calls for impeachment, hounded by investigations. His ballot must be portrayed every bit the illegitimate outcome of a criminal or united nations-American conspiracy.
To accomplish this, bad actors in the intel community could pace up utilise of surveillance tools as a weapon to look for dirt on Trump before his inauguration. They could rely on dubious political opposition enquiry to secretly fence for wiretaps, plant 1 or more than spies in the Trump campaign, then leak to the press a mix of true and faux stories to create a sense of chaos.
In one case Trump is in role, a good insurance policy would call for neutralizing the directorate seen equally most threatening, including his chaser general. The reigning FBI director could privately send the implicit message that equally long equally Trump minds his own business organisation, he won't be named as a target. When the president asks the FBI manager to elevator the cloud and tell the public their president isn't under investigation, the FBI director could demur and permit a tempest of allusion to build. Idle chatter benefits the plot. In that location would be rampant media leaks, both true and fake, only none of them would benefit Trump.
All would be well unless the president removes the FBI director. Then, a passenger on the insurance policy would kick in. After months of assuring Trump he'southward not under investigation, he must now become a focus to keep him abroad from the Justice Department and the FBI; once an investigation opens, all of Trump'due south attempts to touch policy or to dig into allegations against the intelligence community could be portrayed as obstacle of justice.
How to open an investigation after all these months? Engage a special counsel. (Easy to get the right 1, with Trump's attorney general out of the mode.) How to get public and congressional support for a special counsel? Through a partnership betwixt the fired FBI director and the media; he could secretly leak to The New York Times anti-Trump versions of memos he wrote, inventing the pretext for a special counsel probe. The chosen special counsel should be an insider with his own legacy to protect. Anti-Trump FBI officials who secretly vowed to "finish" Trump could be assigned to the investigation.
Every bit crazy equally it all sounds, it becomes slightly more plausible when nosotros examine the record and find self-described conspiracies to develop "insurance policies."
On Aug. 15, 2016, after FBI counterespionage chief Peter Strzok and his FBI girlfriend Lisa Folio met with Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, Strzok texted Page that they couldn't accept the risk of Trump getting elected without having "an insurance policy" in place.
Some other figure, Benjamin Wittes, chose the aforementioned phrase. In October 2016, in his Lawfare blog, Wittes wrote: "What if Trump wins? Nosotros need an insurance policy against the unthinkable: Donald Trump's actually winning the Presidency."
Equally it happens, Wittes has acknowledged being a good friend of fired FBI Managing director James Comey. It's not difficult to imagine that the two men share some beliefs, and even discussed some of the issues involved. In fact, Wittes spoke to a New York Times reporter nigh Comey'south interactions with President Trump, right after Robert Mueller's appointment as special counsel.
So, in his 2022 blog post, Wittes wrote that his vision of an "insurance policy" against Trump would rely on a "Coalition of All Democratic Forces" to challenge and obstruct Trump, using the courts as a "tool" and Congress as "a partner or tool." He even mentioned impeachment — two weeks before Trump was elected.
If this far-fetched idea of an insurance policy were actually true, it also could include tactics memorialized in a memo, written in 2009 by a Democratic strategist working at the time for the liberal smear group Media Matters. Information technology described how to fight a "well funded, presidential-manner entrada to ignominy and embarrass" targets. Individual eyes would probe into their personal lives, courts would be used for lawsuits. "Massive demonstrations" would be organized, Michael Moore would make a negative documentary and "a squad of trackers" would pale out targets at events. "Opposition research" would be collected. The targets would be attacked on social media, yard signs posted in their neighborhoods, and a "mole" placed inside their organization.
If there really were an insurance policy against Trump, it might include having ex-intel officials getting hired at national news outlets where they'd monitor and influence news organizations, and be invited to give daily spin on controversies surrounding their own actions. Figures such as former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Comey adjutant Josh Campbell and others could become hired by CNN; erstwhile CIA Director John Brennan and ex-Mueller/Comey aide Chuck Rosenberg could become hired by NBC and MSNBC.
But all that would never really happen. Or if it did, it's downright silly to remember of information technology as office of an organized insurance policy.
Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) is an Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist, author of The New York Times bestsellers "The Smear" and "Stonewalled," and host of Sinclair'southward Sunday Idiot box plan, "Total Measure out."
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Source: https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/401116-what-would-the-intelligence-communitys-insurance-policy-against-trump
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