Hot off the heals of calling for the impeachment of Donald Trump after his firing of now former FBI Director James Comey the media has a fresh story to meltdown over, as the Washington Post just broke another “bombshell” leak.
The Washington Post published a story, citing anonymous sources in the form of “current and former U.S. officials”, which claims Donald Trump revealed classified information during his meeting with the Russian Ambassador.
The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said that Trump’s decision to do so risks cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State. After Trump’s meeting, senior White House officials took steps to contain the damage, placing calls to the CIA and National Security Agency.
“This is code-word information,” said a U.S. official familiar with the matter, using terminology that refers to one of the highest classification levels used by American spy agencies. Trump “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.”
“It is all kind of shocking,” said a former senior U.S. official close to current administration officials. “Trump seems to be very reckless, and doesn’t grasp the gravity of the things he’s dealing with, especially when it comes to intelligence and national security. And it’s all clouded because of this problem he has with Russia.”
It appears this entire story boils down to Trump mentioning the threat of ISIS and radical Islamic terrorists using laptops and iPads to conceal explosive devices, which would then be detonated on passenger planes. Oddly enough, this story was released weeks ago, as CNBC and other outlets reported that Trump is considering banning laptops on flights from the UK or other countries.
Ironically, that story was also citing “several informed sources” as its basis, which seems to be standard for any story involving the tarnishing of Donald Trump.
Regardless of the information that was discussed, which was well within the President Trump’s authority, there remains a serious issue of who is leaking this information. Could it be rogue elements within the intelligence community who have bugs or other devices in the White House?
According to Trump supporters Alex Jones and Roger Stone, the leaks are coming directly from him own inner circle.
Roger Stone, long time ally and former campaign manager for Donald Trump, claims that “McMaster has been documented as the main leaker.”
Jones and Stone have been speculating for weeks that McMaster is his way out, spurred on by reports of him not getting along with Trump and that he’s been making serious decisions without consulting the president.
“If you look at everyone who was in the meeting, all fingers point to McMaster, he’s the only one with a plausible motive,” Stone says.
Stone points out the leak would not be in the best interest of Rience Priebus, Rex Tillerson and certainly not the Russian ambassador.
It’s important to note that every single person in the room with Trump during his meeting have publicly denied the Washington Post’s story.
Rex Tillerson: “During President Trump’s meeting with Foreign Minister Lavrov a broad range of subjects were discussed among which were common efforts and threats regarding counter-terrorism. During that exchange the nature of specific threats were discussed, but they did not discuss sources, methods or military operations.”
H.R. McMaster: “The president and the foreign minister reviewed common threats from terrorist organizations to include threats to aviation. At no time were any intelligence sources or methods discussed and no military operations were disclosed that were not already known publicly.”
Dina Powell: “This story is false. The president only discussed the common threats that both countries faced.”
As the mainstream media, Democrats and possibly even establishment Republicans throw around the word “impeachment” over what amounts to a coordinated attack by the “fake news” press, there’s no denying that Donald Trump has some serious house cleaning to do if he wants to prevent further leaks.
Even if the core facts in the leaks boil down to a trivial matter, the media machine will crank out blatantly false headlines in order to chip away at President Trump in hopes of finally ousting him from his elected position, effectively denying millions of voters their voices.