‘One Step Closer to Despotism?’ Why Declassification Must Happen Now

Oct. 9, 2020 (EIRNS)—Writing at American Greatness, Lee Smith, who is extremely close to House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes, lays out what must happen now to neutralize a significant chunk of the coup against the President if the Barr/Durham investigation produces nothing ahead of Nov. 3. Like others, he believes the President himself must declassify critical documents and stop relying on weak-kneed and institutionally addicted Republicans to save the nation. “Americans deserve to know beforehand if they are choosing to move one step closer to despotism.”

Illustrative of his impatience, Smith highlights a meme retweeted by the President which features a photoshopped Chris Farley from Saturday Night Live yelling at Attorney General Barr, “For the Love of God, ARREST SOMEBODY!” He moves on to provide a fascinating analysis of the landscape. Here are his key points:

The John Brennan notes, declassified this week by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, are misdated to imply that President Barack Obama was only read into the operation against Trump in July 2016. Deliberately so, as misdirection by Brennan, Smith emphasizes. (Parenthetically, Smith calls Brennan’s recent TV appearances those of the leader of a “cult of morose bureaucrats,” while pointing out that one of the main people stalling Barr and John Durham, CIA Director Gina Haspel, is extremely close to both Brennan and to the British.)

Smith says that the actual available evidence points to Obama’s spy chiefs as being active against Trump as far back as October 2015 and that the Clinton team signed off on the operation no later than March of 2016, when it hired Fusion GPS. The previous Fusion Trump/Russia investigation, focused on showing Trump’s links to Russian organized crime, was instigated by Wall Street funder Paul Singer in collusion with Sen. Marco Rubio.

Smith doubts that a Clinton foreign policy advisor sold the Trump/Russia state collusion narrative to Clinton as implied in Brennan’s notes. (Other commenters, including Paul Sperry, point to Biden aide Jake Sullivan as the foreign policy official referenced.) “Whoever directed that transition, from Russian criminals to Russian officials, is less likely to be a foreign policy adviser than an intelligence official who understood what it would take to obtain a FISA warrant on the Trump Campaign.”

Smith goes on to highlight DOJ documents which show that Crossfire Hurricane was set in motion to find out whether the Russians had Hillary Clinton’s 30,000 deleted emails and would provide them to Trump for an October Surprise. Smith says the chief concern here was that the Clinton emails from Clinton’s illicit server, would be damaging not just to Clinton but also to Barack Obama. Smith’s article is headlined “One Step Closer to Despotism?”