Posted on 07/20/2022 6:03:09 AM PDT by Red Badger
In the final hours of the Trump presidency, the U.S. Justice Department raised privacy concerns to thwart the release of hundreds of pages of documents that Donald Trump had declassified to expose FBI abuses during the Russia collusion probe, and the agency then defied a subsequent order to release the materials after redactions were made, according to interviews and documents.
The previously untold story of how highly anticipated declassified material never became public is contained in a memo obtained by Just the News from the National Archives that was written by then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows just hours before Trump left office on noon of Jan. 20, 2021.
Meadows' memo confirmed prior reporting by Just the News that Trump on Jan. 19, 2021 declassified a binder of hundreds of pages of sensitive FBI documents that show how the bureau used informants and FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign and misled both a federal court and Congress about flaws in the evidence they offered to get approval for the investigation.
The declassified documents included transcripts of intercepts made by the FBI of Trump aides, a declassified copy of the final FISA warrant approved by an intelligence court, and the tasking orders and debriefings of the two main confidential human sources, Christopher Steele and Stefan Halper, the bureau used to investigate whether Trump had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.
In the end, multiple investigations found there was no such collusion and that the FBI violated rules and misled the FISA court in an effort to keep the probe going.
The documents that Trump declassified never saw the light of day, even though they were lawfully declassified by Trump and the DOJ was instructed by the president though Meadows to expeditiously release them after redacting private information as necessary.
"I am returning the bulk of the binder of declassified documents to the Department of Justice (including all that appear to have a potential to raise privacy concerns) with the instruction that the Department must expeditiously conduct a Privacy Act review under the standards that the Department of Justice would normally apply, redact material appropriately, and release the remaining material with redactions applied," Meadows wrote in the memo.
Just the News obtained the memo after going to the Trump collection at the National Archives and asking it to look for the binder of documents Trump had declassified. The Archives said it did not possess the documents, the Justice Department did and provided a copy of Meadows' memo.
In an interview Tuesday night on the "Just the News, Not Noise" television show, Meadows said he was dismayed that DOJ ignored a lawful instruction from a sitting president and said it was part of a larger dynamic in which the permanent federal bureaucracy repeatedly tied to undercut Trump to protect itself.
"Well, you know, the swamp is pretty deep," Meadows said. "But when we look at this, this particular president was all about draining the swamp, you know, and when he was running, that was more of a campaign slogan. When he got there, he realized that not only was the swamp very deep, but they they would fight back. And oftentimes he said, 'You know, I want to do this and get this out to the American people, not just the classification in terms of issues that affected him or his campaign personally, but issues that affect the American people.
"What would happen is he would have a directive, and then we would see, as people were leaving the Oval Office, you know, they were nodding compliance in the Oval Office, and the minute they go out, they said, 'Well, we're not going to do that' or 'We're going to find all the reasons not to do it.' So I found that very often while I served as chief of staff, but also found that as a member of Congress, that many times we would go in and the president was all in on a transparency issue, only to find that many, whether they be at a particular agency or the Pentagon, they started pushing back."
Liz Harrington, Trump’s spokeswoman, told Just the News that DOJ’s failure to release the memos fit a pattern of political abuse inside an agency that is supposed to be above politics.
“For four years they lied, leaked, spied on, and smeared President Trump in their attempts to defy the will of the people,” she said. “This is further proof of the depths they will go to hide their corruption. It is far past time for transparency of one of the biggest political scandals in American history.”
The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment. The FBI declined to comment.
Meadows wrote in his 2021 memo that White House lawyers told him that the DOJ's last-minute concerns were not legitimate because the executive office of the president was exempt from the Privacy Act. In the interview Tuesday night, he said he agreed in the final minutes of the presidency to let DOJ make redactions "out of an abundance of caution" and expected the DOJ would comply with Trump's order.
"We wanted to make sure that that we didn't harm anyone," he explained. "And so we gave them those declassified documents. I want to stress they were declassified documents, and they were to do a final redaction for some of that personal information with the instruction that they were to go ahead and disseminate those. We expected fully that they would do that."
You can read the full memo here:
https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2022-07/Meadows%20Memo%20to%20AG%20re%20Declassification%20of%20FBI%20Binder.01.20.2021.pdf
Meadows Memo to AG re Declassification of FBI Binder.01.20.2021.pdf Former Pentagon Chief of Staff Kash Patel, who worked as the chief investigative counsel for the House Intelligence Committee when it unraveled the false Russia narrative under then-Rep. Devin Nunes, said Tuesday the DOJ's defiance of a lawful presidential order only compounded the FBI's and department's failings during the original probe by preventing the American public from having transparency.
"It is illegal to hide documents from publication through the FOIA process, if their sole purpose is to cover up an embarrassment or unlawful activity, and that's what's going on right now," Patel told the John Solomon Reports podcast, criticizing current and former federal officials for not speaking out against the DOJ's defiance.
"It's shocking, but not surprising, since it has to do with President Trump," Patel added. "So their hypocrisy is on display." The DOJ and FBI, he said, simply attempted to run out the clock as the administration's final hours wound down.
Patel said the next steps to force the disclosure of the documents is a FOIA lawsuit and possible subpoenas from Congress if Republicans regain control in the November elections. Just the News is exploring such litigation.
Tom Fitton, the president of the watchdog group Judicial Watch, said the documents in the binder are likely to be responsive to current lawsuits his group has pending at the Justice Department and FBI for Russia probe documents and the 2021 memo from Meadows may make it easier to persuade a court to take action. He said he believes DOJ is "still trying to protect their own in terms of the corruption involving the targeting of Trump" during the Russia probe.
Notably, Fitton's group won a court ruling years ago that the White House was exempt from the requirements of the Privacy Act, and he said the DOJ's last-minute effort to raise the issue to stop the release of the declassified documents smacked of bad faith.
DOJ "did the runaround to try to protect themselves from being exposed, because the documents, to be clear, relate to the improper targeting of Trump and his associates that we know is based on politics and animus as opposed to national security or anything substantive," Fitton told the "Just the News, Not Noise" show. "And in this case, these were documents that were made available pursuant to the president's lawful authority. And in the end, the FBI came up with a lie, which is that the Privacy Act was implicated in the release of these documents by the White House, and that wasn't the case."
Former Trump adviser David Bossie, the head of the Citizens United watchdog group, said the episode is a pointed reminder that the permanent bureaucracy in Washington wields so much power it can thwart the actions of a duly elected president.
"This is what President Trump ran against: the Deep State," Bossie said. "These are the deep state actors that the American people don't understand really what it's about, but it's the people who are the permanent class in Washington D.C. They just don't do what they're told. They don't do what they are ordered to do. And so when President Trump says to a bunch of bureaucrats to go do something, they sit on their hands, and especially at the last minute. This was a conspiracy against the president, within our own government."
Meadows said if the documents are finally released, they will provide compelling evidence that congressional Democrats and FBI leaders who assured the public there was a Russia-Trump conspiracy actually knew what they were saying was untrue.
"We found that not only were some of the allegations made by some of the Democrats false, but they were kind of guilty of what they were accusing Donald Trump of," he said.
Safely buried under ten levels of protection......................
US intelligence agencies have decided to become the new pretorian guard and they alone want to control who is president. Sure you can keep voting but THEY will move the election to whom they want in charge. The pretorian guard helped insure that ancient Rome was doomed and the US intelligence goons will repeat history.
The rule of law is dead and the US intelligence agencies are the primary culprits of its death. By carrot and stick they have controlled most US presidents and the elites. If they need to drop charges or ignore crimes they did, think Feinstein and Eric the Farthead. If they need to hit someone think Roger Stone or General Flynn. US intelligence employees are ruthless and amoral and care only about maintaining power, they don’t give a tinkers damn about the USA and protecting US citizens is not even in their purview of giving a crap. They are there to protect themselves.
They couldn’t blackmail Trump and he had to be removed. If re-elected in 2024 watch for them attempt to take Trump out. They did it to JFK and the chief warmonger Bolton stated US intelligence conduct coups to remove leaders they can’t control. They tried several times with Trump and failed. Trump should-should know their game and if re-elected fire massive swathes of US intelligence agencies.
I see Meadows’ mistake. He knew they were snakes but he trusted them anyway.
It’s OK. We just need to vote in more (R)N(C) & they’ll be sure to ‘get to the bottom’ of things w/ a sternly worded letter
See old Russian fable “The Scorpion and the Frog”..............
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog
Nothing to hide, move along.
FIRE EVERY LAST ONE OF EM >>. I don’t think he can fire them but they should be immediately transferred to the new offices in Nome AK. land Phone and cot. No internet, email etc. Trump needs to build a shadow cabinet now of people he can trust. It’s not time to go it alone. Reagan had his people from California who looked out for him and did what he said. Trump has no one and no one from DC can be trusted. He knows that now. too late for his first term but he can make it as 47.
If Trump (or DeSantis, etc.) takes over the White House in 2025 the first order of business should be doing a complete sweep of the three letter agencies.
Evaluate everyone from the mail room up to senior staff, and only keep the people who are there to serve the American people and not the deep state.
Trump is not good at planning , strategy, and focused follow through. Since his whole campaign in 2016 was about draining the swamp, he needed to have a team of loyal talented MAGA people ready to be nominated to top positions as soon as he was inaugurated. But he didn’t have a team ready to go. He didn’t do the disciplined planning necessary. He was even interviewing Romney for Secretary of State in the weeks leading to inauguration. He ended up filling his administration with disloyal swamp dwellers
The same lack of focus, strategy and discipline can be seen in his re-election campaign. There was no organized effort to counter the democrats drive to make in voting laws and policies.
This is why I’m for Desantis. He’s smarter, disciplined, articulate, and good at hiring loyal people who share his agenda.
“f Trump (or DeSantis, etc.) takes over the White House in 2025 the first order of business should be doing a complete sweep of the three letter agencies.”
Trump didn’t do it before. Why reward him for that failure by nominating him again? Desantis is the more logical choice.
“ no one from DC can be trusted. He knows that now”
You and I knew that long ago. Why wasn’t Trump smart enough to know that? How can you trust his judgment going forward when it was so bad in his first term? He hired the swamp and kept swampsters in power. And he gsve extraordinary authority to his son in law. Why do we need all that again when Desantis is available, and he has a proven record of hiring good people who actually share his agenda?
The fox is guarding the henhouse and eating the eggs 🤪
Why did Trump fail to release the Dallas 1963 documents?
Don’t know how old she is but we know she has had some ailments.
Maybe, just maybe we’ll see a great headline in the near future.
Maybe one of her doubles will run in here place. Dems will do anything.
Umm…IIRC, I think you have to be impeached, tried, and convicted before Clause 3 of the 14th Amendment takes effect. It’s the tried and convicted by the Senate part that is doubtful.
Rep. Adam Shifft (sp) (D-CA) has talked about a referral to the Department of Justice for some sort of criminal indictment and prosecution, but nothing of the specifics has come out. Rumor has it that there is no evidence that would support a convection under existing law.
The amendment and clause are supposed to be enforced by Congress, not the courts. So a conviction would still have to be brought before Congress as evidence of disqualifying conduct that would then require congressional action to actually invoke the disqualification clause of the amendment.
It’s murky because the clause has not been used that much since it was adopted after the Civil War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
It would take years for all of that to play out in the courts.
It would be my guess that this whole charade is to make Trump yell ‘UNCLE’ and agree to not ever run again, or face a constant barrage of legal problems that would eventually bankrupt him...............................
“Wray was by far the biggest mistake Trump made. It is hard to overstate the damage that terrible choice caused.”
Exactly. You will also notice that the Biden administration kept him in place and has not said a word about him. That tells me a lot.
We are truly in a dystopia that rivals the movie "Brazil" circa 1985-ish.
Nothing works. No process delivers an outcome besides celebrating the process. People run agencies and bureaucracies they have no experience in. Anything that embarrasses the state will not be remedied or explained. The media and journalists are run by the state.
I tried to find my package from India to my address that shows "inbound to Customs" from two months ago. Their own regulations require a letter be sent on anything beyond 45 days. Three times in the past year my parcels never left customs. What do they do with all the stuff shipped. Their systems on the phone mention Covid about 60 times an hour while you are on hold for two hours.
Good question.
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