Just when you thought the media couldn’t get anymore ridiculous, they rip their shirts off, and say “hold my beer.” As you've heard, last night a former Senate staffer named James A. Wolfe was arrested for lying to the FBI (a crime we’ve been assured is most serious when it involves Robert Mueller’s team).
"A federal grand jury indicted the staffer, James A. Wolfe, 58, on three counts of making false statements in December about contacts with reporters, including providing sensitive information related to the work of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which he served as security director for 29 years."The indication here is that Wolfe was leaking classified info from Senate investigations to a reporterette from the New York Times he was boinking name Ali Watkins. Now if you were wondering where so many of the 2017 leaks about the Senate investigation were coming from, well we may have just got the answer. Watkins was essentially caught red-handed because it is shown that her revealing of Carter Page’s name in early 2017 was a direct result of information given to her by Mr. Wolfe.
As part of the leak investigation that ultimately snagged Wolfe, federal prosecutors seized the text messages of Ms. Watkins in order to show he was lying when interviewed by the FBI in December of 2017. This has got the media losing their minds over the use of her phone records, but before we get to that let’s flashback to earlier this week.
It all started with Rudy Guiliani suggesting in an interview that he probably shouldn't have given in the first place that the (not a) President may have the power to pardon himself (a stupid thing to say given it’s an irrelevant point). Despite there being no reason for the President to do so, the media at large started tearing at their clothes and went insane suggesting the President is placing himself “above the law,” a charge that falls on it’s face given the realities of impeachment, but hey, it’s the media.
Of course, the usual subjects went nuts and the tweeter machine lit up:
A more official statement was given by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, who speak at large for the media.
"All leak investigations — whether they directly target reporters or not — are a grave threat to press freedom. Whistleblowers are the lifeblood of reporting, and the Trump administration is directly attacking journalists’ rights by bringing these cases....."To start, this guy was not a whistleblower. He was leaking testimony and details about an ongoing federal investigation to a reporter he was bumping nasties with. He wasn’t exposing that investigation’s corruption or any such nonsense. You also don’t receive whistleblower protections unless you actually go through the system setup to protect whistleblowers. That’s a non starter.
Secondly, the fact that the media can righteously lecture the country that no one is above the law on Monday but by the end of the week be vehemently saying that reporters should be above the law (to the point of saying law shouldn’t be enforced at all no less) is an incredible exercise in hypocrisy.
The same media who cheered non-stop for the over the top raid on the office of the personal lawyer to President of the United States, Michael Cohen, thinks its records should not be subject to criminal investigations. What exactly is all this based on? The U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of the press but it does not guarantee a reporter’s right to assist in breaking the law.
As of now, this reporter is not being pursued for any wrongdoing herself. That rule of tradition (not law) is being honored in this situation by the Trump administration despite the protestations of media members. This is not the same thing as the Obama administration actually going after journalists under the Espionage Act, as it did with James Rosen. Of course, most in the media couldn’t muster up more than a weak rebuke when that happened because a Democrat was in power.
(Freedom of the Press Foundation)
(NYT)
(Red State)