By Judi McLeod ——Bio and Archives--March 31, 2017
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“…Trump’s lying is enabling and feeding an indifference to the truth,” Farkas wrote. “In a March 28 speech, President Obama cited the work of Politico reporters who fact-checked 4.6 hours of Trump speeches and news conferences and identified more than 51 lies, or as David Brooks of The New York Times put it, “one every five minutes.” This past week alone, Trump made false and irresponsible statements about the Geneva Conventions, nuclear proliferation, and NATO and our Asian allies’ contribution to security. More recently he offered up a view of the U.S. economy that forecast a coming “very massive recession,” which Washington Post writer Jim Tankersley called a mix of “economic conspiracy theories with magical-thinking accounting.” “Despite such attempts at fact-checking, reporters just don’t seem to know how to counter Trump’s large-scale deployment of WMD — Weapons of Mass Denial (of the truth). There are so many lies to dispute now, it seems an overwhelming task; where to start? Intentional or not, the end result is Trump’s statements are not being sufficiently exposed as falsehoods. As with Putin in Russia, his many misrepresentations are enabling and feeding an indifference to the truth in this country. “Where could it end, if Trump does gain the presidency?”Farkas, was linking Trump and Putin before the New York Times, came out with the sensational headline “Trump, Offering No Evidence, Says Obama Tapped His Phones.” on January 19 and 20, 2017
THE LID: “On January 19th and 20th 2017, The NY Times reported that wiretaps of people on the Trump team were passed along to the Obama White House, one of the story’s authors was Michael S. Schmidt. On Saturday that same Michael S. Schmidt was one of the reporters who wrote the story, “Trump, Offering No Evidence, Says Obama Tapped His Phones.” “That’s right, the same NY Times reporter who was one of the sources for the President’s claim, said that there was no evidence for the claim. “The first story by Mr. Schmidt appeared on the NY Times website the evening of January 19, 2017 and appeared on the front page of the paper the morning of Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017.(Andrew Benjamin-- Canada Free Press, March 12, 2017
“Donald Trump has been dismissing the threat posed by Russia to U.S. elections, to our democracy and even to him from the moment he entered the campaign for president. He hasn’t stopped dismissing the serious Russian intelligence and information operations against the American people, even after his election and practically on the eve of his inauguration.”Meanwhile, Sean Hannity said on Wednesday that Farkas “could vindicate” President Trump on his Obama wiretap charge. Surely that should be “unwittingly” vindicate President Trump, Sean.
“Fox News' Sean Hannity opened Wednesday night's edition of "Hannity" by saying that statements by a former Obama administration official "could prove the Obama administration was very much involved in the surveillance of Trump transition team members.” “Hannity was referring to a March 2 MSNBC interview with Dr. Evelyn Farkas, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia and now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. "In the interview, Farkas admitted to "telling the Hill people, get as much information as you can [about possible connections between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence] ... before President Obama leaves the administration, because I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior [Obama] people who left.” “Farkas also said she feared "that the Trump folks – if they found out how we knew what we knew about their ... the Trump staff dealing with Russians – that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we no longer have access to that intelligence.” “According to Hannity, Farkas was "admitting ... surveillance of Trump and his associates and transition team took place," as well as "unmasking" of those Trump team members and "intelligence leaking," which, Hannity said, "could very well be a felony." "Surveillance. Unmasking. Intelligence leaking. All acknowledged in that tape by Evelyn Farkas," Hannity said. "Now, for days, we have been asking on this program, ‘Who knew what, when and where?’ "Did Obama officials commit a crime here and how did Evelyn Farkas, a former relatively low-ranking Obama administration official, how did she know about all this surveillance? ... My prediction is as each day goes by, more and more information will be coming available and soon, we’re going to have the answers to these very important questions.”“White House spokesman #, days before the Times’ excuse-making, clearly explained that President Trump’s tweets on March 4 were based on open-source news media reporting of the wiretaps—thus including The New York Times—over the last few months. (AIM March 18, 2017)
“In fact, the news media have been reporting since at least September 23, 2016, that U.S. intelligence has been “actively monitoring” the “talks” (conversations), “wiretapping” the phone “calls,” and intercepting other communications of Trump aides or Trump himself—communications allegedly made with the Russians. “Active monitoring” means wiretapping and surveillance of future phone calls, emails, texts, and other communications on an ongoing basis. “Not a shred of any New York Times or other reporting since September, 2016 on the “wiretapping” of Trump and/or his aides has demonstrated any concern whatsoever for Trump’s civil rights or the sanctity of the election process. No concern was expressed by the CIA, FBI, NSA or other agencies, or by the Obama White House—or by the media doing the reporting. In fact, they have been quite excited and eager about the prospect of illegal snooping on Trump. “As White House spokesman # pointed out, efforts were made by Obama officials during their last days in office to lessen the protections of wiretap data in order to spread more widely any highly-sensitive wiretap data on Trump. The New York Times reported on March 1 that the Obama administration’s lowering of “classification levels” of NSA data was done to “spread” the Trump wiretaps around various agencies and even foreign governments (see Obama DNI James Clapper’s orders lowering security protections of raw NSA intercept data, December. 15, 2016). The New York Times had originally reported on January 12 that this massive lowering of NSA wiretap data security was in contrast to Obama’s previous tightening of regulations in 2014, after the Snowden mass leak, to give “privacy protections to foreigners,” like they were Americans. But not for Trump.”If Congress is serious about finding the ‘leaker’ of the Trump-in-cahoots-with-the Russians-conspiracy, they should bring Farkas in for questioning. Not surprisingly the Farkas story has been patently ignored by the MSM and seems to have already fallen by the wayside. Meanwhile the rest of us will take the advice of actor-comedian Rob Schneider who has a simple message for Democrats harping on about alleged connections between Trump campaign staff and the Russian government: “It’s not them. It’s you.” Resources: MSM sits on Evelyn Farkas story hoping their suppression will make it go away The mainstream media, including its alphabet television news networks, the New York Times and Washington Post are sitting this morning on the bombshell revelation that ex-Obama official Evelyn Farkas appears to have owned up in her own words to have participated in well-planned surveillance of the Trump team conducted by the Obama administration which buried their dirty work deep in the federal bureaucracy. Read The Swamp. Hillary Clinton aides had access to State Dept. after she left, says key lawmaker When Hillary Clinton resigned as Secretary of State in 2013, she negotiated continuing access to classified and top-secret documents for herself and six staffers under the designation "research assistants," according to a powerful senator who notes that Clinton was later deemed "extremely careless" with such information.
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