December 30, 2017

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

CIA Director Mike Pompeo: 'WikiLeaks will take down America any way they can' (Josh Siegel, Jul 20, 2017, Washington Examiner)

CIA Director Mike Pompeo condemned WikiLeaks as dangerous to America during comments at the Aspen Security Forum on Thursday.

"WikiLeaks will take down America any way they can," Pompeo said in a conversation with New York Times columnist Bret Stephens.

Asked about comments President Trump made during the presidential campaign, when Trump declared "I love WikiLeaks," Pompeo said he holds a different view.

"I don't love WikiLeaks," Pompeo said.

Pompeo has taken a tougher line on WikiLeaks since becoming CIA director. Earlier this year he referred to WikiLeaks as a "hostile intelligence service." The secrets-leaking website was tied to the Russians by multiple intelligence agencies in a January report.

But in June 2016 during the campaign, when Pompeo was a Republican House lawmaker from Kansas, he tweeted a link to hacked documents obtained by WikiLeaks of emails from the Democratic National Committee.


Donald Trump Jr.'s Messages With WikiLeaks Point to Campaign-Finance Violations (BOB BAUER  NOV 16, 2017, The Atlantic)

Donald Trump Jr.'s private Twitter correspondence with WikiLeaks adds significant detail to the emerging picture of a political alliance between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016. It provides evidence of criminal violations of federal campaign-finance rules, which prohibit foreign spending in U.S. elections.

The prohibition has a broad sweep. It disallows contributions, donations, or "anything of value" provided by a foreign national to sway an election. It also bars a campaign from offering "substantial assistance" to a foreign national engaged in spending on American races. Trump Jr.'s messages not only powerfully support the case that the Trump campaign violated these rules, but they also compound the campaign's vulnerability to "aiding and abetting" liability under the general criminal laws for assisting a foreign national in violating this spending ban.


The exchanges show how the campaign, in this instance through Trump Jr.'s activities, provided specific support and encouragement to WikiLeaks, which by then had effectively partnered with Russia to attack Hillary Clinton's candidacy and promote Donald Trump's. Russia devoted resources to hacking Democratic emails; WikiLeaks funded their distribution. In public and private communications, the campaign endorsed and facilitated their actions.

Posted by at December 30, 2017 11:11 AM

  

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