Four days after the raid on former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, The Washington Post ran interference for the Biden Administration’s politicized FBI and DOJ by disseminating a whopper in an obvious attempt to tamp down the outrage.
Not that they probably care, but the four reporters bylined on the story were punked. And Americans were deceived.
On August 12, the Post breathlessly reported that, even though it had never been done before, the tossing of Melania’s under-lovelies at Mar-a-Lago by 30 FBI agents must have been totally legit because according to “people familiar with the investigation,” “experts in classified information,” and “former senior intelligence officials,” Trump had nuclear documents.
Reporters Devlin Barrett, Josh Dawsey, Perry Stein, and Shane Harris reported explicitly that “classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought.”
Other media outlets picked up the story and quicker than you can say “51 experts claim Hunter Biden’s laptop is Russian disinformation,” the “Trump-has-nuke-secrets” story became received wisdom. Trump was in possession of nuclear secrets! He had nuclear codes! reported Vanity Fair.
Trump must have been planning a launch from Mar-a-Lago, Mike Davis of the Article III Project ruefully joked on my The Adult in the Room Podcast. After going through a list of whoppers leaked to the media by Attorney General Merrick Garland, Davis noted that Garland “leaked out that he’d deliberated for weeks — for weeks — before he authorized this [search]. Okay, so, if Trump had these nuclear records — which is complete[ly] bogus because there’s no Q classification on the inventory of records they got back” — it wouldn’t make sense that he waited to act.
Q classifications denote classified nuclear materials from the Department of Energy. There were none listed on the inventory released to the media the day The Washington Post reported its story. And there were none in the Trump search documents nor in the affidavit released weeks later.
According to the Federation of American Scientist’s Project on Government Secrecy, the Q designation refers to the clearance level required to handle such sensitive materials about nuclear programs.
Q Sensitive allows access to Special Nuclear Material (SNM) category 1. An employee with a Q sensitive clearance could have access to nuclear weapons design, manufacture, or use data; disclosure could cause exceptionally grave damage to the nation.
Q Nonsensitive allow access to Special Nuclear Material (SNM) category 2. The higher the SNM category, the more readily the material could be converted to a nuclear explosive device. Categories 1 and 2 require special protection, such as armed guards.
As for the feared nuclear codes? They change frequently, and Trump would have had to mug Joe Biden to get them. But, hey, don’t let facts get in the way of a great story about crazy Trump with his finger on the button.
Related: The Reasons for the Redactions on the Mar-a-Lago Raid Affidavit Were [REDACTED]
The timeline didn’t make sense for a Dr. Strangelove storyline, either. Davis continued on the podcast:
“Right, so Trump had nuclear secrets, like he broke into the nuclear football…stole the launch codes…the Biden Administration didn’t catch this for the 18-months that Trump was gone with these nuclear secrets, they didn’t change the codes, and somehow Trump was going to, like, trick the people into thinking it was Biden – because you have to have the Secretary of Defense verify any launch from the president. Trump’s going to launch from Mar-a-Lago…”
But what are a few rabbit trails to distract the media versus getting political cover for nine hours of rifling through Trump’s office, his safe, and Melania’s underwear looking for “nuclear secrets”?
…or January 6 “evidence” or Russian Collusion documents outing your agency as crooks?
…or planting spying devices? We’ve noticed a lot of the folks out there who hate Trump mock this avenue of inquiry. Remember when Trump said he was being bugged during the 2016 election? What a joker, wrote the media, rolling their eyes.
But Trump was spied on. And, forgive us, but the head of the FBI spoke of wearing a wire to get Trump on a 25th Amendment gaffe. And the FBI, CIA, and Hillary Clinton’s election apparatus addled Robert Mueller and beguiled the news media into believing Trump was a Russian secret agent — using the media as their dupes.
We can only imagine the laughs at the agents’ favorite bar over this knee slapper: “And then, I told the guy — you aren’t going to believe this one — I told him Trump had the launch codes! You shoulda seen his eyes bug out!” says one, to a chorus of guffaws.
Heh, heh. If you think the Fourth Estate being used as the Fifth Column is hilarious, it gets even “funnier.” The Post outed its own sources in its later story about being totally wrong. It came in a follow-up whoopsie-daisy story about the release of the affidavit.
“In addition, the FBI believed that the material contained what it calls “national defense information,” or some of the most guarded secrets. (The Washington Post has reported the government feared nuclear secrets were at Mar-a-Lago.)
So all the Post‘s sources — who it nebulously described as “‘people familiar with the investigation” and “experts in classified information” and “former senior intelligence officials” and “a person familiar with the investigation” who said there were nuclear secrets at Mar-a-Lago — were “the FBI” and the “government.”
Please laugh.
Then vote.
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