I had planned on taking a day off from the blog, but developments with the Wikileaks email dump obliged me to stay on the job. Late last night a friend informed me that Julian Assange's internet access had been disrupted. Let me give you a bit of background on Assange and Wikileaks. Julian Assange is an Australian citizen, computer programmer by occupation, who created the organization known as Wikileaks. Since its inception over ten years ago, Wikileaks has been dedicated to hacking into private government and business computer systems, and releasing to the public confidential information. The organization claims no political bias, and only releases information that it decides is in the public interest. You may recall that former U.S. Army soldier Bradley Manning was Court-Martialed for sharing Top Secret military intelligence with Assange and Wikileaks. While Wikileaks was making a name for itself in the Bradley Manning affair, Assange found himself in "unrelated" difficulty with the Swedish police. Two women accuse Assange of sexual assault, relating to the time period that Assange was living in Sweden. Assange, who was in England when the accusations became public, has been hiding out at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in order to avoid extradition to Sweden to face trial. While he has been holed up in the Embassy of Ecuador, Assange has continued to control Wikileaks. In fact, Assange claimed that Wikileaks had hacked into Hillary Clinton's server when she was Secretary of State, and that Wikileaks intended to release these emails in October, just prior to the U.S. presidential election.
When October rolled around, and Wikileaks started releasing Clinton emails, the U.S. media was busy giving airtime and legitimacy to a string of slanderous, false stories about Donald Trump. A number of us noted with anger the "coincidental" timing of the stories about Trump, but we also realized that the media could not distract the American public forever. The Wikileaks emails would eventually be disseminated, and barring any unforeseen developments, the release would take place before the November election. Imagine my surprise when I discovered Sunday night, that Assange's email access had been disconnected, just prior to the release of another batch of emails. Wikileaks, which claims to have other methods of sharing the emails, announced that Assange's access was terminated by the government of Ecuador. I have also read that the CIA was involved, but I doubt the varacity of that particular accusation. I am convinced that the Obama Administration put the heat on the Ecuadorians, strongly advising them to shut down Assange's access in order to avoid an incident with the U.S. government. We all know just how popular Barack Obama is internationally, so I doubt the effort required much arm-twisting.
You see, folks, the emails are beginning to bear fruit. Sunday and Monday were the first two days in weeks during which I did not hear personal attacks against Donald Trump. Instead, the news channels were unable to avoid airing details of a Wikileaks email from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's office to the FBI. In this particular email, Under Secretary of State Patrick Kennedy offered to make a deal with the Bureau. According to the email, if the FBI would CHANGE the classification on some of Hillary Clinton's emails, then, quid quo pro, the State Department would lift restrictions it had placed on the presence of FBI Agents in certain sensitive countries. First and foremost, what was offered is illegal. Only the originator of intelligence can change its classification, and it has to be done on the actual document, not a subsequent email that may contain only a snippet of the sensitive material. Secondly, the State Department has rules based on National Security and Diplomacy that dictates which U.S. government employees should be allowed in what country. I can guarantee you that none of these rules includes a "quid quo pro" agreement with another government agency.
This attempt to change to classification on emails was a blatant attempt to assist Clinton in covering her tracks "after the fact". I'm thoroughly disgusted to see State Department protocol manipulated for Clinton's personal benefit, but after what has happened with the FBI's Clinton email server investigation, I am not in the least bit surprised. For the moment, though, I'm more concerned about the attack on Wikileaks and the interruption of Julian Assange's ability to disseminate emails. I am keeping my fingers crossed that all this talk about a secondary and tertiary ability to disseminate isn't just bravado. The Clinton Campaign and the Obama Administration have jumped through hoops to keep the American people from seeing these emails. Is it possible that Wikileaks was able to download some of the missing thirty-three thousand emails before Clinton's cronies were able to have them erased?
Just in the last forty-eight hours the Trump Campaign seems to have re-energized and re-prioritized itself. I'm confident that moderator Chris Wallace will not turn the debate into a personal attack on Trump. I believe Wallace will keep the debate focused on the issues, which absolutely should include any new revelations derived from the Wikileaks emails. Do not let the Democrats distract you with accusations that the Clinton server issue is a personal attack. Hillary Clinton was a government employee when she ordered the server to be installed, and a government employee when she knowingly trafficked classified intelligence on her unclassified system. As a government employee, she is supposed to be accountable to us. Everytime Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was involved in a controversy, she publicly announced that as Secretary of State, she was ultimately responsible. Then, just as soon as the press cleared out, she would put in motion efforts to blame everyone and everything, so long as she wasn't accountable. I'm a student of U.S. political history. I love reading about the various past presidential elections, and learning about some of the controversies that occurred. I am beginning to believe, that when one takes into account the influence peddling between her State Department and the Clinton Foundation, the lies of the Benghazi tragedy, and the outright "priveleged" gall of the email server issue, that Hillary Clinton is the most corrupt nominee to ever get this close to the White House.
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