The original draft of the email below was sent to veteran Washington Post columnist David Ignatius who, with nothing approaching proof, has effectively accused former President Trump and one particularly loyal operative of seeking “control of the nation’s intelligence and military command centers” as part of a failed post-election coup plot. Even by The Post’s fast-eroding standards, such breathlessly groundless storytelling comprises a stunning debasement of Mr. Ignatius’s once sound reputation. Several of Mr. Ignatius’s editors were copied on the email, as was Post publisher Fred Ryan.
Dear David,
As “Record Player” Joe might say, “C’mon, man.”
Rather than a “systematic plan to gain control of the nation’s intelligence and military command centers as part of Trump’s effort to retain the presidency” despite losing the election (where’s your proof of this plot?), the much simpler and more obvious Occam’s Razor explanation for the leaking of classified intelligence documents or the declassification thereof by Kash Patel or any other Trump loyalist would have been to show that the craven and dangerously partisan Clappers and Brennans and Rices and Comeys of the world had indeed been lying for years about everything from Benghazi and Hillary’s emails to Russian collusion and the supposedly growing terrorist threat from “white supremacists,” as though 21st-century America has reverted back to 1950s Alabama [“How Kash Patel rose from obscure Hill staffer to key Trump operative,” A27, Apr. 18].
Classified documents that can prove past and present intelligence officials lie routinely when they appear publicly before Congress or on MSNBC and NPR, or when they’re providing the willfully gullible Post and New York Times still more anonymously sourced tidbits damning Trump would be most embarrassing to the establishment and might even force a reluctant Biden DOJ to investigate and prosecute some of these liars — just as Trump’s DOJ prosecuted Roger Stone. So one or more of these liars likely reached out to you, “off the record” I’m sure, to pitch this Patel dossier you’re peddling in Sunday’s paper.
Look, I don’t know Mr. Patel and carry no water for him or Mr. Trump. But I’ve never seen in decades a less curious press corps when it comes to ferreting out documents and stories that could prove the existence of powerful forces in and outside government, pulling strings from off stage and brazenly seeking to orchestrate political outcomes.
Is Trump paranoid? Could be. But we’ll never know for sure without a whole bunch of leaks and/or declassification. And The Post I cut my teeth on 50 years ago would move Heaven and Earth to obtain and report such classified material, letting the political chips fall where they may. In any case, it sure as hell wouldn’t be siding secretly with dog-waggers and doing hit pieces on would-be leakers as you’ve done today.
Darren McKinney, Washington, D.C.