By Gene Johnson

The Associated Press

SEATTLE Greyhound, the nations largest bus company, said it will stop allowing Border Patrol agents without a warrant to board its buses to conduct routine immigration checks.

The companys announcement Friday came one week after The Associated Press reported on a leaked Border Patrol memo confirming that agents cant board private buses without the consent of the bus company. Greyhound had previously insisted that even though it didnt like the immigration checks, it had no choice under federal law but to allow them.

Greyhound Lines operates the Dungeness Line on the North Olympic Peninsula with stops in Port Angeles, Sequim, Discovery Bay and Port Townsend. The company took over the Dungeness Line in 2018 from Olympic Bus Lines, whose buses were boarded by Border Patrol agents seeking undocumented immigrants in 2008-09.

In an emailed statement, Greyhound said it would notify the Department of Homeland Security that it does not consent to unwarranted searches on its buses or in areas of terminals that are not open to the public such as company offices or any areas a person needs a ticket to access.

Greyhound said it would provide its drivers and bus station employees updated training regarding the new policy, and that it would place stickers on all its buses clearly stating that it does not consent to the searches.

Our primary concern is the safety of our customers and team members, and we are confident these changes will lead to an improved experience for all parties involved, the statement said.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which includes the Border Patrol, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Greyhound has faced pressure from the American Civil Liberties Union, immigrant rights activists and Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson to stop allowing sweeps on buses within 100 miles of an international border or coastline. In many cases, the buses being checked were not crossing or even approaching an international boundary.

Critics say the practice is intimidating and discriminatory and has become more common under President Donald Trump. Border Patrol arrests videotaped by other passengers have sparked criticism, and Greyhound faces a lawsuit in California alleging that it violated consumer protection laws by facilitating raids.

We are pleased to see Greyhound clearly communicate that it does not consent to racial profiling and harassment on its buses, Andrea Flores, deputy director of policy for the ACLUs Equality Division, said in an email.

By protecting its customers and employees, Greyhound is sending a message that it prioritizes the communities it serves.

Ferguson said in an email his office will follow up with Greyhound to ensure compliance.

Todays announcement from Greyhound confirms what should have been obvious to the company since I contacted them a year ago it has both the power and the responsibility to stand up for its customers, who suffered for far too long from Greyhounds indifference to CBPs suspicionless bus raids and harassment, he said.

The Border Patrol has insisted that it does not profile passengers based on their appearance, but instead asks all passengers whether they are citizens or in the country legally. The agency says the bus checks are an important way to ferret out human trafficking, narcotics and illegal immigration.

Some other bus companies, including Jefferson Lines, which operates in 14 states, and MTRWestern, which operates in the Pacific Northwest, have already taken similar steps to those announced by Greyhound. Flores said the ACLU would continue to push others to follow suit.

The memo obtained by the AP was dated Jan. 28, addressed to all chief patrol agents and signed by then-Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost just before she retired. It confirms the legal position that Greyhounds critics have taken: that the Constitutions Fourth Amendment prevents agents from boarding buses and questioning passengers without a warrant or the consent of the company.

When transportation checks occur on a bus at non-checkpoint locations, the agent must demonstrate that he or she gained access to the bus with the consent of the companys owner or one of the companys employees, the memo states. An agents actions while on the bus would not cause a reasonable person to believe that he or she is unable to terminate the encounter with the agent.

Greyhound previously argued that case law, including a 1973 Supreme Court ruling, did not extend the Fourth Amendments protections to commercial carriers.

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Greyhound to stop allowing regular immigration checks on buses - Peninsula Daily News

Well, that was chaos. Wednesday night the Democratic presidential candidates took the stage in Las Vegas to debate. It was not boring. The circular firing squad left no one unscathed. Most seemingly shocked by it was former New York City Mayor Bloomberg, clearly unprepared to defend from the well-predicted target on his back.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is being credited for her attack-dog approach going after almost everyone, but most strongly, Bloomberg. She thought she had him against the ropes a few times; she wouldnt have if Bloomberg were better prepared to answer. She attacked him for refusing to, on stage, waive any non-disclosure agreements women had signed with his company. He stuttered and stumbled. It was uncomfortable. I think the answer would be pretty simple: I cant undo legal documents on a political stage, nor should I. That would be exploitative. Im not a lawyer, but I really hope a pressured pronouncement in a political venue for political gain cant be a legal way to cancel a contract.

She then went after him for calling people bad names. Look, its not nice, but if claim you havent called people bad names to their faces or behind their backs, I dont believe you. I think Im a generally nice person, but Ive gotten mad enough to name-call and the more annoyed I am the more creative my choice of words. Sure, you can mince, well, calling someone this is worse than calling someone that. But, is it? Im far more offended that Warren called herself a Native American and stole a heritage to advance her education and career than I am by the nonsense-names Bloomberg called anyone. We shouldnt call anyone derogatory anythings, but we all have. Its not a disqualifier unto itself. And, my Republican friends, you cant support Donald Trump and be offended by Bloombergs name-calling.

We had some back and forth between the two rising stars, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar. I can summarize it best as: Youre a doo doo head! No, youre the doo doo head! It was that intellectual. Mayor Pete is upset that in a recent interview Sen. Klobuchar couldnt come up with the name of the Mexican president. As Klobuchar pointed out the election for president isnt a game of Jeopardy. Campaign days are long, with dozens of questions, interviews and conversations every day. People get tired and so do their brains. People forget things they know. It's not worth the way too many seconds Mayor Pete spent on it.

Joe Biden went after Bloomberg for his support of the New York City police policy of stop and frisk when he was mayor. I dont support stop and frisk. I think it goes against the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. I simply dont understand this bizarre tactic of Democrats going after each other for who is more racist, sexist or bigoted. What an odd and pandering approach. When one of them is the nominee, have they thought about how they are going to support said racist, sexist or bigot against Trump?

The most interesting part of the grudge-match presidential debate was the race to the extreme left. We knew about Universal Health Care and the Green New Deal. These candidates went even further left. Bernie Sanders wants to force companies to give a chunk of their companies to their employees. Why would anyone start a big business if they have to give it away? Warren wants a wealth tax. The idea that you punish success is anti-American. Whats she going to do with that money? Pay for far more things than it could afford. My favorite is Universal Childcare. Cradle-to-grave control of our children paid for by taxpayers. Then shes going to mandate increasing wages for childcare workers. She wants the government to set industry specific salaries and wages.

Bloomberg didnt jump in on the new nonsense, but lets not forget hes the guy who told New Yorkers how much soda, per ounce, they can drink. He did have the most accurate comment of the night: I cant think of a way that would make it easier for Donald Trump to get re-elected than listening to this conversation.

The yelling over each other and hand waving seemed below the office of the president. The bar of our expectations of respect and civility has been lowered of late, but least it was entertaining.

Alicia Preston is a former political consultant and member of the media. Shes a native of Hampton Beach where she lives with her family and three poodles. The views expressed are those of the writer. Write to her at PrestonPerspective@gmail.com.

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Column: What happened in Vegas should stay in Vegas - Seacoastonline.com

Editors Note Shadowproof editor Kevin Gosztola is in London for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assanges week-long extradition hearing.

Stay tuned to Shadowproof, as well as his Twitter, for coverage. And if you support our work and are able to help fund Kevins reporting, go here to donate.

James Goodale is one of the more prominent First Amendment lawyers in the United States. He represented the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case. In 2013, Goodale wrote the book, Fighting For The Press, which outlined the threat to press freedom if President Barack Obamas administration prosecuted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

No First Amendment attorney has been as outspoken on what will happen to journalism if the U.S. government successfully extradites Assange and brings him to trial in the U.S. for violating the Espionage Act.

Ahead of the first part of Assanges extradition hearing, I spoke with Goodale about the U.S. governments argument that Assange is not protected by the First Amendment. He also addressed the evidence of an espionage operation against Assange while he was in the Ecuador embassy. The operation was reportedly backed by the CIA.

Below is an edited transcript of our conversation. In a few areas, the audio cut out, but it is still possible to understand all of Goodales key points on what is at stake in this case.

GOODALE: I have dreaded the beginning of the extradition hearing because I do not want Assange back in this country to be tried under the Espionage Act. So thats my general point of view. I do not think that he should be tried under the Espionage Act because the act was designed for espionage and not for reporting the truth, which is what Assange did. And I dont want the law stretched any further than it has already been stretched.

With respect to the precise nature of the hearing, while the principal issue in the extradition hearing will be whether or not the offense complained of is a political offense and therefore does not hit the middle of the target with respect to the First Amendment, its close enough. So I am following that issue very carefully to see how the court will deal with it.

Seems to be, generally speaking, the actions that Assange took were against the interests of the United States, against its political interests, and therefore he is being sent back for a political trial. If, in fact, Im correct in that and the judge agrees with me, then he cant be extradited. So thats quite important.

A second issue that Im following is the CIAs tapping of his phone. It is quite clear that the CIA made a deal with a Spanish security company [inaudible]to have that Spanish security company videotape and audio tape everything that went onincluding importantly Assanges conversations with his lawyers.

If you have a conversation with your lawyer and its being taped, that is really fundamentally bad.

More to the point, in terms of the history of the Espionage Act as applied to these proceedings in the United States, Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, was tried under the Espionage Act back in 1973. That prosecution was dismissed because it came to the attention of the court that the plumbers, employees who were in the White House under President Richard Nixons tutelage, broke into the office of Ellsbergs psychiatrist.

That is very much the same as breaking into the conversations, and as a consequence, Ellsbergs trial was dismissed. By analogy, therefore, Assange should not come back to this country because his rights have been completely fouled up.

Third thing Im following is that the government is taking this very strange position that Assange has no First Amendment rights whatsoever. That position is based on the idea that Assange is not an American citizen and therefore he doesnt get First Amendment protections. The government has said theyre going to put that into the court. I will be listening carefully as to what exactly that position is.

GOSZTOLA: Is there any argument to be made that a person who is a non-American would not have First Amendment rights? Or are they concocting this argument, making it up on the fly out of whole cloth?

GOODALE: I would agree with the fact that theyre concocting it [but not necessarily out of whole cloth].

What happened once a long time ago was that a drug dealer in Mexico was arrested in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and the Supreme Court said hey, the guys in Mexico. He doesnt get the protection of the Fourth Amendment. I dont think that applies to this case because, first of all, its a First Amendment case, and secondly, in the drug dealer case, he was being pilloried in Mexico.

In Assanges case, when he broadcast his informationthat is to say when he put it on the netit went worldwide, and it came into this country. So he was in the country, and if hes in the country, he should get the protection of the First Amendment. The drug dealer to whom I referred was not in this country.

Pretty disturbing that the government would take somebody who is in a country other than the United States, namely Assange, and say that hes subject to the Espionage Act of this country but he doesnt get the protection of the other laws that would otherwise protect him. Its the most outrageous goddamn thing Ive ever heard.

GOSZTOLA: What were talking about here are secrecy laws within the United States that have bearing on First Amendment rights for U.S. citizens. Then those laws are being imposed on someone who is a foreigner. If the First Amendment doesnt apply to Julian Assange, then how can this secrecy law? How can he be accused of violating the Espionage Act?

GOODALE: Exactly, how can the government have it one way and not the other way? You cant have it both ways. Hes not subject to it and hes out. Or he is subject to it and he gets the protection. It seems to me that when you think about this concept as applied to Assange, it makes no sense.

With a world that is tightly bound by the internet and thus we could have another example of this down the line. A precedent that the United States can go all over the world and pick up people who they think are stealing their secrets and try them under U.S. law when theyre in fact in some other country, not covered by protections of U.S. law, is a pretty outrageous concept.

GOSZTOLA: We see this reluctance to describe or allow Assange to be treated as a publisher. Of course, people dont want to say hes a journalist. But at minimum we can agree hes a publisher.

Does it matter whether people describe him as a whistleblower or a journalist? Ive always had a tough time trying to see him as a whistleblower because hes not the originator of the information.

GOODALE: We got the leaker, Chelsea Manning. The leakee, thats Julian Assange. Then weve got the publisher and thats anybody who puts the leaks on his website. So lets look at and see what Julian Assange does. Does he fit into the leaker category? No he doesnt. Is the leaker category the same as the whistleblower category? So hes not a leaker. So hes not a whistleblower. Then what is he? Hes a journalistic entity whos receiving information.

Hes very much the same as a reporter. Ok, and then he takes the information. He passes it on to the New York Times, among others. And the New York Times publishes it, and then Assange publishes, too. So, as Ive said, hes a publisher so hes wearing two hats: one is as a quasi-journalist and one as a publisher.

With respect to being a publisher, it doesnt matter whether you call him a journalist or not. He should be entitled to all protections that every publisher, including the New York Times, the Guardian, and the others get, under the First Amendment if in fact the First Amendment applies, which I think it does.

It makes no difference whatsoever under the law because if, in fact, you are gathering information you should be protected under the laws of this country regardless of whether we call that person a journalist, a leakee, or anything else. The function that he performs is something that the First Amendment protects. Its something that freedom of speech [inaudible] freedom of speech laws of any country should protect. It doesnt matter what you call him.

GOSZTOLA: You make the comparison between Assange and New York Times Neil Sheehan, who was involved in publishing the Pentagon Papers.

GOODALE: Many years ago, the government tried to do the same thing to Neil Sheehan. They had a grand jury all set up. They were going to indict him, and they were going to indict him under the Espionage Act. For reasons no one really knows, the grand jury got disbanded. They never went after Sheehan, but Sheehan and Assange are identical in terms of what happened to them and the function they performed.

GOSZTOLA: If you can apply the Espionage Act, then he has First Amendment rights. And then if he has First Amendment rights, how would all the details from the espionage operation be weighed to show the case could not go forward?

GOODALE: The basic argument you make is that the trial, if many, has to be fundamentally flawed if, in fact, everything that youve told your attorneys and told your colleagues is in the hands of the entity that is trying to prosecute you, namely the United States. So thats why I say its the same as breaking in on Ellsbergs psychiatrist, which is what the U.S. government did and the judge took a look at it and said Ive got to throw the whole case out.

Weve got to remember that Ellsberg was in the same position as Sheehan. Tried under Espionage Act for criminal [inaudible]. So that case got thrown out, so why shouldnt the Assange case get thrown out? So why shouldnt the extraditing court in [the United Kingdom] say its so fundamentally flawed? Hes not going to go back.

GOSZTOLA: The media organizations or editors are sensitive. They describe him as a source and not a partner, even though there was collaboration. They may be doing this because they dont want to treat him as a journalist. Is there a liability issue?

GOODALE: I do not think there is a legal liability issue that causes the American press and particularly those who partnered with him to parse the definition of what Julian Assange was doing in this case. I think myself that its absolute foolishness on behalf of the journalist profession to try to distance themselves from Assange in any way we can. And thats what were really talking about when establishment press, journalists generally speaking, say well hes not really a journalist. Hes a source.

Its all a bunch of nonsense as far as Im concerned. He is performing for all practical purposes, and particularly for all legal purposes, all the functions of a journalist. So come on. Wake up, American press. This guy is doing enough of what youre doing so that, when hes penalized for what hes doing, the penalties are going to come back and get you. Wake up.

Julian Assange, because hes not the ordinary person youd meet in any kind of circumstances, the journalists are standing askance and they dont want to be associated with him. But too bad for those journalists who dont want to be associated with him.

Cmon. Hes going to get pilloried, perhaps, without your support. You better stand up and support him because whatever happens to him is going to happen to you, and down the line, whats going to happen is really bad.

And whats really bad is the United States is going to end up with an Official Secrets Act, by which leaking not only is criminalized but receiving leaks in the capacity of a leakee is also going to be criminalized. And that is really bad because youre just inviting governments, particularly authoritarian governments, to control their information.

And if they lose control, you go to jail. They dont really believe that what you have received is that criminal. In fact, its the fact that youve got it and they dont have it. And if they dont have it, they cant control you. Wake up, American press.

GOSZTOLA: Do you feel like the press and all the people who should be concerned have responded adequately?

GOODALE: One person is concerned, the present speaker. One person speaking out against one of the greatest threats to the American press in the history of the United States. The answer to your question is no one seems to be paying any attention.

If, in fact, you were to follow world pressthe world press is covering this fully and completely. The American press isnt covering it at all, as far as I can see. Thus far. And it will be very interesting to see what the press does as to the coverage of the trial in England.

The rest of the world is concerned. Why shouldnt the U.S. press be concerned? I just dont get it.

GOSZTOLA: There are [members of parliament] from European countries, who will be there as observers, but there isnt a single person from [the U.S.] Congress who is going over to watch proceedings.

GOODALE: Thats a very good point. The German parliament [inaudible] briefing sessions related to Assange, and they will have observers. To the best of my knowledge, the U.S. will have no one.

Part of the problem in this country, which is different from other countries, is theres a sour taste in the mouths of journalists with respect to Assanges activities vis-a-vis the [Democratic National Committee (DNC)] leak. That is most freshly in their mind and because of that happenstance, and the fact that it was looked into by Mueller and is still around, has made Assange particularly unpopular. But so what?GOSZTOLA: The case that they tried to bring against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks around the issue of hacked material but we saw a court defend the right of publishing hacked material in the United States and it seems like the political establishment just cant accept that that is a part of our law.GOODALE: Well, thats another good point. That case was decided by my former First Amendment partner, Judge John Koetl.

He decided the First Amendment applies to Julian Assange in this country, and that Julian Assanges activities with respect to the release of information concerning the DNC was protected by the First Amendment. That suit was brought by the DNC, and Judge Koetl went out of his way to say that the activities of Assange in releasing that information were fully protected by the First Amendment.

If the Justice Department is going to succeed in persuading the world that the First Amendment doesnt apply here, theyre going to have to overrule Judge Koetls decision.

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Interview With James Goodale: Stunning How Few In US Care About Threat Posed By Assange's Case - Shadowproof

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But as self-appointed arbiters of truth, weve largely excused our own unprecedented string of fact-challenged reporting. The truth is, formerly well-respected, top news organizations are making repeat, unforced errors in numbers that were unheard of just a couple of years ago.

Our repeat mistakes involve declaring that Trumps claims are lies when they are matters of opinion, or when the truth between conflicting sources is unknowable; taking Trumps statements and events out of context; reporting secondhand accounts against Trump without attribution as if theyre established fact; relying on untruthful, conflicted sources; and presenting reporter opinions in news storieswithout labeling them as opinions.

So since nobody else has compiled an updated, extensive list of this kind, here are:

USA Today misstated Melania Trumps arrival date from Slovenia amid a flurry of reporting that questioned her immigration status from the mid-1990s.

Multiple outlets including Politico, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, AP, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal reported the same leaked information: that Trump fired FBI Director James Comey shortly after Comey requested additional resources to investigate Russian interference in the election.

The Justice Department, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe said the media reports were untrue and McCabe added that the FBIs Russia investigation was adequately resourced.

The New York Times Jonathan Weisman reported that Comey testified Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions told Comey not to call the Russia probe an investigation but a matter. Weisman was mistaken about the attorney general and the probe. Actually, it was Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch (not Sessions) who told Comey to refer to the Hillary Clinton classified email probe (not the Russia probe) as a matter instead of an investigation.

CNN edited a video that made it appear as though Trump impatiently dumped a box of fish food into the water while feeding fish at Japans palace. The New York Daily News, the Guardian and others wrote stories implying Trump was gauche and impetuous. The full video showed that Trump had simply followed the lead of Japans Prime Minister.

MSNBC personality mistakenly stated that Trump had banned the Red Cross from visiting children separated from illegal immigrant parents.

NBC reporter Leigh Ann Caldwell reported that outgoing Supreme Court Justice Kennedy only retired after months of negotiations with Trump that concluded with Trump agreeing to replace Kennedy with Judge Kavanaugh.

Support Sharyl Attkissons fight against government overreach in Attkisson v. DOJ and FBI for the government computer intrusions. For more info visit:https://www.gofundme.com/sharyl-attkisson-4th-am-litigation

Washington Post reporter implied Trump doesnt understand NATO countries. In fact, Trump met with the Finnish President at the NATO summit. Further, Finland is a NATO partner, just not a member.

The New York Times issues a major correction (below) to an original unfair article about U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.

The New York Times falsely reported that a man, Mark Judge, testified he remembered an incident more than 30 year ago in which Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is accused of assault. Judge actually said the opposite: he does not remember such an incident, and that the allegations are absolutely nuts. The Times corrected its article in an editors note.

Multiple news outlets report that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein has resigned or been fired. Neither turns out to be true. Axios and others eventually update and clarify their erroneous reports.

NBC News falsely reports that President Trump praised Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Actually, Trump had praised the Union General Ulysses S. Grant.

CNNs Jeff Zeleny reports that President Trump has decided to fire a deputy national security adviser upon the First Ladys demand. The Wall Street Journal reports the adviser has been escorted out of the White House. Later, its reported that neither case was true. This did not happen. She is still here at the WH, a senior official told the press. The adviser was reassigned to another job.

Its discovered that nearly everything written by a Der Spiegel reporter, who had been honored by CNN, about a supposedly racist Trump stronghold town was fabricatedlike much of his other work.

NBC reports that Trump was the first President since 2002 not to visit the troops at Christmastime. But he (and First Lady Melania) did. NBC added a note to its story but left the false headline in place.

CBS News claimed, in June of 2018, that Trump spokesman Sarah Huckabee Sanders would retire by the end of the year. She didnt. As of May 2019, she was still on the job and there had been no correction or editors note. The same CBS story also quoted sources as saying the departure of White House assistant Raj Shah was also imminent. It wasnt. Shah continued to serve seven more months.

The New York Times issues a correctionto a report that falsely stated former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort asked for campaign polling to be given to a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, who has ties to Russia President Putin.Instead, the Times now claims, Manafort actually asked his associate Rick Gates to give polling data to Ukrainian oligarchs not Deripaska.

While working at Politico, one of the New York Times reporters, Ken Vogel, got caught sending drafts of stories to democratic officials. Another co-author, Maggie Haberman, was considered a friendly by Clinton campaign officials who turned to her when she worked at Politico.

We have had her tee up stories for us before and have never been disappointed. We can do the most shaping by going to Maggie, wrote Clinton officials in emails.

Fox TV affiliate in Seattle, Washington airs fake, doctored video of President Trump that altered his face and made it appear as though he had stuck his tongue in and out while giving an Oval Office address.

The Buzzfeed exclusive with anonymous sources implicating Trump in potentially criminal behavior (that Democrats and pundits said would be the nail in Trumps impeachment coffin) is refuted in a rare rebuke from Special Counsel Muellers office. Buzzfeed stands by its reporting.

Fight improper government surveillance. Support Attkisson v. DOJ and FBI over the government computer intrusions of Attkissons work while she was a CBS News investigative correspondent. Visit the Attkisson Fourth Amendment Litigation Fund. Click here.

The New York Times and Washington Post are among the publications that issue corrections after falsely reporting that an anti-Trump activist had served in the Vietnam War.

Additionally, multiple news employees, including a CNN employee, apologize for mischaracterizing as the aggressors Trump-supporting teenagers at a pro-life rally.

The UK Telegraph apologizes for all the facts it got wrong in a Jan. 19 article criticizing the First Lady.

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While some media outlets responsibly reported and properly attributed allegations in the racist attack alleged by actor Jussie Smollett, others did not. Some unskeptically furthered the narrative that Smollett, who is black, was attacked by Trump-supporting racists who put a noose around Smolletts neck, shouted racial slurs, told him its MAGA (Make America Great Again) country, and poured bleach on him. While details are still emerging as of this date, Chicago police have stated that Smollett is no longer considered a victim of the crimes he alleged. The New York Times receives special mention here for adding a biased non sequitur in its early reporting that treated skepticism of Smolletts story as if it were unfounded, and fit in a dig at President Trumps son.

But the lack of progress in the investigation has fueled speculation about whether the report was exaggerated. The presidents son Donald Trump Jr., who is known to disseminate conspiracy theories on his Twitter feed, retweeted an article this week about Smollett declining to turn over his cellphone to the police.

Its as good a day as any to point out that The Washington Post and others reported last November that Trump was imminently about to fire DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. The Post confirmed this with five anonymous sources. The firing was said to be likely to happen the following week.

Nielsen remained on the job for five more months before resigning.

Testimony by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen seemed to put the final nail in the coffin of the dossier claim reported by many that Cohen had visited Prague to meet with Russians to help collude on Trumps behalf. Cohen told Congress hes never been to Prague or the Czech Republic, for that matter. McClatchy even reported that Cohens cell phone had pinged off Prague towers. Where did this apparently false information come from? Four people spoke with McClatchy on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of information shared by their foreign intelligence connections. Each obtained their information independently from foreign intelligence connections, reported McClatchy.

The Washington Post deleted a tweet containing false reporting about a January 19 incident regarding a standoff between Trump-supporting pro-life Catholic high school students and a pro-choice Native American activist. The Post wrongly stated, without attribution, that the activist had fought in the Vietnam War. The activist also falsely stated that a high school student had blocked him and wouldnt allow him to retreat. These events were later called into question, and the Washington Post is being sued in a multi-million dollar libel suit over its allegedly false reporting and misrepresentations. The Post also posted an editors note on this date stating that a more complete assessment of the incident contradicted or failed to confirm accounts as originally reported, including that a particular student was trying to instigate a conflict.

Multiple reporters and media outlets have provided false information and/or quoted incorrect anonymous sources as to the timing of the release of Special Counsel Muellers report on Trump-Russia collusion. The Washington Post said it would be out in summer of 2018. Bloomberg said it would be shortly after the 2018 Midterm elections. In February 2019, CNN, The Washington Post and NBC reported the report was coming the last week of February. However, it was not announced at that time.

Continued here:

112 Media Mistakes in the Trump Era: The Definitive List - Sharyl Attkisson

Like most of what ails us today, the seeds of the current crisis in republican governance the severance of Washingtons omnipotent law enforcement and intelligence apparatus from democratic accountability were sown in the 1960s and 70s. That was when we began to erase the salient distinction between law and politics. Under the guise of national security, we insulated governmental actions and policies from the reckoning of our citizens, whose safety and self-determination hang in the balance.

Fast forward to 2020. The FBI, in its bungling partisanship, very likely swung the 2016 presidential election away from its preferred candidate, Hillary Clinton. The sprawling community of intelligence agencies (led by the FBI and CIA) covertly used dubious foreign sources to justify monitoring an American political campaign and, later, a U.S. presidential administration. To do so, it invoked daunting foreign-counterintelligence surveillance powers, based on a fever dream that its bte noire, Donald Trump, was an agent of the Kremlin. And the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court recently chastised the FBI for feeding it false and unverified information the secret court apparently calculating that this extraordinary public expression of wrath will divert attention from its own shoddy performance in approving highly intrusive spy warrants based on sensational, blatantly uncorroborated rumor and innuendo.

As usual, Washington is reacting with high-decibel inertia. In an era of hyperpartisanship, Democrats defend the politicization of the law enforcement and intelligence that resulted in the Trump-Russia investigation. Republicans, meanwhile, wail about being victimized even as the victim-in-chief ham-handedly dabbles in his own mini-version of the abuse: the Ukraine kerfuffle, in which the president sought, however futilely, to leverage the investigative and foreign affairs powers of the executive branch for domestic political advantage.

Few are willing to confront the crisis. Even acknowledging it seems politically impossible. Not only are Democrats invested in defending the Russia investigation and its excesses, but their post-Watergate surveillance reforms forged the modern law enforcement and intelligence apparatus, which tends to be politically like-minded, at least in the supervisory ranks. For their part, Republicans pay lip service to limited government and political accountability while continuing to see national security and law-and-order hawkishness as key to political success. Any questioning of the status quo, as opposed to criticism of the individual abuses that the status quo reliably produces, is framed as a green light to foreign sabotage and domestic lawlessness.

Yet there are indications weve reached an inflection point: The public is growing weary and not a little bit angry. The politicization of law enforcement and intelligence-gathering threatens everyone, regardless of political persuasion. And officials seem always to escape accountability.

Consider the center-right, the part of the political spectrum where the FBI and aggressive spy powers have traditionally found their staunchest defenders, myself very much among them. We see several Trump operatives (Carter Page, Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Roger Stone, and Paul Manafort) subjected to groundless surveillance or prosecuted with unseemly zeal for process crimes (usually, misleading investigators), or for offenses unrelated to the fictional Trump-Kremlin conspiracy. In stark contrast, government officials who misled investigators, judges, and lawmakers evade prosecution. The latest example: the Justice Departments mid-February announcement that the FBIs former deputy director, Andrew McCabe, will not be indicted despite serially misleading agents who were probing a media leak that he orchestrated.

Here is the problem: The immense powers wielded by our law enforcement and intelligence apparatus are essential to protecting the United States. The agencies that wield them, as currently constructed, are not.

The intelligence communitys performance is often subpar. While officials have played an admirable part in preventing a reprise of the 9/11 atrocities, they have also promoted misconceptions that they and their intrusive information-collection techniques are fit tools for the tasks at hand. For example, the notion that international terrorism is primarily a law enforcement matter led for years to a focus on post-attack prosecutions rather than the prevention of attacks from happening. Indeed, the specter of jihadist strikes ebbed only after domestic law enforcement was subordinated to military operations against overseas terrorist sanctuaries. And lets not forget the bulk collection of communications and metadata involving tens of millions of innocent Americans, supposedly necessary for intelligence agencies to target a relative handful of bad actors which amounted to the risible suggestion that heaping ever more hay in the stack somehow makes the needles easier to find.

Yes, we need aggressive intelligence collection, mission-focused rather than warehoused without much discrimination, to protect the nation from very real foreign threats. But this is a political responsibility, and government officials who carry it out must be accountable. When officials are permitted to shroud their work in complete secrecy, making themselves unaccountable, an outraged public will eventually react to abuses of power by demanding that the powers themselves be pared back or repealed. Our nation would be imperiled from without by foreign aggressors, even as we remained threatened from within by a politicized bureaucracy.

Some history is in order. In its 1967 ruling in Katz v. United States, the Supreme Court completed its transformation of the Fourth Amendment. Originally, it had been rooted in principles of trespass, a venerable criminal-law doctrine whose application is straightforward: The government must respect property rights. The new rule of the road was expectation of privacy. That is a fluid standard, evolving as do technology (which enables government monitoring without physical trespass) and the publics expanding conception of zones of personal activity and intercourse that should be shielded from prying, investigative eyes.

Brokering the eternal tension between security and privacy is a political task. It should be governed by legislated rules that police can easily carry out. Instead, weve put our police in the position of intuiting what privacy invasions the courts might indulge. That is asking them to do policy, not policing.

National security is also a political policy matter, categorically different from law enforcement. In requiring judicial warrants for wiretaps in ordinary criminal investigations in Katz, the court recognized that distinction, stressing that its ruling did not encompass government actions to protect national security. In 1968, Congress recognized the same distinction when it enacted the federal wiretapping statute. Lawmakers took pains to note that they were not encroaching on the presidents constitutional authority to protect national security and guard against espionage by obtaining foreign intelligence, including by electronic surveillance.

What about the crossroads where national security and law enforcement intersect? In the 1972 Keith case, the Supreme Court was forced to confront it, in that instance regarding insurrection and its related crimes by domestic terrorists. The intelligence agencies sought to treat the matter as a security threat, suitable for such national defense tactics as warrantless surveillance, not a policing challenge calling for the due process and substantive safeguards attendant to court prosecutions in peacetime. Reasoning that politically motivated violence was bound up with constitutionally protected political dissent, the court ruled that the rabble-rousers rights to privacy and expression had to be respected, even if a judicial warrant requirement was certain to make monitoring them more difficult (and preventing their attacks more challenging). Again, however, the justices caveated that the scope of our decision involves only the domestic aspects of national security (emphasis added). The court was not saying that foreign powers and their agents were entitled to the due process protection.

Such caution was well-founded. In 1948, in the Chicago & Southern Air Lines decision written by Justice Robert Jackson, an iconic figure in politics, national security, and jurisprudence, the Supreme Court explained why judges were not institutionally competent to regulate foreign intelligence matters or be taken into executive confidences regarding them. The very nature of executive decisions as to foreign policy is political, not judicial. In our system, Jackson observed, such decisions are wholly confided to the executive and legislative branches. Because the most significant decisions a free society makes are those about its security, they must be left to the political actors directly responsible to the people whose welfare they advance or imperil, not to the unaccountable judiciary.

But Washington threw caution to the wind. The FBI and judges were already making policy decisions about where constitutional protections should yield to law enforcement demands. In 1978, in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Congress extended this delegation to intelligence policy.

Enacted in the wake of Watergate and domestic spying scandals that led to Congresss Pike and Church Committee inquiries, FISA empowered federal judges to oversee the executives foreign intelligence collection. Originally, this power was limited to the FBIs surveillance of clandestine foreign agents in the United States; later, it was dramatically expanded to cover intelligence collection targeting foreigners outside the U.S. Plainly, lawmakers calculated that the creation of a separate court to handle all applications for foreign-intelligence surveillance would grow judicial expertise, addressing the institutional incompetence problem to which Jackson had alluded. FISA is heedless, though, of the more serious constitutional problem: the transfer of responsibility for innately political national security decisions to nonpolitical unelected officials i.e., away from democratic accountability.

It is the culture of law enforcement to expect independence from politics. Such independence is imperative for the legitimacy of the criminal justice system, on which depend the rule of law and thus domestic peace and prosperity. The framers understood that nothing lends itself to tyranny more than police powers unmoored from political accountability. The FBI and the Justice Department (of which the bureau is a component) are part of the executive branch, answerable to the president, who is accountable to the public. Prudently, however, the executive branchs political leadership does not involve itself in day-to-day policing, content to set programmatic enforcement priorities (e.g., deciding whether to allocate more resources to violent crime or healthcare fraud). There is no political interference in decisions about what cases to bring and which defendants to charge. Those are left to police professionals, who apply Congresss penal statutes in proceedings overseen by courts.

National security, on the other hand, is an innately political responsibility. Indeed, the foreign counterintelligence mission is conducted solely to support the presidents national defense duties, not to develop prosecutable court cases. If the FBI and the courts are doing national security, they are necessarily practicing politics. Arms of government that make political determinations cannot properly be independent of political oversight and accountability.

Ive always believed the FBI could handle these related but different responsibilities. History proved me wrong. The bureau arrogantly insists on independence from political oversight not just in criminal cases but even when it is carrying out national security functions. It wants a free hand to act and even make policy judgments in the political realm, but it demands insulation from political accountability. The courts, analogously, have shed their healthy reluctance to become embroiled in national security policy disputes, as well as their formerly laudable line-drawing between political questions and controversies fit for judicial resolution.

FISA was a well-meaning effort to give a modicum of due process to Americans suspected of acting as foreign agents. In point of fact, it does not provide meaningful due process because it cannot replicate the adversarial search for truth that is the hallmark of judicial proceedings. The FBI and Justice Department appear ex parte before the court; the surveillance subject cannot be effectively represented, and the proceedings are classified, so the expectation is that no one will ever check the executives representations. This is unlike criminal cases, which lead to prosecution, discovery, and significant legal consequences if government agents duped the judge into granting warrants.

More important, the FISA framework intended to provide more oversight of executive surveillance has had the opposite effect. Because the judges are not constitutionally responsible for national security, they are loath to second-guess the officials who are. The system perversely incentivizes those officials to seek warrants on questionable premises. They know that the judge will probably approve the warrants. Once thats done, the agents can brandish these judicial imprimaturs as proof that their actions are unimpeachable and thus to claim there is no legitimate reason for Congress, much less the public, to pierce the veil of secrecy.

And now, with the Trump-Russia investigation, weve witnessed the abuse of power many FISA critics predicted for decades: the pretextual invocation of FISA surveillance powers to conduct a criminal investigation for which the investigators lack a criminal predicate in this instance, the hunt for some crime that might render Donald Trump unelectable or removable. Worse, and quite naturally, the abuse has happened in a political context: the incumbent Democratic administration using the threat posed by a hostile power, Russia, to rationalize foreign counterintelligence surveillance of the opposition partys political campaign, an abuse that continued for two years and impeded the Trump administrations capacity to govern.

This was all predictable. It may even have become inevitable, as law enforcement was increasingly intertwined with political policymaking in the areas of privacy and national security, and as intelligence-gathering and criminal investigations were increasingly intermingled.

A fix is not that hard to grasp. It is doubtful, though, that our political culture could muster the consensus and will it would take for implementation.

The FBI should be relegated to the investigation and prosecution of crime. The bureau excels in executing its law enforcement duties and can be trusted to operate with minimal political supervision because the criminal justice system features transparent judicial oversight. The foreign counterintelligence mission should be transferred to other intelligence community components and subjected to beefed-up congressional regulation and oversight. FISA should be repealed, with the courts returned to their judicial role of providing a forum for those injured by governmental overreach, rather than aiding and abetting in the overreach.

Much more rethinking of the intelligence community needs to be done. The Claremont Institutes Angelo Codevilla, an insightful and provocative intelligence expert, argues the CIA is obsolete, politicized, and counterproductive. He would assign foreign intelligence responsibilities to the departments that carry out national defense and foreign relations missions mainly, the Defense and State Departments tailoring the gathering of intelligence to the practical needs of these missions. This would strip down the so-called deep state, a leviathan that warehouses mountains of intelligence to the detriment of our liberties and with dubious benefits to our security. Codevilla would also repeal FISA.

His ideas are worth exploring. What is already clear, however, is that national security against foreign powers is not a fit responsibility for police agencies and courts. Assigning it to them is a failed experiment: a temptation to intrusive surveillance of innocent citizens and politicized law enforcement. We should end the experiment before the public, in its frustration over the lack of accountability, clips the powers vital to our national defense.

Andrew C. McCarthy, a former chief assistant U.S. attorney in New York, is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, a contributing editor at National Review , and a Fox News contributor.

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The case for repealing FISA and reforming the FBI and CIA - Washington Examiner