I watched CNN‘s coverage of the President Donald Trump-Baby Kim summit, following which they signed a document wherein they agreed on four steps to carry out on the path forward, including Baby Kim’s commitment to denuclearize “the Korean Peninsula.”  That last, especially, is a Big Deal, albeit hard details like on what schedule and what Baby Kim wants in return are yet to be discussed and agreed.

Still, you’d think that would be news worth covering, worth reporting and commenting on.  So what did CNN devote its Tuesday morning programming to?  Their morning Star Anchor interviewed two ex-Federal employees, asking them about taping back together “White House” torn-up documents.  The anchor kept referring to the documents as “destroyed official documents” as she sat at her desk, leaning into the camera with her mouth hanging open in faux shock (or, as my mother used to say, drawing flies).  The interviewees kept holding up the pieces of paper they’d brought with them to illustrate the kinds of documents they’d been told to tape together and the degree of “destruction” the tearing up represented.

Now, I came on the interview in mid-stream, so I don’t know the basis of the anchor’s characterization of the documents as “official” or as “destroyed.” It wasn’t clear to me throughout the remainder of the interview that these terminated employees weren’t expressing their disgruntlement over having been terminated.  It wasn’t clear to me how these two interviewees came to have—after their termination—official documents still in their possession, or even whether what they had were documents.  They did clearly represent the size of the torn pieces to be representative of their reassembly task.  What also was clear was that those representative pieces of paper weren’t “torn-up,” official or otherwise.  They were documents that had been torn in quarters or eighths.  Thus, they could have been notes torn up to signify “done with these,” as many of us do, or they were “official” and torn in rejection, as the tearer (Trump? one of his senior staffers?) told the individual who handed them to him said, “This is trash; do it over. Bring me what I asked for.”

But what’s important about CNN‘s interview is this: the just concluded summit wasn’t important enough to cover, but taping pieces of paper together was.

…for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to go.  He

threatened to “subpoena” emails, phone records and other documents from lawmakers and staff on a Republican-led House committee during a tense meeting earlier this year [January], according to emails reviewed by Fox News documenting the encounter and reflecting what aides described as a “personal attack.”

In a notification to the House Office of General Counsel about the incident, the House Intelligence Committee’s then-Senior Counsel for Counterterrorism Kash Patel (now the Committee’s National Security Advisor) wrote

The DAG [Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein] criticized the Committee for sending our requests in writing and was further critical of the Committee’s request to have DOJ/FBI do the same when responding.  Going so far as to say that if the Committee likes being litigators, then “we [DOJ] too [are] litigators, and we will subpoena your records and your emails,” referring to HPSCI [House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence] and Congress overall.

A second staffer corroborated the complaint:

Let me just add that watching the Deputy Attorney General launch a sustained personal attack against a congressional staffer in retaliation for vigorous oversight was astonishing and disheartening. … Also, having the nation’s #1 (for these matters) law enforcement officer threaten to “subpoena your calls and emails” was downright chilling.

In response, DoJ said that Rosenstein

never threatened anyone in the room with a criminal investigation.

That’s a cynically offered strawman, and its offering confirms the need for Rosenstein to go—as well as the DoJ official who offered it.  Patel was not alleging a retaliatory criminal investigation, only protesting the threat of subpoena of Committee and Committee personnel correspondence in response to a threat of Contempt of Congress citation—itself necessary by the FBI’s and DoJ’s—Rosenstein’s—stonewalling of Committee document requests.

Further distraction, stonewalling, and now intimidation: Rosenstein, according to one of his own staffers, will

request that the House General counsel conduct an internal investigation of these Congressional staffers’ conduct.

For the heinous crime of insisting on the House’s oversight prerogative, Rosenstein is expected to extend his threats and intimidation effort.

Tom Dupree, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in Bush the Younger’s administration, long out of government, still felt qualified to weigh in:

It’s hard to tell whether [Rosenstein] was sending a message to back off, or whether he was just trying to illustrate how invasive he considered the demands from Congress.

There’s no misunderstanding here.  Rosenstein plainly was trying to intimidate the Committee members and staffers into backing off.  He knows full well that Congressional oversight is, necessarily, invasive, especially given the stonewalling.

Again: Rosenstein must go.

In most venues, receiving stolen material is a felony.  Only precious journalists get a pass on that crime.

Yet self-styled media critic Howard Kurtz is worried that that pass might be getting a second look—however tenuously—from the recent arrest of James Wolfe, now ex-Director of Security for the staff of the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence, pursuant to which New York Times reporter Ali Watkins’ email and phone (and Twitter?) records were seized.  (Kurtz also is downplaying the importance of Wolfe, too, referring to him as a “veteran Senate Intelligence Committee staffer.”)

What triggered the arrest is the FBI’s investigation into leaks of material, some of it potentially classified, from that Committee’s deliberations.

[Wolfe]…was indicted for allegedly giving false statements to the FBI about his contacts with three reporters and for lying about giving two reporters non-public information about committee matters.

Watkins was one of those reporters, at the time apparently working for Buzzfeed and/or Politico.

Kurtz said the importance of the case cannot be overstated and could lead to some reporters’ sources “drying up.”

And

“It’s a real classic chilling effect. … It’s a crime to leak classified information. At the same time, journalists rely on these leaks to get what they think is important information,” said the MediaBuzz host, noting that some of the communications with Wolfe were through encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal.

That encryption is a strong indication that Wolfe knew what he was doing was illegal, and the recipients’ acceptance of those encrypted messages and their ability to decrypt them is a strong indication that those recipients knew they were getting illegally released material—stolen material.

Does Kurtz actually listen to himself?  Journalists rely on leaks of classified information to get their stories?  It’s a short hop from there to journalists actively soliciting leaks of classified information, but that’s a separate story.

Beyond that, I certainly hope these criminal sources get dried up.  It would be a short hop from there—but probably too far a leap for journalists—to instead actively seek out legitimate information from legitimate—and named, not hidden—sources.  It would be a short hop—but too far for journalists, apparently—to cite two on-the-record sources to corroborate “information” supplied by “anonymous” sources, like journalism standards used to require.

But a return to honest journalism would be a Good Thing, however inconvenient journalists might find that.