Former FBI Director James Comey prepares to testify before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on "Russian Federation Efforts to Interfere in the 2016 U.S. Elections" on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 8, 2017. (REUTERS/Jim Bourg)

‘Deep State’ Exposed in New Report

Unelected officials use corruption, propaganda, and secrecy to form alternative government not responsible to voters

A system of unelected officials within various branches of the U.S. government have utilized the intelligence agencies, key public officials, and a network of foundations and nonprofits to build a corrupt alternative government that does not answer to American voters.

This system is widely referred to as the “Deep State,” and the conservative, non-partisan watchdog group Judicial Watch recently released a 64-page report that details some of the corrupt actions of the Deep State, as well as a series of lawsuits that Judicial Watch has lodged against it.

“The actions of the Deep State constitute a direct challenge to our republican form of government,” states Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, in the report.

The report states that the Deep State is not “monolithic,” but is instead built of people who share a “common mindset and worldview,” and who collectively use a system of “secrecy, surveillance, and subterfuge” to advance their agenda, while avoiding public and legal scrutiny.

Meanwhile, the organization also appears to be using, and at times colluding with, major news outlets to “leak” information that can advance its goal.

The report states that the “American media complex effectively operates as the propaganda arm and transmission belt of the Deep State.”

It cites a 2013 article from James George Jatras, former State Department foreign service officer and congressional policy adviser and analyst, stating that “American media increasingly have operated uncritically in conjunction with the bipartisan Washington political establishment.”

Through this collusion between the Deep State and major news outlets, it’s able to push narratives by providing “leaked” information under the cover of unnamed “government sources.”

Jatras wrote that the Deep State “includes elements within all three branches of the U.S. government (especially in the military, intelligence, and financial sectors), private business (the financial industry, government contractors, information technology), think tanks, NGOs, the ‘Demintern,’ both political parties and campaign operatives, and an army of lobbyists and PR professionals.”

Political Subversion

The Deep State often works through subtle methods and sleight of hand, states the report, yet at times it works more openly to either support or oppose the incumbent government. It notes, in particular, that records show it worked closely with the Obama administration, which “weaponized the permanent bureaucracy inside the IRS, the FBI and other intelligence and regulatory agencies against the American people and his (and the Deep State’s) political opponents. “

The report states, “The Deep State is more insidious than mere partisanship, and it is more dangerous because it is permanent. While presidents and Members of Congress come and go, the Deep State remains permanently, growing ever more powerful—and predatory.”

In recent months it has turned its sights heavily on President Donald Trump who has sworn to “drain the swamp,” and is eliminating key programs that the unelected officials are tied to.

Thus, in a bid to protect their jobs and their interests, Fitton says officials in the Deep State have utilized intelligence and law-enforcement agencies to engage in “subversive measures” designed to delegitimize Trump and “cause the American people to lose faith in their president,” with the goal of removing Trump from office.

The report states, however, that “The operation of the Deep State is not a meticulously organized conspiracy,” with any known central authority or central location. Rather, it follows the agendas of politicians, bureaucrats, and contractors who “travel in the same, invariably elitist circles.”

Among those at its helm are political appointees, career civil servants, and private contractors. The report characterizes the Deep State as “like a systemic disease of run-away cells, replicating and metastasizing to serve their own interests and survival.”

“No matter which political party controls Congress. And, no matter what is the will of the American people. No matter who’s in power, they exert control,” it states.

“The operatives manning and manipulating the Deep State demand an activist, interventionist government, both domestically and internationally,” it states. “Importantly, their worldview often rejects the beliefs and values of a majority of patriotic Americans.”

Corrupt Governance

The report explains four branches of this system, and details a series of lawsuits and information it has uncovered on each.

One branch involves ties between the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Soros Open Society Foundations, which it revealed in two lawsuits has used “taxpayer money channeled through USAID to destabilize and overthrow the democratically elected governments of Macedonia and Albania.”

When Judicial Watch filed its second lawsuit to expose these connections, Fitton said it was uncovering a “scandal of Obama administration’s siphoning tax dollars to the Soros operations in Europe.”

It later uncovered that, through this connection, American taxpayers were unwittingly paying the Soros Open Society Foundation to establish and fund dozens of left-wing NGOs in Macedonia to “overthrow the conservative government.” The groups were in turn organizing youth movements to “organize violent protests to undermine the institutions and policies implemented by the government.”

Another branch is through the The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Judicial Watch revealed through three lawsuits the efforts of EPA officials to conceal information from the public and government, the use of doctored reports to justify Obama policies, and an illegal effort to “propagandize the American People.”

The report cites a Politico article from Feb. 2, which claimed government employees within the EPA, in the Foreign Service, the Labor Department, and elsewhere, were using Signal, an encrypted communications app, in order to create a network within an agency to work against Trump.

Through its lawsuits and investigations, Judicial Watch found that the EPA has been concealing or failing to provide key information that should legally be publicly available. It cites a Sept. 20, 2016, article from the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, stating that under the Obama administration it was a “widespread practice” to move “select correspondence about EPA-related business to non-official email accounts.”

Another branch of the Deep State was revealed through a series of four lawsuits it filed against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), revealing that the Obama administration used the IRS to target political enemies; as well as “unlawful collusion among the IRS and other agencies of government, such as the Justice Department, the FBI, the Department of Health and Human Services,” to spy on U.S. citizens, and to manufacture propaganda to smear their public image.

The fourth branch was exposed through six lawsuits against intelligence and the law-enforcement community that revealed the unlawful surveillance of American citizens, and the politicizing of spy agencies to attack the Trump administration.

A Solution Through Transparency

The operations of the Deep State would unlikely be able to stand the light of day, and the report presses Trump to leverage presidential powers to begin declassifying reports and information that expose its activities.

It notes that the Obama administration appears to have colluded deeply with these unelected powers, and through policies and executive orders established secrecy policies that function as a “veil” over its activities. Much of this is still in place, it notes, adding “those same secrecy policies seem to be on auto-pilot in the Trump administration.”

However, the solution to this problem may already be in place. The report notes, “The Freedom of Information Act allows for the executive branch to make ‘discretionary disclosures,'” and this would allow the Trump administration to expose the crimes of the Deep State.

Chris Farrell, director of investigations at Judicial Watch, states in the report, “President Trump and his cabinet secretaries can release whatever they want—whenever they wish to do so. They can exercise their discretion to release records that are of broad general and news media interest concerning important policy issues and/or the operation of the federal government.”

Farrell adds, “These discretionary disclosures take nothing more than the stroke of a pen.”