Sure they have. Between the Russia stuff (Flynn being the obvious example) to simple things such as incredible disorginzation in the White House, the leaks have shown plenty of information the White House doesn't want out there.
To date, no illegal activity has ever been pointed to.
Shady refers to more than illegal.
That's not semantics. The President is literally the top dog in their chain of command.
And the President works for America, ergo, the intelligence agencies work for America. And, unlike the President, their work continues after eight years.
Again, I'm arguing semantics, not disagreeing with you that the DNI reports to the President.
Snowden and whoever did the CIA leaks went way beyond anything remotely acceptable.
So you supported the Obama Administration over Snowden? Not a gotcha question, just curious.
There are hundreds of thousands of people involved. Of course it's not all of one mind. However, it's regular enough that it seems to be not insignificant. If I were to guess, I'd say it's a few high ranking people.
But far from a "Deep State". If you're talking about "a few people" amongst hundreds of thousands, the term "deep state" seems a little far-fetched, does it not?
Say a decent amount of the military decides not to follow the order of the President, what happens then? This is no less serious and people better be going to jail.
Well, of course this is much less serious. No one's lives are on the line, just some embarrassment to a serial liar. I understand the point you're trying to make, but you truly are creating a false equivalence.
Let's put it another way. Let's pretend, only for argument's sake, President Trump DID collude with the Russians in order to win the election. This could lead to charges of treason. I want to be clear...I'm not saying that's what happened, I'm only presenting it for argument's sake.
If our intelligence agencies knew Donald Trump conspired with a foreign government to rig our election...should they "leak" those documents? Again, I'm well aware my example is on the extreme end and I'm not saying Trump did collude...I'm merely pointing out leaking, in and of itself, is not always wrong (regardless if it is always illegal).
I use that example to make this point. Nothing which has been released has compromised our country. It's exposed connections to Russia the White House would rather have not been public and exposed some other somewhat embarrassing items about the White House, but that's been about it. The only thing I can think of which comes close to damaging our country is the story about the compromising information presented to Trump and Obama about Trump.
Does the fact this material isn't truly harmful make it less illegal? I'm not arguing that. But I am arguing it is not nearly as worrisome as you're trying to make it sound and certainly far from a "deep state" running the government.
All he did was tell Congress that he found more emails. That's not even a crime, yet you think it's not as big of a deal.
You know as well as I do the implications of what he reported to Congress and the timing of that report. Again, I have no problem with it, but let's not pretend it was a nothing burger and these leaks are an existential threat to our democracy. Because it was a very important moment and these leaks are not suggesting a mass revolt against our President, as your term of "deep state" suggests.
No, it's realistic. "Deep state" is not realistic, it's just the bogeyman the right wing media is trotting out to deflect from the embarrassing behavior of our current President.