Private Dinner: Since When is it Okay to Secretly Record the President?

You’d have to be one conniving, fearless sonofabitch to try and pull that off.

‘Take her out’: Recording appears to capture Trump at private dinner saying he wants Ukraine ambassador fired
Tape Made Public of Trump Discussing Ukraine With Donors
Parnas recording shows Trump talking with indicted businessmen the President has said he doesn’t know
The Video of Donald Trump Telling Associates to “Get Rid of” Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch Has Been Released
Parnas releases full video of dinner where Trump ordered Yovanovitch’s ouster
Indicted Giuliani associate Parnas says Trump ordered Ukraine ambassador’s firing several times before recall

Then again, the media’s always loved an opportunity to catch a Republican with a secret recording, something at least one U.S. senator should be sensitive to.

During a private fundraiser earlier this year, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told a small group of wealthy contributors what he truly thinks of all the voters who support President Barack Obama.

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what… These are people who pay no income tax.

My job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
Mother Jones, 9/17/12

One of the liberal Democrat outrages, going back to the House impeachment hearings, was President Trump’s firing of former ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. But there’s one catch:

What I can tell you is the president is the CEO of the country. He can hire or fire whoever he wants. He is not one that’s going to sit there and talk for too long. If he sees something wrong, he’s going to deal with it. And I think that the reason people are uncomfortable is because he acts. He doesn’t talk with a bunch of people about it before, he just acts.

But at the end of the day, the president has to surround himself with a team that he can trust. He’s going to surround himself with a team that he thinks is going to represent and secure the United States properly.
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, 5/14/17

The media is also going gaga over the recording provided by Lev Parnas’ attorney from what was supposed to be a “private” donor dinner in what looks like a signature suite in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. It’s clear Parnas’ partner Igor Fruman set his smartphone on the dinner table secretly in record mode. While the media is enjoying their latest Trump gotcha moment, they’re totally disregarding the sentiment of the majority of Americans who’ll have one more reason to believe the president is being unfairly set up and harassed.

According to a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released exclusively to The Hill, 62 percent of those surveyed opposed secretly taping the commander in chief59 percent said they thought releasing any tape with a recording of the President should be illegal and punishable by law. 35 percent said leaks could pose a threat to the country’s national security and should be outlawed, while only 21 percent of voters said they feel leaks are an important factor in informing the public and should not be made illegal.
The Hill, 8/27/18

And the very media that’s salivating over this secretly obtained audio of President Trump is very protective of their own privacy. For example, on the 13th floor of the National Press Club building in D.C., The Reliable Source Bar & Grill is frequented by Capitol Hill members of the media. There’s just one house rule understood and strictly enforced: batteries are to be removed from smartphones as to maintain an atmosphere where under-the-influenced reporters, etc. are free to speak in respected privacy; a courtesy not afforded to this President of the United States.

While the American people may not agree with the president secretly being recorded,  it’s not against the law in the nation’s capital and Fruman knew it when he laid his phone on that particular dinner table….

The District of Columbia’s wiretapping law is a “one-party consent” law. DC makes it a crime to record a phone call or conversation unless one party to the conversation consents. See D.C. Code § 23-542. Thus, if you operate in DC, you may record a conversation or phone call if you are a party to the conversation or you get permission from one party to the conversation in advance.
District of Columbia Recording Law

Obviously Lev Parnas was okay with it so all was just peachy.

Which again gets back to the vetting of anyone to be in any way associated with President Trump. We observed many in the fat slug category, sliming their way into the president-elect’s transition circle, some getting jobs in the administration while Reince Priebus’ selection process has now been proven to have been extremely lacking. And now the media is saying in unison that President Trump is lying about knowing Parnas.

You meet a lot of people, I meet a lot of people, certainly the president meets a lot of people. It’s a dinner, 90 minutes of a dinner, hard to be able to say to the president who meets 1,000 people a day, ‘OK, do you know this person who was at a dinner with you a year and a half ago?’
Sen. James Lankford, (R-OK)

This response may be unacceptable to the media, but any reasonable person gets it.

We’ve been to a few political gatherings in and around the Washington D.C., Northern Virginia area, we’ve met nowhere near the amount of people President Trump has between campaign rallies, Oval Office meetings, special events, donor dinners, and if someone came up to us and told us they met us at an event a couple years ago, chances are we might remember them. Chances are also we may not.

This media can get all bent out shape because they were secretly caught on video saying outrageous things about their ideological opponents and/or customers by Project Veritas, but when they can get their hands on media they perceive as damaging to President Trump, it’s a really good day.

Lucky for them they didn’t do this to President Obama.

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