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Comment by piffey | Hacker News Reader

This is a thought exercise, not my opinion as it's too complex/conspiracy theory-ish and more the plot of a Tom Clancy novel, but what if Obama is expanding the power and handing the reins over to intelligence groups that Trump has sidelined? The NSA/CIA are fantastic at collapsing and running foreign governments -- why not ours?

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That is an interesting thought.

We do know Obama (like most presidents) is pretty cozy with the Intelligence Community. We know Trump isn't. I think a coup d'etat or shadow government is too much of a stretch, but this may at least let them work around Trump to an extent.

Also, we're living in interesting times where thoughts like "the intelligence agencies are covertly trying to work around the President!" are actually considered a neutral or good thing by many.

I've heard rumors that a decent number of people will resign from their jobs in the Intelligence Community. This will allow Trump to appoint more political employees. I don't know if this is true or not, but Trump's relationship with those agencies might get less hostile.

Well, if the people who stick around are constantly clashing with the political appointments, things might get even more hostile.

Maybe he'll appoint someone who will lie to Congress less?

It's an interesting thought, but it would be extremely reckless for Obama to do this with the hope of undermining Trump.

Trump and those sympathetic to him could easily use the power of the intelligence apparatus to punish anyone who opposes him. We've already seen Congress pass a measure allowing them to reduce any federal employee's salary to $1. There's also a bill that would make future federal employees at-will hires that the president can fire. Imagine the climate of fear and intimidation that can be created if the president can fire anyway and has access to a massive surveillance complex that monitor all manner of digital communications.

Now maybe Obama knows something we don't, maybe he knows there really is damning information about Trump out there that just needs to find its way to the right hands. But even if that is the case, a more powerful surveillance state is not going to police itself, nor weaken itself even if Trump gets pushed out.

> Now maybe Obama knows something we don't, maybe he knows there really is damning information about Trump out there that just needs to find its way to the right hands.

Makes no sense. If he did, a couple of months ago would have been the best time for it to come out.

We don't have to assume Obama knew about it back then. The spooks could have been keeping it in their pocket for December-intelligence-briefing leverage. In years past, they haven't had to worry about who was president, because they had a degree of control over each one. Now that it's clear that Trump DGAF, they're desperately circulating all the dirty laundry they have or can manufacture, but perhaps to no avail?

As the sibling comment said, maybe things only came to Obama's attention recently. There could be information that intelligence personnel were pursuing but felt like they needed to escalate to the president given other information that has come to light. Could be people with a grudge. Could be that they were pursuing rumors but then recently found more substance to those rumors.

All things considered I think there's a decent possibility that President Trump has more skeletons in the closet that haven't been outed yet.

My first thought and in my mind not at all complex. I can imagine a bunch of last minute meetings with a bitter President (Obama) and angry and scared TLA representatives cooking up a surprise treat for the President elect. Probably phrased as "a last defence line for democracy", "in the event of a substantial rogue political support base for a compromised commander-in-chief". Or such.

Then he'd be setting up something a faction that's analogous the the Praetorian Guard, and that worked so well for Rome.

That would make him a horrible human being.

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