Let's make this simple. The initial counterintel investigation of Flynn had zero foundation. The actual document that began this fiasco had three points.
1. Flynn was "cited as an advisor to the Trump campaign on foreign policy issues."
Anyone here who does not see that this is an overtly political, and extraordinarily illegal formulation is just willfully dishonest. You don't get to investigate your Administration's political opposition just because they are your political opposition. Even if you are the FBI. Every Presidential candidate has someone experienced in "foreign policy issues" acting as an advisor on such. A Lt. General with a war hero record who also served as head of DIA is a pretty good resume.
2. Flynn "has ties to various state-affiliated entities of the Russian Federation, as reported by open source information."
Wow. They guy ran Defense Dept Intel and he has "ties" as described. Like he has similar ties to the UK, Canada, Mexico, China, Germany, Luxembourg probably. Geez, Clinton was Secretary of State. How many ties to "state-affiliated entities of the Russian Federation" does she have? At least as many as Flynn. She did the famous "Russian Reset" comedy routine with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. That went down so badly it should have been a SNL sketch, but Clinton thought it was a serious ceremony. This point 2 is meaningless. "Open source information." That means the FBI read about it in the newspaper. Such impressive intel collecting technique! With that standard, think of the investigations FBI could be doing on Meghan Markle right now? Or Kim Kardashian?
3. Flynn "traveled to Russia in December 2015."
Man, that looks bad. In retirement, he was hired (for about $45,000) to attend a public event with Russian big wigs- Putin included- and took the gig. It was the same year Bill Clinton spoke to a bunch of Russian state-affiliated companies for more than ten times as much money, $500,000. I am guessing Billy Boy was investigated too, since he was no doubt an advisor to his wife, campaigned with her, had well known ties to Russia, China and a zillion other countries, and just happened to get paid far bigger money from Russians for a speech than Flynn could dream of. How much influence do you suppose he was offering? And what's the latest on the Crossfire Billy investigation? I haven't heard lately.
So, to Random Guy who still insists on posting left wing propaganda from Lawfare, much of which is not even written by lawyers (such as the clowns in the initial piece RG posted near the start of this thread), I guess my question is why do you insist on posting Democrat Party Propaganda on a gun forum? I guess it doesn't matter, but I can't believe you don't know the ilk behind the "Lawfare" org. You might just as well get your info from Adam Schiff, Jim Comey or John Brennan.
Moving forward, on Jan 4, 2017, Crossfire Razor is ordered closed, because a thorough hunt for any negative information on General Flynn has come up with literally ZERO. As in, he is clean as a whistle. But someone- likely to be Comey, Obama, Brennan or someone else in such high position- tells Peter Strzok NOT to close it. So, on Jan 5 Strzok tells the CR team to leave it open, despite a total lack of predication. Hmm, that leaves the political as the only remaining motivation.
Just a few days before, Flynn has made the calls to Kislyak. That's his job. Why that day, December 29th? That is exactly the question that Obama needs to be asked. Why, a month and a half after the election, did Obama suddenly impose sanctions and expel Russian diplomats for something he claims they were doing for months BEFORE the election? What could possibly be achieved by doing that barely three weeks before leaving office? Why didn't he do that in September, October, early November? Oh, because he "knew" Hillary was going to win and the last thing they wanted to talk about was Russian interference, which mattered nothing to them except as they could fabricate such evidence to attach to Trump.
Important to remember exactly what the Russians did. It was horrible. They spent about $100k on Facebook ads. Much of it POST election. Wow, that must have had SO MUCH MORE impact than the tens of millions the two major campaigns spent in the same medium. I mean, when does $100,000 not beat $80,000,000 in effectiveness? Other than the real world, that is. And no, there is no evidence to suggest the Russians stole DNC or Hillary e-mails from the DNC servers. See Crowdstrike CEO's admission, under oath during his House Committee testimony: no evidence any information was "exfiltrated" to Russia. That the Russians hacked the DNC is a lie that has never had a shred of evidence to support it. Crowdstrike alone saw the servers, FBI took Crowdstrike's internally redacted report as gospel. That is not evidence by any definition. Podesta shipped his own e-mails out by falling for a phishing scam like many of us get in our e-mail daily. That's not evidence either. This is the entirety of the foundation for Russian interference. That's all there is. End of story.
Back to Flynn and the phone calls. So, according to the FBI, Flynn answered, when asked if he had told Kislyak NOT to retaliate, "Not really. I don't remember. It wasn't 'don't do anything.'" That's it. This comes directly from the FBI Agent's report on the Flynn interview, and the question was about the expulsions. Don't miss that. The question was about THE EXPULSIONS. As in, NOT THE SANCTIONS. Obama's orders involved two completely separate actions. Sanctions against specific personnel, and expulsions of Russian diplomats in the U.S. Flynn did not address the sanctions, as he was not asked about it, in the specific answer that is the foundation used by Mueller Special Counsel Prosecutor Brandon Van Grack. So what's the big deal? Out of this, they created a story that Flynn had denied discussing the "sanctions" when in fact he was asked about a different element altogether. Next, it is claimed that he told Kislyak not to "retaliate" when in fact he did nothing of the kind. He asked him not to "escalate." A ti t-for-tat is a defined retaliation. We threw out 35 guys, they throw out 35 guys. In contrast, an "escalation" is to do MORE than just the eye for an eye. This is what Flynn asked. Perfectly legit. Perfectly legal. Perfectly diplomatic.
But you see, Flynn did not have the benefit of a transcript of a four week old conversation in front of him. He probably talked to a dozen other foreign dignitaries that same day. No one could remember every detail of a call. Funny thing, we don't know that the two FBI agents had a transcript either. While that certainly existed, what has come out is that "summaries" of the calls were being used. A summary may not include the exact words, and may be written to suggest something not accurate. Even if they had the exact words, and Flynn didn't recall it word for word, where exactly is the lie?
To supplement that, SC Prosecutor Van Grack filed this as part of the court documents supporting Flynn's guilt plea the following statement: “Immediately after his phone call with the [Presidential Transition Team] official, FLYNN called the Russian ambassador and requested that Russia not escalate the situation and only respond to U.S. sanctions in a reciprocal manner.” Which is exactly what the two FBI agents stated that Flynn told them. I ask again, where exactly is the lie?
Well, as I think I posted pages back, both James Comey and Andrew McCabe- the bosses of the two agents that interviewed Flynn- testified, under oath before Congress, that those two agents did NOT believe Flynn had lied. He displayed no body language that suggested he was anything but 100% comfortable and telling the truth as best he could recall it. Despite this, agent Strzok is now on public record as having rewritten the Flynn 302, with cooperation from his paramour FBI attorney Lisa Page. Uh, that's illegal, guys. To this day, the original 302, which should have been drawn up within 5 days by strict FBI requirements, remains a mystery. FBI refused to produce it. Instead, they have only offered the rewritten one. That is all we need to know that they have nothing. Testimony under oath by the top two officials in the FBI, and no original documentation to contradict their testimony. Flynn did not lie.
So why did he enter the plea? That's well documented. Flynn was driven to bankruptcy. He had sold his house. Prosecutor Van Grack had literally threatened to investigate and prosecute Flynn's son and, should the General not agree to the proposed plea deal there and then, he would be formally charged the next day and face untold further millions in legal fees. What Van Grack did NOT tell Flynn is what makes this all so twisted. A deal had already been struck with Flynn's Covington Firm attorneys. They agreed that Flynn's son would be left alone. Neither Van Grack nor Flynn's attorneys informed Flynn of this fact. (Can you say malpractice suit?) Also, Van Grack never gave Flynn and the Covington boys the transcripts of the calls with Kislyak, the summaries, or any other exculpatory information. What Van Grack did was fabricate a big bad monster under the bed, that was going to come out and eat General Flynn, his son and his family's finances if Flynn did not plea then and there. That's it. Flynn had no reason to believe that the false allegation that he lied to the FBI was merely a bluff. He was told they had absolute proof and he knew it was possible he had remembered something incorrectly, and so they would charge him with said "lie." Covington had a duty to tell him that they had yet to be presented with ANY EVIDENCE that this was so. They colluded with Van Grack's bluff. And Flynn felt it was the only way to protect is family. Fall on the grenade.
That's it. He knew he never stated anything he believed was false. But what he was denied was the knowledge that an honest misstatement was not criminal, and that there was nothing material to predicate the interview, making it legally meaningless. He was set up. (See WH meeting of Jan 5 where Obama himself informs Acting AG about the Flynn/Kislyak calls the President had no business knowing about, certainly before the country's chief LEO. This according to Sally Yate's own sworn testimony.) This was Comey, Obama and (perhaps) Biden, who are all present at the critical meeting where not only the calls but the suggestion of the Logan Act is first broached. Strzok has now stopped the Flynn CR file from being closed, and it's on to the staged interview where all efforts were made to entrap Flynn. If you don't know all the deliberate steps that were taken to insure Flynn was unaware he was a target, you need to read more. Oh, not on Lawfare, by the way.
One or two last things. For all the news of the 30-odd people who unmasked Flynn in the 3-4 months before the inauguration, it has become evident that he was never masked in the first place with regard to the Kislyak calls. That is a problem in itself, given by December 29th the FBI knew he was no risk as an agent of any foreign power. That was just days before they formally wrote the document to close the case. But as I hinted before, the timing is most critical. Obama issued the sanctions and punishment exactly at the time he knew Flynn was making contacts with ambassadors and such from nations all over the planet, in his capacity as the incoming NSA. It was a slam dunk that Kislyak and Flynn would have reason to speak upon the imposition of such dramatic penalties. Penalties that could easily have been done many weeks or months before. But they were done just as it became clear they had nothing on Flynn. Something had to be done about that. It is possible, even likely, that Obama used the sanctions and expulsions specifically as a provocative measure to insure that Flynn and Kislyak would be talking. It was known that Kislyaks calls were all monitored. It was known that technically Flynn was still the subject of the Razor corollary to the Crossfire Hurricane matter, so his name need not be masked. And so, giving him time to forget his verbatim conversation was the seed planted at the WH meeting on Jan 5, where Obama himself brings up Flynn, the calls and discusses the Logan Act, plus Comey stating he might withhold info from Flynn in the transition capacity. Comey had merely to wait until the new WH team was getting set up in the first 3 or 4 days, stating on the record that he used that dynamic to bypass all FBI and WH protocols in order to get to Flynn without legal protection.
And lying to VP Pence and Sean Spicer? Note that FBI never interviewed either of those two, because that was also staged. Some "high ranking Obama official" illegally leaks the classified phone calls to reporter David Ignatius. Suddenly it's all public. This is not only part of setting up Flynn for the interview itself, it is to set up the false impression that Flynn lied to Pence and Spicer. Pence has recently said he has second thoughts, knowing now all that was in play. It's the same word game, sanctions vs expulsions, retaliate vs escalate. It took very little for the press to make the case that Flynn had not told the truth, when in fact he was only made to doubt himself when the FBI went and tricked him into thinking he had said something provably, materially false. Now we know that's not true and, only because of Sidney Powell, Flynn himself now knows he was denied the transcripts specifically in order to trick him into believing he had misstated material facts. Can't wait until the mystery transcripts get declassified and we all can see the verbatim words used to entrap Flynn.
So Random Guy, you have nothing. Lawfare Blog is Orwellian Doublespeak. I can give you a 20 year federal prosecutor's articles that rip that Lawfare crap apart piece by piece. I'll post it all if I have to. But for now, I have just taken the facts, from the now declassified documents and court filings and laid it all out in my own words.
