bearister said:

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https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/fbi-set-up-michael-flynn-to-preserve-trump-russia-probe/

bearister said:

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I personally think Flynn is guilty as f@uck...but even guilty people walk when there are procedural irregularities. I'm happy to let the courts decide his fate....but tRump will pardon him if his plea is upheld.

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https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/05/another_bombshell_about_flynn__and_it_may_reach_up_to_obama_and_biden.html

Unit2Sucks said:

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bearlyamazing said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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bearlyamazing said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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bearlyamazing said:

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What a joke. The Logan Act? Please tell me the last time anyone was ever prosecuted for that. Answer? Never.

You clowns want to throw the book at conservatives only and only when it suits your needs.

If the book should be thrown at General Flynn, the library should be thrown at Comey, Clapper, Brennan, Strzok, Page, Halper, Priestap and so many other people who have done FAR more damage legally then Flynn.

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The joke is you want to prosecute people for doing their jobs but celebrate traitors like Flynn. On Election Day he should have been focused on the transition and preparing to be DNI but instead he was taking money to write an OpEd for Turkey. He was a foreign agent and a huge security risk as DNI but you worship him.

I guess it makes sense since you have fallen hook line and sinker for Trump and his cronies. I hope you enjoy sending your campaign donations to Kimberly Guildoyle and other Trump cronies on the campaign payroll.

When did conservatives stop start carrying water for traitors who are on foreign government payrolls and lie about it? You used to punish people like that.

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Some of the nonsense you post here is absolutely laughable. Prosecute people for doing their job? Really? Brennan, Comey, Clapper, Strzok, Page, Priestap, McCabe and the rest of the sorry stooges just earnestly doing their jobs? How f'ing gullible are you? Seriously. This is just beyond belief, even from you.

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Believe it or not I enjoy being lectured by someone with a PhD in right wing YouTube conspiracy theories. It would worry me if someone like you who is unable to discern reality from Alex Jones fantasy somehow agreed with me.

Fortunately there will always be another conspiracy theory to capture your fancy and entertain the rest of us.

Let us know when you contribute to Traitor Flynn's legal defense fund and how that works out for you.

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You're pathetic. You've seen reams of evidence and people fired for cause from these clowns you say are "just trying to do their job" and when continually faced with facts and evidence, even reluctantly by the mainstream media, you turn to the stupid conspiracy theory crap. I don't believe you're stupid but you sure post some stupid and blatantly disingenuous bull**** here with regularity. Who exactly are you trying to convince with this crap? And your continuing to call General Flynn a traitor says a lot about your character. Or lack thereof.

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Here in the real world Trump's DOJ prosecuted Flynn, Manafort, Gates, the coffee boy, Cohen and Stone and none of the people you've accused of wrongdoing. Flynn sold out his country for Turkish $$ and yet you breathlessly defend him. You Gish Gallop from conspiracy theory to conspiracy theory and probably never wonder why it is that things don't work out the way you expect them to.

Call me when the number of convicted people you've criticized exceeds the number of Trump associates convicted. Meanwhile, and not coincidentally, thousands of Americans die every day in a crisis that Trump has completely botched. It's not a coincidence that Trump has been throwing out red meat for the base to distract from yet another disaster he's overseeing as commander in chief. How many more crises will Trump need to botch before you start to realize that he's not the night in shining armor that you dream about at night?

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Please explain how Flynn is a traitor? By possibly lobbying (indirectly) for Turkey? By failing to file a proper FARA report - which for all other people is a minor violation that is routinely fixed after the fact and almost never criminally charged? Is he a traitor because he disagreed with Obama's foreign policy?

Here is an article from a VERY anti-Trump website that sets out how rare it is to prosecute FARA violations. https://www.lawfareblog.com/justice-departments-new-unprecedented-use-foreign-agents-registration-act

And if you think FARA is a major thing, can you explain why Tony Podesta and MANY other people have not been prosecuted for FARA violations - only the guy closest to Trump. https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/24/weber-podesta-investigation-foreign-lobbying-1509942

You claimed that Flynn took money from Russia. Please provide evidence - I don't believe there is any. In fact, the recent release confirms that Flynn was cleared by the FBI of any wrongdoing involving Russia on 1/4/2017 - before the FBI interview. You have surprising hatred of the guy - the reality is he's not different than most of Washington - people who go in and out of government and take massive lobbying dollars. For every Flynn (who incidentally was a registered democrat) or republican grifter, there's a Clintonista doing the same thing. Its gross, but not criminalized.

In terms of Flynn's lying, I think the entrapment/perjury trap argument is just a rabbit hole and largely irrelevant. In order to be criminal, the alleged lie needs to be material to a proper FBI investigation/matter. So the question is, how could what Flynn have said been material when: (i) he had already been exonerated by the FBI of colluding with Russia; (ii) the FBI had no other proper investigation pending related to the phone call; (iii) the FBI had a transcript of the call and knew exactly what was said, so whatever Flynn said couldn't have changed what they knew; and (iv) in any event, the FBI concluded he did not lie (i.e., have the requisite intent) and was probably only misremembering - this was confirmed by James Comey in congressional testimony. It was only after Mueller's team took over and they wanted to squeeze Flynn that the "lie" allegation, combined with bankrupting flynn and threatening his son, became part of the plan. But you're right - nothing to see here.

What was the FBI properly investigating in its interview with Flynn? The answer is nothing. The interview was pretext to take out Flynn with either bogus Logan Act claims or a "lie." The fact that the FBI and Sally Yates even raised the Logan Act shows has objectively bad faith the endeavor was - it is laughable. And if you dispute that, please confirm that the FBI has similarly investigated John Kerry for his constant direct meddling with Iran since 2017.

Flynn did what a lot of people in his situation would do. He took a deal. The question is would he have done so had he known - and had the FBI disclosed - all of the materials they failed to disclose. For example, if he'd have known the FBI had initially concluded he didn't lie, I think that's a game changer. And the feds had a standing obligation to disclose those items - that's not really in dispute. Not to mention the fact that the 302 was edited after the fact and all the other evidence coming out now that reflects very poorly on Mueller's prosecutors and the FBI.

Flynn may not be a hero. But he's entitled to the same due process and fairness that any other defendant would be. And if you can't see that he was targeted solely because he was a Trump supporter - and received disparate treatment - then you're partisan hatred is clouding your judgment.

In a different era, Flynn's GRU contact issues would have been resolved at dawn.

blungld said:

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dajo9 said:

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It's no use talking to bearlyamazing. He has injected the disinfectant.

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Put any Democrat under Obama having done the same action and he would be apoplectic. It's not just a double standard, it's a complete tunnel view of reality and the inability to sort through fact, propaganda, and ideological loyalty. He is a lost cause, no longer a thinking person who deserves consideration. He should be entirely ignored.

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Typical lefty. Trying to shut down and marginalize voices they don't like. What a laughable double standard. You and so many other lefty whack jobs have posted and propagated so much outright garbage and lies about Trump and those in his orbit you've lapped up from Rachel Madcow and the like over the last few years here that's been proven dead wrong and you want to come at me? And it's hilarious that you and so many others here try to sell the bs lefty Biden line that "everyone wanted him fired." A "thinking person" wouldn't accept that for a second. Flat out, blatant quid pro quo of the most scandalous kind. And General Flynn's "a traitor?" Clown.

Unit2Sucks said:

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BearGoggles said:

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Please explain how Flynn is a traitor? By possibly lobbying (indirectly) for Turkey? By failing to file a proper FARA report - which for all other people is a minor violation that is routinely fixed after the fact and almost never criminally charged? Is he a traitor because he disagreed with Obama's foreign policy?

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Why do you say "possibly"? He belatedly registered as a foreign agent for Turkey. The only "possibly" here is whether he and his idiot son actually made plans to kidnap Fethullah Gulen for the Turkish government?

Call me old fashioned, but I think that the Director of National Intelligence should have allegiances to the United States and no other country. I don't think it's okay for him to secretly take money from Turkey and Russia. You want to hang your hat on the fact that private citizens aren't always prosecuted for crimes? That's pretty weak for a member of the "law and order" party.

This isn't a political issue as he has been roundly criticized by both left and right. Here's another "law and order" Fox News republican on Flynn:

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"As a former military officer, you simply cannot take money from Russia, Turkey or anybody else," Jason Chaffetz said. "And it appears as if he did take that money, it was inappropriate and there are repercussions for a violation of law."

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BearGoggles I know you like to be a contrarian and defend the indefensible whenever you believe it is under attack by scary liberals, but Michael Flynn is a traitor who put his own personal interests before our national security and doesn't deserve your defense.

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I say possibly because the money he took was from a Turkish company - not the government of Turkey. It has not yet been proven that at the time he knew it was government money (or that it actually was).

He was the NSA, not DNI and never was DNI. But in any event, he was not DNI/NSA or in government when he took the money, so I have no idea why you're raising that as an issue. I think its absurd to call him a traitor. If he is, then explain to me why these people are not also traitors: Hillary and Bill Clinton (lots of speaking fees and the Clinton Foundation), madeleine albright (lobbyist), Kissinger group (lobbyist), John and Tony Podesta (look up the Podesta Group).

Former NSAs who later took massive amounts of foreign government money (including from enemies like China and Russia) include Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinkki (sp?), Brent Scowcroft. Basically, it is what government people do. And, incidentally, none of them registered under FARA.
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/01/17/foreign_influence-peddling_in_dc_a_clear_and_present_muddle.html

And Chaffetz is both right and wrong. Former military officials can take money from foreign governments as a legal matter. But they shouldn't. The reality is that it happens all the time, people did not register for FARA, and it was seldom if ever prosecuted - particularly if the filings were made after the fact.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-foreign-lobbying-mueller-20180301-story.html

Cave Bear said:

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BearGoggles said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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bearlyamazing said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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bearlyamazing said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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bearlyamazing said:

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What a joke. The Logan Act? Please tell me the last time anyone was ever prosecuted for that. Answer? Never.

You clowns want to throw the book at conservatives only and only when it suits your needs.

If the book should be thrown at General Flynn, the library should be thrown at Comey, Clapper, Brennan, Strzok, Page, Halper, Priestap and so many other people who have done FAR more damage legally then Flynn.

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The joke is you want to prosecute people for doing their jobs but celebrate traitors like Flynn. On Election Day he should have been focused on the transition and preparing to be DNI but instead he was taking money to write an OpEd for Turkey. He was a foreign agent and a huge security risk as DNI but you worship him.

I guess it makes sense since you have fallen hook line and sinker for Trump and his cronies. I hope you enjoy sending your campaign donations to Kimberly Guildoyle and other Trump cronies on the campaign payroll.

When did conservatives stop start carrying water for traitors who are on foreign government payrolls and lie about it? You used to punish people like that.

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Some of the nonsense you post here is absolutely laughable. Prosecute people for doing their job? Really? Brennan, Comey, Clapper, Strzok, Page, Priestap, McCabe and the rest of the sorry stooges just earnestly doing their jobs? How f'ing gullible are you? Seriously. This is just beyond belief, even from you.

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Believe it or not I enjoy being lectured by someone with a PhD in right wing YouTube conspiracy theories. It would worry me if someone like you who is unable to discern reality from Alex Jones fantasy somehow agreed with me.

Fortunately there will always be another conspiracy theory to capture your fancy and entertain the rest of us.

Let us know when you contribute to Traitor Flynn's legal defense fund and how that works out for you.

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You're pathetic. You've seen reams of evidence and people fired for cause from these clowns you say are "just trying to do their job" and when continually faced with facts and evidence, even reluctantly by the mainstream media, you turn to the stupid conspiracy theory crap. I don't believe you're stupid but you sure post some stupid and blatantly disingenuous bull**** here with regularity. Who exactly are you trying to convince with this crap? And your continuing to call General Flynn a traitor says a lot about your character. Or lack thereof.

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Here in the real world Trump's DOJ prosecuted Flynn, Manafort, Gates, the coffee boy, Cohen and Stone and none of the people you've accused of wrongdoing. Flynn sold out his country for Turkish $$ and yet you breathlessly defend him. You Gish Gallop from conspiracy theory to conspiracy theory and probably never wonder why it is that things don't work out the way you expect them to.

Call me when the number of convicted people you've criticized exceeds the number of Trump associates convicted. Meanwhile, and not coincidentally, thousands of Americans die every day in a crisis that Trump has completely botched. It's not a coincidence that Trump has been throwing out red meat for the base to distract from yet another disaster he's overseeing as commander in chief. How many more crises will Trump need to botch before you start to realize that he's not the night in shining armor that you dream about at night?

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Please explain how Flynn is a traitor? By possibly lobbying (indirectly) for Turkey? By failing to file a proper FARA report - which for all other people is a minor violation that is routinely fixed after the fact and almost never criminally charged? Is he a traitor because he disagreed with Obama's foreign policy?

Here is an article from a VERY anti-Trump website that sets out how rare it is to prosecute FARA violations. https://www.lawfareblog.com/justice-departments-new-unprecedented-use-foreign-agents-registration-act

And if you think FARA is a major thing, can you explain why Tony Podesta and MANY other people have not been prosecuted for FARA violations - only the guy closest to Trump. https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/24/weber-podesta-investigation-foreign-lobbying-1509942

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Note there's no argument made here that Flynn didn't break the law, only equivocation. No argument the law wasn't broken, not even an argument the law is wrong. Know what's really funny with what you wrote about the rareness of FARA prosecutions? The Trump Justice Department just tried and failed to convict a Democrat of breaking FARA. A Trump appointed DA brought a case again a Democrat who failed to register and he was acquitted -- but only because the statute of limitations had expired. As far as I know, it's the only case brought by a Trump appointed federal DA from the Mueller investigation.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/04/greg-craig-found-not-guilty-in-ukraine-lobbying-case-1481017

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You claimed that Flynn took money from Russia. Please provide evidence - I don't believe there is any.

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Flynn took $65,000 from Russian government linked companies in 2015, including $45,000 from state-owned broadcaster RT for Flynn's infamous trip to Moscow and speech at a gala where he was seated next to Putin. This is while his own government is fighting proxy wars with Russia in Ukraine and Syria.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/politics/michael-flynn-russia-paid-trip.html

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In fact, the recent release confirms that Flynn was cleared by the FBI of any wrongdoing involving Russia on 1/4/2017 - before the FBI interview. You have surprising hatred of the guy - the reality is he's not different than most of Washington - people who go in and out of government and take massive lobbying dollars. For every Flynn (who incidentally was a registered democrat) or republican grifter, there's a Clintonista doing the same thing. Its gross, but not criminalized.

In terms of Flynn's lying, I think the entrapment/perjury trap argument is just a rabbit hole and largely irrelevant. In order to be criminal, the alleged lie needs to be material to a proper FBI investigation/matter. So the question is, how could what Flynn have said been material when:

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The first sentence is a big falsehood that will be dealt with below. For now let's just note the renewed equivocation, softening the ground for the ultimate conclusion that Flynn broke a bunch of laws but who cares.

Now let's look at the enumerated points i - iv

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(i) he had already been exonerated by the FBI of colluding with Russia;

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Here's that special "conservative" understanding of what exoneration means that they put on display when Trump declared himself exonerated by a report that there was insufficient evidence of criminal wrongdoing with regard to collusion but that Trump had committed 10 acts that amount to obstruction of justice. Note that neither of these is what being exonerated looks like. To be exonerated is to be cleared from blame; it is not negative, as in "it is not conclusive that you are guilty", it is positive as in "it is conclusive that you are innocent". Is this what the FBI concluded of Flynn? No.

The FBI was prepared to close their Mueller-related investigation of Flynn on Jan 4 2017 because they had received no "derogatory" information related to him in the course of the investigation. No evidence had come in that Flynn was involved so they were going to stop investigating him. However, even if closing their Mueller-related investigation of Flynn did amount to "exonerating" him, Flynn still wouldn't be exonerated since ultimately the FBI chose NOT to close the investigation on Jan 4, due to the intervention of Peter Strzok (as far as I know there is no documentation regarding why Strzok wanted to keep going).

Moreover the memo in which closing Flynn's file is initiated, it is said "If new information is identified or reported to the FBI regarding the activities of [Flynn], the FBI will consider reopening the investigation if warranted."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/us/politics/trump-flynn-stone.html?smid=tw-share

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(ii) the FBI had no other proper investigation pending related to the phone call;

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FBI management did not know about the phone call until after they had initially determined to close the investigation into Flynn. Whether Strzok might have known about it is something I wonder. The timing on how soon after Strzok countermanded the instruction to close Flynn's case the FBI hierarchy learned of the contents of Flynn's Dec 29 call (a week earlier) is not clear but it's also irrelevant. Even if the FBI had closed Flynn's file and then learned of the call several days later they would be justified in reopening the investigation into him based either on their stipulation about "new information" in the memo or just common sense.

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(iii) the FBI had a transcript of the call and knew exactly what was said, so whatever Flynn said couldn't have changed what they knew;

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Funny thing about the disclosed FBI documents: right-wingers are loudly crying they show the FBI was out to get Flynn when they very clearly show their priority going into the interview was in assessing Flynn, not prosecuting him. Their idea was to "put him on notice and see what he does with that."

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.191592/gov.uscourts.dcd.191592.189.1.pdf

The tone of their internal dialogue plus their initial inclination to close their investigation of Flynn completely undercuts claims that the FBI was simply out to nail him for political purposes: "Our goal is to determine if Mike Flynn is going to tell the truth @ his relationship w/ Russians"

https://www.scribd.com/document/459057200/doc-188#fullscreen&from_embed

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and (iv) in any event, the FBI concluded he did not lie (i.e., have the requisite intent) and was probably only misremembering - this was confirmed by James Comey in congressional testimony. It was only after Mueller's team took over and they wanted to squeeze Flynn that the "lie" allegation, combined with bankrupting flynn and threatening his son, became part of the plan. But you're right - nothing to see here.

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Prove it.

I'm serious, show me proof the FBI concluded he did not lie because I have proof the FBI concluded he did lie: the notes from the interviewing agents which were taken at the FBI office immediately following the Flynn interview and filed in February 2017.

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5633260/12-17-18-Redacted-Flynn-Interview-302.pdf

There is no FBI documentation at all that says Flynn did not lie. The only thing I know of that comes close is apparently from Strzok's June 2017 debriefing (the documentation either has not been released or I cannot find it) wherein he apparently said his read from Flynn's relaxed and unguarded demeanor that he was not lying. That is not the same as the FBI saying Flynn did not lie. Flynn very clearly lied and Strzok's own interview notes prove it -- he made "materially false statements" when directly asked three consecutive times whether he and Kislyak discussed the Obama sanctions. In March 2017 Comey apparently privately told the House Intelligence Committee the same thing, so this was original impression by Strzok. However, and this is very important, the fact that Strzok assessed Flynn's demeanor as indicating non-deception does not mean Flynn wasn't lying! Of course Flynn did not want to appear deceptive when he was telling lies!

Less important overall but more important for you to address re: your claims that "it was only after Mueller's team took over" that the FBI claimed Flynn had lied -- Mueller was not appointed until May 17 2017. The FBI had accused Flynn of lying almost immediately after their interview in January! Two days after the interview the FBI informed Attorney General Sally Yates of Flynn's lies and Flynn was fired in February by Trump for lying about the Kislyak call to Pence. It was not the Mueller probe that turned Flynn's false statements into a crime, you have completely fabricated that falsehood.

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What was the FBI properly investigating in its interview with Flynn? The answer is nothing. The interview was pretext to take out Flynn with either bogus Logan Act claims or a "lie." The fact that the FBI and Sally Yates even raised the Logan Act shows has objectively bad faith the endeavor was - it is laughable. And if you dispute that, please confirm that the FBI has similarly investigated John Kerry for his constant direct meddling with Iran since 2017.

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First let's note the return of equivocation. "Others do it too" is now the (selective) approach to excusing law breaking by "conservatives". Second note that there is no actual evidence that Kerry advised Iran take an action contrary to the explicit policy of the US government, but there is a transcript of Flynn's talks. So even the equivocation is built on nothing.

Now let's talk about the Logan Act. It's been the law for over 200 years, and not one of those laws that doesn't get repealed because no one knows it exists. There have been attempts to repeal it and they fail despite the constitutional liberty questions and the fact that no one has ever been convicted of its breach, and I believe it is because the law actually does touch upon a compelling state interest. US citizens should not be directly conspiring with adversarial governments to sabotage the diplomatic policy of their own government. That said, I can respect an anti-Logan Act position, but only one assumed honorably. It is not honorable for a high public officer to purposefully break a law they don't like, and then break the law again by lying about it to cover it up. If the Logan Act is wrong, Flynn should have admitted his actions to the FBI when they came to interview him and dared them to give him a chance to have the law overturned through prosecution.

However, I don't think Flynn was worried about being prosecuted for violating the act when he lied about the Kislyak conversation. I think he was worried about the exposure of improper communications with the Russians at a moment when the Trump administration was under fire for having colluded with them to corrupt the 2016 election. Regardless of whether he would be prosecuted for the breach, admitting it happened exposes him and the Trump administration to more probing about the matter including perilous questions like "who told you to collaborate with Kislyak about defeating Obama's sanctions?"

A little historical note: Republicans have a proven history of this kind of behavior. In October 1968 the Johnson administration was trying to get a peace plan working while Nixon was secretly telling the government of South Vietnam to stonewall peace efforts, promising them a better deal once Nixon had won the White House. Nixon denied this on a phone call with Johnson, possibly not knowing that the president had transcripts of conversations between his campaign and South Vietnam. Later Nixon denied knowing about the secret negotiations and that denial held up in public for 50 years until his aide HR Halderman's notes on the operation personally implicating Nixon were discovered among his papers.

Ultimately however it doesn't matter why Flynn lied. He did lie. They have him dead to rights on having made materially false statements. That's on top of the Logan Act and FARA violations (the latter his son is also implicated in).

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Flynn did what a lot of people in his situation would do. He took a deal. The question is would he have done so had he known - and had the FBI disclosed - all of the materials they failed to disclose. For example, if he'd have known the FBI had initially concluded he didn't lie, I think that's a game changer. And the feds had a standing obligation to disclose those items - that's not really in dispute. Not to mention the fact that the 302 was edited after the fact and all the other evidence coming out now that reflects very poorly on Mueller's prosecutors and the FBI.

Flynn may not be a hero. But he's entitled to the same due process and fairness that any other defendant would be. And if you can't see that he was targeted solely because he was a Trump supporter - and received disparate treatment - then you're partisan hatred is clouding your judgment.

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Again, the FBI never concluded Flynn did not lie. As for the rest of the "revelations" in the documentation, they reflect what the law enforcement establishment in this country regards as legitimate investigatory techniques. The FBI did not entrap Mike Flynn, nor is it even clear from their internal communications that they were trying to target him for prosecution. What is clear is they were determined to understand his role in the larger Russia investigation, and ultimately they were successful in leveraging Flynn's culpability into turning him informant.

Not only has Flynn received the due process he's entitled to, but in fact he has been treated very sweetly by his supposed persecutors. He confessed to violating three different federal statutes and Mueller recommended six months. He has yet to serve a day and it's doubtful he ever will. If he's allowed to withdraw his guilty plea, the legal case against him may well be suspended. Otherwise he can expect a pardon from Trump.

Imagine the tables were turned, and it was an Obama official who was caught by the Bush administration collaborating with Russia or Iran in December 2008 with transcripts, and then lied to the FBI about it. Further that the official in question was hyper-partisan and had been paid by Russia/Iran $65,000 in that same year. Plus the US intelligence community reporting that the Russians had materially backed Obama in the election. Imagine all of that and then think about what the reaction from American "conservatives" would have been. You people really have a lot of nerve defending Flynn, Stone, Manafort, etc.

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Comey and McCabe both told congress the FBI agents did not believe Flynn was lying. It was only after mueller took over that charges were brought.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-fact-check-comey-flynn-fbi-20180519-story.html

"Collaborating"? Flynn was doing his job as part of the transition. And every new administration changes policy and lets foreign governments know changes are coming. I assure you that in 2008, President Elect Obama transition members were making the exact same type of calls. And before that, in 2000, Bush did the same thing.

Your defense of the Logan Act is laughable. It is dead and has never been successfully prosecuted - not even an attempt in the last century. And if you think it has any basis in good policy, please explain why John Kerry (or for that matter, Jessie Jackson, Dennis Rodman, and a ton of other people) have never been threatened with prosecution. Literally, John Kerry and many others are actively meeting with the EU and Iran on an ongoing basis now - why no investigation?

I'm not going to correct all of your factual misstatements. But Flynn did not plead guilty to lying three times. Also, contrary to your assertion, there is evidence as to why Strzok intervened to prevent closure of the Flynn investigation. In contemporaneous texts, it was based on instructions from the "7th floor" which is Comey/McCabe, etc. And they did it so they could have a pretext for the interview.

Point of irony - the link to the 302s your posted actually supports my position. Those 302s were not disclosed in violation of the Court's standing order and constitutional requirements. They also show that the 302 from Flynn's interview was edited multiple times by people who had no business making changes, all in coordination with the 7th floor. This was highly irregular and improper under standing FBI rules and regs. Can you provide any innocent explanation for why this took place?

Flynn was targeted and railroaded to besmirch Trump and hopefully get Flynn to flip. That doesn't mean he is innocent or, separate from criminality, blameless in some moral sense. However, the question of why he was prosecuted when others weren't under identical circumstances tells you everything you need to know.

For example, Andrew McCabe was found to have lied repeatedly and knowingly to FBI investigators. It was an active leak investigation and McCabe lied to: (i) hide the fact that he was the leaker; and (ii) actually blamed the leaks on other parties to deflect suspicion. Under what theory of justice is it ok to prosecute Flynn but not McCabe?

Same argument for FARA. How is it that Flynn and his son get threatened with that law, but the Podestas (and many, many others) are not prosecuted or even given a civil penalty?

You can't answer these questions (honestly) because it shows that Flynn was taken out for political reasons. Your shoe on the other foot argument is apt - if what happened to Flynn is ok, then wait until the next president comes into office.

There has been a ton of proven misconduct and irregularities at the FBI and above - the Horowitz IG reports make that very clear, not to mention all the FISA misconduct. And all of those errors and misconduct (or "mistakes") were directed at the same objective - attacking Trump and his administration. The Flynn prosecution did not happen in a vacuum - it is part of the larger misconduct.

problem with calling out debunked stuff may be reinforcing the lies subconsciously, as much as its' falseness.
# took psych 1a pass/fail.

Ah yes, the old, "You once posted an incorrect graph that sent people into apoplectic fits so that invalidates everything you ever said or will say." That makes lots of sense. I told you it was an honest mistake and that it's exceedingly hard to get a handle on good data and asked if you had it but you've failed to do anything in response but point fingers and call names.

If getting things wrong on occasion invalidated the thoughts and opinions of someone, this board would be a graveyard and you'd have long ago been shown the door. Or do I have to go back through the thousands and thousands of lefty, conspiracy theory, Rachel Madcow told us so posts you and others here have made over the last few years and dig up some nuggets that you'd undoubtedly still defend? Fortunately for you, I don't have the time but we all have eyes, ears and memories.

bearlyamazing said:

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Ah yes, the old, "You once posted an incorrect graph that sent people into apoplectic fits so that invalidates everything you ever said or will say." That makes lots of sense. I told you it was an honest mistake and that it's exceedingly hard to get a handle on good data and asked if you had it but you've failed to do anything in response but point fingers and call names.

If getting things wrong on occasion invalidated the thoughts and opinions of someone, this board would be a graveyard and you'd have long ago been shown the door. Or do I have to go back through the thousands and thousands of lefty, conspiracy theory, Rachel Madcow told us so posts you and others here have made over the last few years and dig up some nuggets that you'd undoubtedly still defend? Fortunately for you, I don't have the time but we all have eyes, ears and memories.

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Are you absolutely certain that you didn't have other bloopers like the fake graph? People are SIP so really have time to dig through your atrocious post history. Better go on immediately and edit stuff out, the race is on.

bearlyamazing said:

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Ah yes, the old, "You once posted an incorrect graph that sent people into apoplectic fits so that invalidates everything you ever said or will say." That makes lots of sense. I told you it was an honest mistake and that it's exceedingly hard to get a handle on good data and asked if you had it but you've failed to do anything in response but point fingers and call names.

If getting things wrong on occasion invalidated the thoughts and opinions of someone, this board would be a graveyard and you'd have long ago been shown the door. Or do I have to go back through the thousands and thousands of lefty, conspiracy theory, Rachel Madcow told us so posts you and others here have made over the last few years and dig up some nuggets that you'd undoubtedly still defend? Fortunately for you, I don't have the time but we all have eyes, ears and memories.

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I agree it was an honest mistake, but not for the reasons you mentioned. It was "honest" in the sense that it perfectly reflects who you are as a poster. It gave everyone an honest window into your value as a poster. You have an agenda and you post whatever information you can find that supports that agenda, regardless of provenance or veracity.

It took me 3 seconds to look at the chart and know that it was wrong - without having to check sources - because it was completely inconsistent with all of the reporting I've seen. It was obviously garbage.

What has your response been to posting fake news? You blame everyone else for your delusion (even the CDC and NYT who were misquoted!) and gish gallop into other garbage. You should take your lumps, go look at the real data (which you could find if you *gasp* actually read the NYT) and tell us how your opinion has now changed based on review of real numbers - not a completely made up graph from Citizen Free Press.

But you can't do that (or won't) because you're delusional.

You should always feel free to call people out on conclusions they draw from fake data and if they don't acknowledge their mistake and re-evaluate their opinions then they would be just as delusional as you.

Here are the conclusions you made based on fake data you posted. If you were anything other than a ****poster you would correct the record based on actual facts. But we all know that's not true and that you will just keep on ****posting.

Quote:

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Gee, what a coincidence! Deaths from heart disease, flu, cancer, stroke, Altheimers, accidents and homicide plunge from 13,000 to 4,400 in NY in the same 1 month timeframe last year vs this year. Of course there are less accidents and homicides with SIP but not even remotely close enough to bridge this giant chasm.

Does't reflect well on the doom and gloom narrative here about covid. Deadly disease but not nearly as rampant and deadly as many here would have you believe, with any death from anyone who has the virus being labeled a covid death, even if they die due to any number of other principal reasons and underlying medical conditions.

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Are you denying that hospitals have been ordered to list cause of death as covid in many cases when it's one of only many life-threatening factors? Are you denying that NYC decided to up their count of covid deaths by 3700 who didn't test positive for covid but showed covid-like symptoms?

You act as if all the numbers being thrown around are spot-on accurate covid numbers when you know very well there's a ton of fudging the numbers but you and your ilk are so militaristic about it, you won't budge an inch.

Well guess what? When people die with pneumonia or heart disease or some other serious life-threatening illness and it's always labeled a covid death if they had a positive covid test, the numbers of pneumonia and heart disease deaths are going to go down and it has to be factored into any honest discussion of the true death rate from covid. So the graph got it wrong. I ignore all kinds of right leaning material that doesn't look right to me. I don't see much of it because I stay away from the crazy sites but will sometimes see things posted on social media and the like since my friends are all over the map politically, though only a handful post conservative politics. If the numbers were more transparent and easily accessible, it would've been easier to tell the graph wasn't accurate but you clowns just won't let it go. The fact that it was only for a specific 30 day period made it even harder to know it might not be accurate.

I mean, go to any number of CDC links and you'll see different, seemingly contradictory info that most can't reconcile. It's no wonder there's confusion out there.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html

All you need to know about why going after Flynn was complete bs. Read it and be educated it. Ignore it and discredit the source, as you and the left ALWAYS do and remain in denial and ignorance.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/04/your-guide-to-the-obama-administrations-hit-on-michael-flynn/

Your Guide To The Obama Administration's Hit On Michael Flynn
New documents in the Michael Flynn case cemented that a small cadre of high-level FBI agents set a perjury trap for President Trump's then-national security advisor.

By Margot Cleveland
MAY 4, 2020

The unsealing last week of a series of documents in the Michael Flynn criminal case cemented the reality that a small cadre of high-level FBI agents set a perjury trap for President Trump's then-national security advisor. Beyond exposing the depth of this despicable personal and political hit job on a 30-year military veteran, the newly discovered documents hold great legal significance. Here's your legal primer.

The Russiagate special counsel's office charged Flynn with violating 18 U. S. C. 1001, which makes it a federal crime to "knowingly and willfully" make a false statement of "a material fact" to a federal official. Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team claimed Flynn violated Section 1001 by lying to FBI agents Joe Pientka and Peter Strzokthe latter of whom has since been firedwhen the duo questioned Flynn on January 24, 2017, about Flynn's December 2016 telephone conversations with the Russian ambassador.

Flynn pleaded guilty to the Section 1001 charge in December 2017, but after the special counsel's office disbanded, Flynn fired his prior attorneys and hired Sidney Powell. He later moved to withdraw his guilty plea, arguing his prior Covington and Burling lawyers had provided ineffective counsel. More significantly, Flynn maintained that he is innocent of the charge and had only pleaded guilty because Mueller's prosecutors threatened to go after his son if he refused.

New Lawyer Discovers a Rat's Nest
Since Powell took the reins of Flynn's legal defense nearly a year ago, she has been busy reviewing the voluminous file Flynn's former lawyers kept. In a court filing a little more than a week ago, Powell revealed she had discovered strong evidence supporting Flynn's claim that federal prosecutors had threatened to target his son.

"We have a lawyers' unofficial understanding that they are unlikely to charge Junior in light of the Cooperation Agreement," one email read, referring to Flynn's son, also named Michael Flynn. A second email proved even more damning, as Flynn's lawyer suggested prosecutors were attempting to keep the Michael Flynn Jr. part of the deal secret to avoid having to reveal it to other defendants against whom Flynn senior might testify. (Disclosing such impeachment testimony is constitutionally mandated by the Giglio decision.)

"The government took pains not to give a promise to [defendant Flynn] regarding Michael Jr., so as to limit how much of a 'benefit' it would have to disclose as part of its Giglio disclosures to any defendant against whom MTF may one day testify," Flynn's attorney wrote in the email Powell attached to a supplemental filing in Flynn's case.

This evidence confirms Flynn's claim that he was coerced into the plea agreement. (It also provides an independent basis for a plea withdrawal, although outright dismissal is a more appropriate remedy to respond to the outrageous prosecutorial misconduct.) That coercion explains why Flynn would have pleaded guilty to lying when he did not knowingly misrepresent his conversation with the Russian ambassador to the FBI agents.

Now It All Starts to Make Sense
In fact, this scenario makes more sense than the "Flynn lied" script: Flynn, who had served in the Obama administration as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was well-versed in intelligence and would have known that his conversation with the Russian ambassador had been recorded. Flynn would have known that the FBI either already knew or could have easily learned the content of Flynn's conversations. Flynn also violated no law in speaking with the Russian ambassador, so there was no reason to lie about the conversation.

Evidence that has trickled out over the last two years also indicates that the FBI agents did not believe Flynn had lied to them. Nearly two years ago, Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, testified in an executive session of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that "the two people who interviewed [Flynn] didn't think he was lying."

Since then, we have learned from Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuse that, prior to interviewing Flynn, FBI Agent Pientka had attended a briefing with then-candidate Trump and Flynn to assess Flynn's demeanor. Pientka explained to the IG that he took "the opportunity to gain assessment and possibly have some level of familiarity with [Flynn]," such as learning "Flynn's overall mannerisms."

The IG report further noted that "in this instance it actually proved useful because [Pientka] was able to compare Flynn's 'norms' from the briefing with Flynn's conduct at the interview that [Pientka] conducted on January 24, 2017, in connection with the FBI's investigation of Flynn."

That the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn did not believe he was lying, including one agent who had previously interviewed the retired general to establish a baseline of Flynn's demeanor and assess his "norms," provides strong support for Flynn's claim that he did not "knowingly and willfully" misrepresent his conversations with the Russian ambassadorthe first element the government would need to establish to convict Flynn of violating Section 1001.

More Reasons Flynn Didn't Break the Law
But the newly released documents now make clear that even if Flynn had "knowingly and willfully" misled the FBI, he still did not violate Section 1001, because his statements to the FBI were not concerning "a material fact." As the Supreme Court has made clear, to be "material" a "statement must have 'a natural tendency to influence, or [be] capable of influencing, the decision of the decisionmaking body to which it was addressed.'" So to be criminal, Flynn's purported lies needed to be capable of influencing the FBI.
How could Flynn's statements have influenced the FBI, given that the FBI knew exactly what Flynn said to the Russian ambassador before the agents interviewed him? But the law is clear that even if the government agent knows a statement is false, it can nonetheless be material because it could influence an investigation. Here is where the recently unsealed documents prove legally significant: There was no legitimate ongoing investigation of Flynn at the time of the interview!

On Thursday, we learned for the first time that in a January 4, 2017 email the FBI transmitted documentation to close the Crossfire Razor investigation into Flynn. The four-page closing document summarized the supposed basis for targeting Flynn, detailed the results of the FBI's investigative effortsno derogatory informationand concluded Flynn "was no longer a viable candidate as part of the larger Crossfire Hurricane umbrella case."
A series of text messages released last week show that, 20 minutes later, Strzok desperately reached out to an unknown FBI agent telling the agent not to close out the Flynn investigation yet because the "7th floor" was now involved, meaning the upper leadership of the FBI. The exchanges noted they were trying to decide what to do with Flynn with regard to a matter that was redacted, but other texts indicated McCabe and Strzok were discussing interviewing Flynn.

Flynn's Prosecutors Mislead the Court
Here the unsealing of Exhibit 3 completes the story. Exhibit 3 in the first of Powell's recent supplemental filings consisted of a series of emails the FBI agents exchanged in preparation of the January 24, 2017 questioning of Flynn and handwritten notes attributed to McCabe and the now-retired assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division, Bill Priestap. Those documents make clear that the FBI's questioning of Flynn was unrelated to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation and that the FBI kept the investigation of Flynn open to provide a pretext to question him.

The FBI knew of those communications and nonetheless decided to close the investigation into Flynn.
This evidence refutes federal prosecutor Brandon Van Grack's argument to the court that Flynn's purported "false statements to the FBI on January 24, 2017, were absolutely material." "At the time of the January 24 interview, the FBI was conducting a counterintelligence investigation into whether individuals associated with the campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump were coordinating with the Russian government in its activities to interfere with the 2016 presidential election," the special counsel hold-over wrote in a brief to the court in opposition to Flynn's motion to dismiss the case against him for egregious prosecutorial misconduct.
"The defendant's conduct and communications with Russia went to the heart of that inquiry. Actions such as the defendant's communications with the Russian Ambassador about U.S. Sanctions could have been indicative of such coordination," Van Grack suggested.

But as the recently unsealed documents reveal, the FBI knew of those communications and nonetheless decided to close the investigation into Flynn, concluding Flynn "was no longer a viable candidate as part of the larger Crossfire Hurricane umbrella case." That there was an official investigation still open on Flynn had nothing to do with there being a legitimate investigative purpose for questioning Flynn.
Rather, as Strzok and Page quipped in text exchanges unsealed last week, the FBI's failure to have expeditiously closed the Strzok investigation was the result of their "utter incompetence" which, in their minds, proved to be "serendipitiously good."

Without a legitimate investigative purpose for questioning Flynn, his statementslegallycould not be material within the meaning of Section 1001. Or, as Powell put it more bluntly to The Federalist, "there is no world in which Flynn's statements to the agents in the scenario of this rank setup were material to any 'investigation.'"

It's a Trap!
Powell is correct. This was no investigation. This was a "rank setup." It was in essence a perjury trap, where the "government questions a witness for the primary purpose of obtaining a statement from him in order to prosecute him later for perjury." As the case law explains, "it involves the government's use of its investigatory powers to secure a perjury indictment on materials which are neither material nor germane to a legitimate ongoing investigation."

Remarkablybecause who puts this stuff in writing!Priestap's handwritten notes released last week expose this reality: "What is our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?" he wrote, after recognizing the interview strategy devised the previous day made no sense from an investigative standpoint.

Even then, the only investigative standpoint the FBI agents floated concerned the Logan Act, and not the Crossfire Hurricane Investigation. There was no open Logan Act investigation into Flynn, and any such investigation would have been an illegitimateand laughablebasis on which to question Flynn.
Mark Hemingway's concise summary of the Logan Act sharpens this point:

Quote:

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Let's talk about the Logan Act for a bit. Or rather, let's talk about why serious people don't talk about the Logan Act. The Logan Act is to national security laws about what phrenology is to medical science. Since its passage in 1799, no one's ever been convicted under the Logan Act, and just about every legal expert agrees it is wildly unconstitutional and runs counter to the First Amendment. George Logan, the senator whose actions motivated the passage of the law, was never even charged under it. Seriously, the only man charged under the law was a Kentucky farmer who wrote a newspaper article in 1803 about American territories allying with Franceand even he was never prosecuted. The fact the Logan Act is still on the books is an accident of history, and to the extent it has been discussed in modern times, it's almost exclusively invoked by cranks and the conspiracy-minded.

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To the "cranks and conspiracy-minded" chatting up the Logan Act, we can now add coup-fermenting FBI agents. No one ever took the Logan Act theory seriously, which is why the special counsel's office and later the rag-tag remainderman of Van Grack never mentioned it as a justification for the interview of Flynn.

It Was Always a Trap
It was always a perjury trap to oust Flynn. The details dribbled out over the last two years tell that truth: the strategizing over how to put Flynn at ease; the back-and-forth over the required timing of the 1001 admonition (a warning to a target that lying to FBI agents is a federal offense); the plotting over how to frame that warning without alerting Flynn to the real purpose of their questioning; the FBI's decision not to show Flynn the transcript of his call with the Russian ambassador, even though, as Priestap's notes reveal, that would be the regular course of action.

Then, following his interview, even though Strzok didn't believe Flynn had lied, Strzok was nonetheless giddy that Flynn had misremembered the details of his conversation with the Russian ambassador. "Describe the feeling, nervousness, excitement knowing we had just heard him denying it all. Knowing we'd have to pivot into asking. Puzzle round and round about it. Talk about the funny details. Remember what I said that made Andy [McCabe] laugh and ask if he really said that," Strzok texted his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, as he left the White House after questioning Flynn.

These facts and many others reveal that Flynn did notand could nothave violated Section 1001, because any misstatements were immaterial.

Special Counsel and Prosecutors Violated a Court Order
Last week's revelations hold a second legal significance: They conclusively establish the special counsel's office, and later the federal prosecutors handling the case, violated presiding Judge Emmet Sullivan's standing order that directed the prosecution "to produce to defendant in a timely manner . . . any evidence in its possession that is favorable to defendant and material either to defendant's guilt or punishment."
Under normal circumstances, the government would be required under Brady v. Maryland to produce evidence that is material to a defendant's guilt or punishment, including, as the Supreme Court later clarified in Giglio v. United States, impeachment evidence. But in his plea agreement, Flynn waived his right to obtain any additional evidence. Judge Sullivan's order, however, trumped that waiver and thus the prosecution was required to comply with Brady and Giglio.

Yet Powell just now received these highly material documentsand only after U.S. Attorney General William Barr assigned an independent U.S. attorney to review the Flynn case. These documents are highly relevant to the question of materiality and whether there was a legitimate purpose for the interview of Flynn, or whether it was a perjury trap.

While the answer seems clear that it was the latter, even those who refuse to acknowledge the obvious should be able to see the significance of the emails, texts, and handwritten notes: Those documents would provide a defense attorney substantial ammunition for cross-examining the government's witnesses in order to argue to the jury that the purported lies were immaterial.

Now We Know Why Prosecutors Hid the 302s
The documents released on Thursday also revealed a further Brady violation: the prosecution's failure to turn over the original version of the 302 interview summary. Powell has long asked for the original 302, and now we know why: They were substantially revised by Strzok and Page.

What exactly the original 302 said before the edits is important to know.
"This document pisses me off," Page texted Strzok, in reference to the 302 form Strzok had revised and emailed Page. "You didn't even attempt to make this cogent and readable," Page fumed. Strzok countered, "Lisa you didn't see it before my edits that went into what I sent you." He then explained that he was "trying to not completely re-write the thing so as to save [Pientka's] voice," and yet get it to her quickly for a general review. Strzok added that he had already incorporated Page's earlier edits.

What exactly the original 302 said before the edits is important to know. Had FBI Agent Pientka spoken of his belief that Flynn had not knowingly lied in the interview? What exactly did Pientka report Flynn had told him and Strzok about his conversations with the Russian ambassador?

We already know from Powell's other filings that the FBI made edits to other versions of the 302s, changing the content and context of Flynn's statements and making it appear that Flynn had lied when he had not. We now know that even more substantial edits were made earlier to the original 302. This obvious Brady material should have been turned over to Flynn's defense team long ago.

Hopefully, U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen will uncover the original 302 in his continued probe into the Flynn case. The public, though, will have to wait some time to learn any more details, as late last week Judge Sullivan entered an order directing Powell not to file any additional supplements on Flynn's behalf "until the government completes its final production from the review of the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri." Sullivan further ordered Jensen to file a notice on the public docket once it has provided Flynn the government's final production.

There is no telling how long that will take, but in the interim, Powell should consider asking Judge Sullivan to vacate the protective order that prevents her from discussing or publishing the documents Jensen handed over. Flynn, who has been on trial in the court of public opinion for more than three years, deserves that much.
Flynn's position in the Obama administration has been corrected.

Another excellent, factual piece on the Flynn bs prosecution and the motives to go after him. If you're intellectually honest, you'll read this. But because I don't know a single person here on the left who will ever give an inch in admitting they were wrong, you won't read it, I'm certain.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/fbi-set-up-michael-flynn-to-preserve-trump-russia-probe/

The FBI Set Flynn Up to Preserve the TrumpRussia Probe
By Andrew McCarthy

Michael Flynn at the White House, February 1, 2017. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)Perjury trap was not score-settling. To investigate the president, it was a practical necessity to sideline his chosen national-security adviser.

Michael Flynn was not the objective. He was the obstacle.

Once you grasp that fundamental fact, it becomes easier to understand the latest disclosures the Justice Department made in the Flynn case on Thursday. They are the most important revelations to date about the FBI's TrumpRussia investigation, code-named Crossfire Hurricane.

The new disclosures, in conjunction with all we have learned in the last week, answer the all-important why question: Why was Flynn set up?

The answer to the what question has been clear for a long time: The FBI set a perjury trap for Flynn, hoping to lure him into misstatements that the bureau could portray as lies. In the frenzied political climate of the time, that would have been enough to get him removed from his new position as national security adviser (NSA), perhaps even to prosecute him. On that score, the new disclosures, startling as they are to read, just elucidate what was already obvious.

But why did they do it? That has been the baffling question. Oh, there have been plenty of indications that the Obama administration could not abide Flynn. The White House and the intelligence agencies had their reasons, mostly vindictive. But while that may explain their gleefulness over his fall from grace, it has never been a satisfying explanation for the extraordinary measures the FBI took to orchestrate that fall.

Concealing Information 'as It Relates to Russia'
To understand what happened here, you have to understand what the FBI's objective was, first formed in collaboration with Obama-administration officials. That includes President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Flynn's predecessor, national-security adviser Susan Rice, with whom then-Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and then-FBI director James Comey met at the White House on January 5, 2017 smack in the middle of the chain-of-events that led to Flynn's ouster. Recall Rice's CYA memo about the meeting: "President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia" (emphasis added). Rice wrote those words on January 20, at the very time the FBI was making its plan to push Flynn out.

The objective of the Obama administration and its FBI hierarchy was to continue the TrumpRussia investigation, even after President Trump took office, and even though President Trump was the quarry. The investigation would hamstring Trump's capacity to govern and reverse Obama policies. Continuing it would allow the FBI to keep digging until it finally came up with a crime or impeachable offense that they were then confident they would find. Remember, even then, the bureau was telling the FISA court that Trump's campaign was suspected of collaborating in Russia's election interference. FBI brass had also pushed for the intelligence community to include the Steele dossier the bogus compendium of TrumpRussia collusion allegations in its report assessing Russia's meddling in the campaign.

But how could the FBI sustain an investigation targeting the president when the president would have the power to shut the investigation down?

The only way the bureau could pull that off would be to conceal from the president the fullness of the Russia investigation in particular, the fact that Trump was the target.
That is why Flynn had to go.

President Trump was a political phenomenon but a novice when it came to governance. He was not supported by the Republican foreign-policy and national-security clerisy, which he had gone out of his way to antagonize in the campaign. The staff he brought into the government consisted mainly of loyalists. There were some skilled advisers, too, but their experience was not in the national-security realm.

The exception was Flynn. The former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency knew how the spy agencies worked. He knew where and how they kept secrets. He had enough scars from tangles with the intelligence bureaucracy that he knew how the game was played how intelligence officials exploited information, or selectively withheld it.

Someone as smooth as Director Comey might be able to dissuade President Trump from inquiring too deeply into the Russia investigation. Trump would be satisfied as long as Comey kept assuring him not to worry because the bureau was not investigating him personally even though it was. The unseasoned Trump staff would also be easy to brush back: Just tell them that the FBI was rigorously independent, and that if the White House poked around too much, Trump staffers would be accused of political meddling. The staff was green enough to be bullied into minding its own business even about the FBI's counterintelligence mission, in which the bureau is supposed to serve the White House, not the other way around.

But Flynn was different. After 33 years in the Army chain of command, the decorated former combat commander grasped that the FBI, like other executive-branch components, worked for the president. As NSA, Flynn would ensure that Trump ran the intelligence agencies, not be run by them. If Flynn wanted to know what was going on in intelligence investigations, he'd be able to find out he wouldn't take Jim Comey's "no" for an answer. He was loyal to Trump, not to the intelligence establishment or the "policy community." And he was White House staff, not a cabinet appointee i.e., he did not have to wait interminably on an iffy Senate confirmation; he would be on the job from the very first moments of the new administration, getting his arms around what the executive branch intelligence apparatus was up to.

Collusion Narrative and the Sanctions Controversy
The eleven pages of documents the Justice Department released on Thursday are a treasure trove for analysts who've followed the collusion caper. There will be time to discuss various aspects of them, particularly the matter of how disgraced former agent Peter Strzok managed to keep open the Flynn thread of the Russia investigation ("Crossfire Razor") after the FBI had seemingly closed it on January 4 the day before Comey's Oval Office meeting with Obama & Co. For now, though, let's focus on that why question.

Upon the new president's January 20 inauguration, Flynn was the matter of most immediate urgency to the FBI. That was not because the agents were trying to make a case on him. It was because he was already starting his new job as Trump's NSA.

It was also a frenzied time, with the media and Democrats pushing the collusion narrative, creating an uproar over whether Flynn had discussed anti-Russia sanctions with Ambassador Kislyak. Flynn publicly said the subject did not come up. Vice President Pence publicly backed him. But the FBI had had surveillance coverage on the Russian envoy. The bureau knew the issue of sanctions had been discussed. Though Flynn had said nothing inappropriate on the subject, its mere mention would become a huge political problem.

We do not know for sure what Flynn's conversation was with Pence. Maybe he misinformed the vice-president. Maybe there was a garble (the difference between didn't come up and wasn't discussed inappropriately could easily be confused). Or maybe Pence decided it was politically expedient to back Flynn's account, regardless of whether it was true. Whatever happened, such political matters would not be the business of the Justice Department and the FBI in most administrations. Can anyone imagine the Obama Justice Department and FBI getting alarmed that the president, National Security Adviser Rice, and Secretary of State Clinton were publicly saying things about the Benghazi attack that the FBI knew to be untrue?

This was the Trump administration, however, so Obama holdover officials, such as Acting AG Yates, would pose as aghast that Pence was publicly echoing Flynn's misstatement. Even though they knew the misstatement was trivial . . . which explains why the FBI moved to close the Flynn investigation on January 4, after Flynn's conversations with Kislyak they plainly knew Flynn was not a Kremlin mole.

More to the point, the newly revealed documents include emails between Strzok and other FBI officials from the weekend before the FBI's January 24 grilling of Flynn.

Most of the press attention has been about the planning for that grilling about how brazenly the bureau spoke of trying to get Flynn to lie, about the renegade scheme to orchestrate an interrogation of Flynn without informing the Trump White House, as protocol required. That's significant, but it misses the bigger picture. The January 2122 emails show that the FBI did not start out with that perjury-trap plan. They ended up with the perjury-trap plan because there was no practical alternative if the bureau was to achieve its objective the withholding of information about Russia from the incoming Trump team, in order to keep the TrumpRussia investigation alive.

No Alternative
The perjury trap was set for Flynn out of necessity. If the Justice Department had informed the White House about recordings of Flynn and Kislyak discussing sanctions, and the FBI then asked for permission to interview Flynn, the bureau knew permission was sure to be denied. Flynn would be untouchable, and free to discover the entirety of the Obama administration's extensive but secret effort to depict Trump and his minions as Russian operatives an effort the FBI was determined to keep pursuing.
If no way could be found to sideline Flynn (the way Attorney General Jeff Sessions would later be sidelined), then Flynn was going to find out about Crossfire Hurricane. He was going to be a hands-on NSA, so that was a given.


Strzok thus started out the weekend by proposing that Flynn be given a "defensive briefing." This is when an official is advised that he and his cohorts are the targets of some espionage or criminal operation. Here, it would be the purported Russian infiltration of the Trump campaign and the new administration.

Understand: It is not that the FBI wanted to give Flynn this information; it is that there was no practical alternative. Under the circumstances, the FBI would have to tell Flynn directly. But that raised the question: Could it be done in a way that would scare him off, make him feel vulnerable, marginalize him?
On Saturday, Strzok started out by proposing to Bill Priestap, the bureau's counterintelligence chief, that Flynn be given "a defensive briefing . . . about CROSS WIND and [redacted]." "Cross Wind" like "Crossfire Razor" and "Crossfire Typhoon," another code name in the new documents appears to have been a subset of the overarching Crossfire Hurricane probe (the latter was depicted as an "umbrella"; underneath it were the "Cross" subsets such Trump campaign figures as Flynn, Carter Page, and George Papadopoulos).
Strzok conceded he was "not certain" that a defensive briefing was the right approach. Maybe, he suggested, such a briefing could be floated as a "pretext"; it would get them in the door, then they'd use the opportunity to "interview" Flynn i.e., to hint that he might be in legal jeopardy over his contacts with Kislyak, then pepper him with questions, hoping he'd say something that compromised him. Or maybe they could just give Flynn a defensive briefing in the usual sense i.e., "put him on notice, and see what he does with that." The idea would be: share a bit of information, then keep tabs on Flynn to see if he spilled the beans to the suspects. That can be an effective way of proving a conspiracy.

While the emails are heavily redacted, we can glean that the sanctions issue hung heavily. The Justice Department seemed to want to alert Vice President Pence that Flynn had misled him. Playing this out, Strzok speculated about what would happen if DOJ decided that "VPOTUS or anyone else" needed to be told "about the [redacted]" what's redacted, I suspect, is a reference to the recorded FlynnKislyak discussions. Strzok surmised that if the Trump White House were told, the bureau would lose any chance to interview Flynn. The agents might believe they needed to take an "overt" investigative step, such as a pretextual defensive briefing that enabled them to interrogate Flynn; but if the Trump White House had been alerted, it could "specifically direct us not to." Trump would probably keep Flynn in place, and the bureau would be powerless to keep the NSA from digging into the Russia probe.

On Sunday morning, having heard Strzok out, an official whose identity is blacked out sent a heavily redacted email to Strzok and Lisa Page (FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe's counsel, and Strzok's paramour). Because of Flynn's NSA position, the unidentified official acknowledged, standard procedure would call for "tell[ing] him "about Wind and [redacted]." Yet, the official cautioned, "I'd be interested in letting that play out a bit before he tells them and the whole thing goes underground." Translation: Once we tell Flynn, then Flynn will tell his administration superiors, and that will derail the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation. Then, in what may be a reference to the recorded communications about sanctions between Flynn and Kislyak, the official conceded, "if we usually tell the WH [White House], then I think we should do what we normally do." But the dilemma remained: Agents "need[ed] to debrief or interview Razor [Flynn]," but they could be "told not to" if the White House were given prior notice.

As the weekend wound down, FBI officials could not square the circle. Try as they might, they could not figure out a way to brief Flynn about any aspect of Crossfire Hurricane, or to alert the White House about the FlynnKislyak sanctions discussion. When game-planned, each proposal along those lines led to the virtual certainty that the bureau would be told not to question Flynn. He would keep his job, and be poised to inquire into the full extent of the TrumpRussia investigation.

Going Rogue
By Monday, January 23, the FBI's top hierarchy had concluded that the only solution was to go rogue: They would approach Flynn without alerting anyone ahead of time, not even the Justice Department and certainly not the White House. It was the same reasoning they'd used in July 2016, when Comey gave his infamous press conference about the Hillary Clinton emails investigation, in violation of Justice Department guidelines: If you ask permission to do something that is against the rules, you might be told no; but if you just act audaciously, your superiors may not like it, but they'll have to accept it otherwise they'll look like they're obstructing the FBI.

And since this was going to be their only shot at Flynn, they had to try to make it a kill shot. They'd do a perjury trap. Flynn would be grilled about his conversations with Kislyak that had become such a media-driven controversy. But the bureau would not play the recordings for him. They would not refresh his recollection. They would not ask him to go line-by-line to help them understand the conversation. That is what they would do in a normal investigation, if they were really trying, say, to figure out what Russia was up to. The goal here was not to advance anyone's understanding.

The goal was to get Flynn to lie. Not to lie so they'd have leverage to threaten a prosecution and thus pressure Flynn to reveal vital evidence he'd been concealing. They wanted him to lie for the sake of lying so they could get rid of him.

To better the odds that he would agree to talk and make inaccurate statements that could be portrayed as willful falsehoods, the FBI would not tell him the purpose of the interview. Agents would not formally advise him of his rights, as they would in a normal case, even if they were dealing with a real criminal. They would just buzz him with questions about what exactly was said, in conversations that had occurred weeks before, at a time when Flynn was having hundreds of similar conversations. They would press him about what exact words had been uttered, even though they knew the exact words because they had recordings. They would try to put him in fear that they could prove the falsity of his public statements about not discussing sanctions. They would put him in fear that he could be prosecuted for violating the Logan Act (an absurd suggestion, but Flynn is not a lawyer and many commentators were discussing this moribund, constitutionally suspect provision as if it were a real crime). In the hotly partisan collusion climate of the time, they would make Flynn understand he could be framed as a sinister collaborator with Russia.

In sum, the FBI could create a scenario in which (a) Flynn might be subject to prosecution, (b) there could be grounds for terminating him, and (c) he would surely be seen as too conflicted about Russia to be made privy to details of the bureau's TrumpRussia investigation.

Checkmate
The text messages and notes disclosed in the last week show that not everyone was comfortable with this plan. Bill Priestap, the counterintelligence chief, expressed deep misgivings. The objective of the plan seemed unclear, even improper: Were they trying to advance an investigation in good faith, or just "get [Flynn] to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired?" Why were they not going to refresh Flynn's recollection with the recording or a transcript, as the FBI would do with similarly situated interviewees? Why did the bureau think it needed to be so "aggressive" with Flynn?

Strzok and Page fretted in text messages on Monday, January 23, that Priestap was not getting the picture. His protests were irking McCabe. By Tuesday morning, a few hours before the January 24 interview, the deputy director was even more frustrated because Priestap had repeated his concerns to Director Comey. If Comey wavered, the plan could be scotched.

The director did not waver. The FBI's top officials met at headquarters. Comey approved the plan to have Strzok and agent Joe Pientka visit Flynn at his office no heads-up to others at the White House would be provided. McCabe was to call Flynn to arrange the meeting, assisted by Strzok in thinking through what to tell the NSA. The idea was to put Flynn at ease make him feel like it would just be a chat between veteran national-security guys, not a criminal investigation; discourage Flynn from getting a lawyer; disabuse him of any thought of involving the White House counsel or chief-of-staff. Just a quick meeting so they could put to rest all this Russia noise in the media. No big deal.

The rest is history.

Acting Attorney General Yates was not given notice that would have triggered an obligation to alert White House counsel Don McGahn. By the time she went to see White House counsel McGahn two days later, she was in a position to say not only that Flynn had discussed sanctions with Kislyak, putting Vice President Pence in an embarrassing position; she was able to add that Flynn had been interviewed by the FBI.

Not immediately perceiving the magnitude of a revelation that the FBI had just interrogated the president's NSA, in the White House and without getting clearance, McGahn quipped, "How did he do?" Yates has testified that she "explain[ed] to Mr. McGahn that the underlying conduct that General Flynn engaged in was problematic in and of itself" i.e., the specious Logan Act angle that Flynn had illegally consulted the Russians without notifying the Obama administration. She also fatuously claimed that Flynn could conceivably be subject to Russian blackmail as if the Russians did not assume the U.S. government had a recording of the FlynnKislyak conversation (something they'd have assumed even if it hadn't already been leaked to the Washington Post). Yates indicated that these problems with Flynn's credibility and capacity to function as NSA had not been cleared up, despite the FBI's interview. As McGahn heard Yates out, he was already asking whether she thought Flynn should be fired.

NSA Flynn's days were numbered. He was frozen out of anything to do with Russia. The collusion chatter went into overdrive. On February 9, the New York Times reported, based on leaks from the usual "current and former American officials," that Flynn and Kislyak had indeed discussed sanctions. Four days later, the president reluctantly cashiered his chosen national-security adviser, one of few allies he had in a virulently Trump-hostile intelligence community.

With the obstacle out of the way, the objective was achieved: Flynn was gone, and the TrumpRussia investigation continued.

Unit2Sucks said:

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smh said:

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problem with calling out debunked stuff may be reinforcing the lie subconsciously, as much as its' falseness.
# took psych 1a pass/fail.

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If everyone here were as gullible and deluded as bearlyamazing that would certainly be a concern. Fortunately there are only a handful of them and they are already so far gone, it doesn't really matter at this point.

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Does anyone know him?Does he think pretending to be an imbecile is funny? Enjoy instigating? Or worse, it's not an act.