A newly released document indicates that Obama pushed the FBI to go after Michael Flynn. It’s not yet clear, though, if this was part of a larger plot on Obama’s part to destroy Trump’s presidency or was merely part of Obama’s vendetta against Flynn himself. It appears, too, that while Biden probably wasn’t part of masterminding the plot, he was in on it from the beginning.
Obama and Flynn had a history, for the latter had once served as Obama’s director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. In April 2014, the Obama administration forced Flynn to retire. By February 2017, Adam Kredo reported that the break had come about because Flynn opposed Obama’s disastrous Iran deal.
In August 2016, the FBI opened its investigation into General Flynn to determine whether Flynn “may wittingly or unwittingly be involved in activity on behalf of the Russian Federation which may constitute a federal crime or threat to the national security.” The FBI had four pathetic points of justification for this extraordinarily serious charge against a man who had spent his life serving America:
Specifically, CR [Flynn] has been cited as an advisor to the Trump team on foreign policy issues February 2016; he has ties to various state-affiliated entities of the Russian Federation, as reported by open source information; and he traveled to Russia in December 2015, as reported by open source information. Additionally, CR has an active TS/SCI clearance.
When Trump won the election, Obama warned Trump not to hire Flynn. Trump ignored that warning and, instead, appointed Flynn as his incoming director of the National Security Agency. It was in this capacity that, on December 29, 2016, Flynn had a phone call with then–Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
According to the Department of Justice’s motion to dismiss the Flynn prosecution, the FBI’s transcript of that call revealed the following:
Mr. Flynn’s request that Russia avoid ‘escalating’ tensions in response to U.S. sanctions in an effort to mollify geopolitical tensions was consistent with him advocating for, not against, the interests of the United States.
That is, the transcript revealed on its face that the phone call did not show Flynn engaging in treasonous behavior.
By January 4, the FBI had prepared its “Closing Communication,” detailing its decision to end the investigation into Flynn because it had no derogatory information that justified continuing to investigate him. The FBI leadership, however, worked with Peter Strzok to keep the investigation open, using the Kislyak call as an excuse — even though everyone involved knew from the transcript that the Kislyak call was as innocent as the rest of Flynn’s behavior.
And that gets us to Barack Obama’s role in all this. On January 5, 2017, a crowd that included Obama, Comey (FBI), Biden, Brennan (CIA), Clapper (DNI), Sally Yates (the acting attorney general), and Susan Rice (NSA) gathered in the Oval Office. The main topic was Russian election interference.
After the meeting, with Biden and Rice still present, Obama asked Yates and Comey to stay behind as well. According to Yates’s just released statement, Obama announced that he had “‘learned of the information about Flynn, and his conversation with Kislyak about sanctions.” Obama was “seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently, given the information.”
While Obama did not give an explicit order about Flynn, one can almost hear him saying, “Hint, hint, hint.” Then, perhaps in the interests of plausible deniability, Obama “specified that he did not want any additional information on the matter …”
Given that Obama knew about the Flynn/Kislyak call, it’s reasonable to believe he knew about the call’s contents. And if he knew about the contents, he also knew that Flynn had not said anything inappropriate or illegal.
Yates, who testified about this meeting, was vaguely aware that Obama and Comey were making plans to prosecute Flynn:
At that point, Yates had no idea what the President was talking about, but figured it out based on the conversation. Yates recalled Comey mentioning the Logan Act, but can’t recall if he specified there was an “investigation.”
One week after the meeting, an illegal leak of classified information resulted in the Washington Post reporting on the call between Flynn and Kislyak. Two weeks after the meeting, on the day that Trump was inaugurated, Rice wrote her bizarre “memo to self” about the January 5 meeting in which she stated that Obama had insisted that the investigation should be done “by the book.” The recently released documents show that the book was The Deep State’s Guide to Destroying Your Political Enemies.
Four days later, Comey violated all standard protocol to sneak into the White House and have his agents blindside Flynn with the interview that led to his prosecution.
Whether all of the above events are connected is not yet clear. What we can see, though, is a straight line from Obama firing Flynn over the Iran deal to Obama unsuccessfully trying to keep Flynn out of the Trump government to Obama sending strong signals to his henchman that the Flynn-Kislyak call could be used to destroy Flynn to Obama’s Deep State agents in fact using that call to destroy Flynn.
The old saying that “a fish rots from the head” is old for a good reason: human nature and experience tell us that when an institution is corrupt, that corruption begins at the top and seeps downward. Even as rank-and-file agents were still doing their jobs, upper-level management not only was breaking the law, but seemed to be getting the go-ahead from Obama himself to do that.
And as we head into the 2020 election, we can’t ignore the fact that Biden was present for all of this…
