May 23, 2020
Finally-the Federal Bureau of Investigation has announced that Director Christopher Wray has ordered an internal review into the bureau’s handling of the investigation of Mike Flynn, President Trump’s former national security advisor.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham has also recently announced that he will seek a Judiciary Committee vote to gain authority to subpoena dozens of Obama and Trump officials connected to the Russian collusion investigation.
These are long-overdue investigations. The accusations that Trump was a Russian agent, and that his campaign colluded with Russia have dogged the president since before he was sworn into office. For three years Trump’s presidency was hamstrung, and his standing in the world was tainted by false accusations coming from within his own country.
Numerous and costly investigations have produced zero evidence of any nefarious dealings between Trump and Russia. Why it took the Republican-controlled Senate so long to begin investigating those responsible for attempting to cripple and destroy Trump’s presidency, along with destroying the lives of those caught in the fray, such as Mike Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor, is mystifying.
No doubt Wray’s and Graham’s decisions have been motivated by recently disclosed documents, which have not only uncovered corruption within the FBI but have also implicated the possible involvement of then-President Obama and then-Vice President Biden.
Last week Acting Director of National intelligence, Richard Grenell released a list of dozens of Obama officials who made a total of 49 requests to “unmask” the identity of Trump’s then-national security advisor, Mike Flynn, between November 2016 and January 2017. When Americans are incidentally caught speaking to a foreign national under surveillance their identity is “masked”, unless there is a legitimate reason by an authorized person to disclose their name.
Eight days before Trump’s inauguration Biden made an unmasking request. What legitimate reason could Biden have had to request the unmasking of Flynn’s name during the waning days of his tenure? Further, many of the unmasking requests were made by political appointees who had no investigatory role within the Obama administration.
Susan Rice E-mail
The recent release of the entire bizarre Susan Rice, Barack Obama’s National Security Advisor, email memorializing a January 5, 2017 meeting, adds to the mounting evidence of the corrupt machinations by the Obama administration to harm the incoming Trump administration.
On the morning of Trump’s inauguration, Rice bizarrely sent herself an email describing a meeting that occurred two weeks earlier. On January 5, 2017, following a briefing with top officials from the intelligence community, Obama, Biden and Rice had a follow-up conversation with then-FBI Director James Comey and then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates.
During this meeting Obama and Comey strategized on how to legitimize concealing U.S. national intelligence from the incoming administration. According to Rice Obama expressed skepticism about sharing information related to Russia with the Trump administration.
A partially blacked-out version of this email was released two years ago. In the recently uncovered section of the email, Rice recounts Comey informing Obama that it could “potentially be a problem” to pass sensitive information related to Russia to then-incoming National Security Advisor, Mike Flynn. The implication being that Flynn was a threat to national security. Comey’s sole reasoning according to Rice, was because Flynn “was speaking frequently with Russian Ambassador Kislyak”.
Never mind that as the incoming NSA it was Flynn’s job to speak to foreign leaders, and the content of the calls was both legal and appropriate. The FBI’s record proves that Comey had no legitimate reason to question Flynn’s loyalty to the United States.
The day before this meeting FBI field agents wrote that they found “no derogatory information” on Flynn related to Russia, and recommended that the FBI cease investigating him. The FBI had opened a counterintelligence investigation on Flynn in August 2016 while he was a surrogate for the Trump campaign. Evidently, those at the top of the FBI used the calls between Flynn and Kislyak as a pretext to keep the probe of Flynn open.
This uncovered email also proves that Rice is a liar-
“I know nothing about this.”
That’s how Rice responded when asked on PBS’s NewsHour in March 2017 “whether Trump transition officials, including the President, may have been swept up in surveillance of foreigners at the end of the Obama administration?”
However, Flynn wasn’t the ultimate target. He was a tool to propagate the Russian collusion narrative. The prosecution of Flynn for lying to the FBI about the content of his calls with the Russian ambassador gave a veneer of credibility to the accusations of duplicitous dealings by the Trump team with Russia, providing the media fodder to propel the false claims.
With a vast national security background, Flynn was also an obstacle to the continuance of the FBI’s counterintelligence probe of the Trump campaign, dubbed Crossfire Hurricane, which unbeknownst to the Trump administration had been opened since July 2016. As the NSA, Flynn would have uncovered the existence of Crossfire Hurricane and tipped off the new administration.
Laughably, three times in her email Rice stated that everything related to the investigation of Russian meddling was being conducted “by the book”. She also wrote that “The president stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective.” Rice has recently claimed that she wrote the email at the direction of White House counsel.
The purpose of the Rice email was to create a record to absolve Obama of culpability regarding the concealment of relevant information from the Trump administration, such as the investigation of Flynn.
However, if Comey and the FBI truly believed that Flynn was a threat to the security of our nation, it is incomprehensible that they would not have alerted the incoming administration. It’s also doubtful that Obama did not provide guidance on perpetuating the Russian collusion narrative at this January 5th meeting.
It is clear that the Obama administration spied on their political competition, fishing for damaging information on Trump and those in his orbit. Undoubtedly, then-President Obama and then-Vice President Biden were aware that U.S. intelligence agencies were weaponized and politicized to destroy their political opponent.
It is unequivocal that the claims of Trump-Russian collusion had no basis of truth. It is past time to expose those who attempted to delegitimize a duly elected president.
