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A Life Nearly Destroyed
Does the name K.T. McFarland ring a bell? A woman who served in three administrations, was frequently interviewed on Fox News, suddenly disappeared. She decided to leave the country before her life was completely wiped out. And now she’s written a book to describe this nightmare.
Most of us are aware of the travesty of an investigation against Michael Flynn, which is now being exposed. But K.T. McFarlane was victimized as well when she worked under Michael Flynn, who was then NSA Adviser, as she describes in her new book, Revolution: Trump, Washington and We the People. The FBI decided that she was either involved with the Russian collusion case or tried to entrap her through their interviews of her. McFarland describes their pursuit of her in this way, in an interview with Brian Kilmeade:
‘The FBI showed up at my house unannounced. I was all by myself. They came in and I said, ‘Do I need a lawyer for anything? I have never met with any Russians. I have never dealt with any Russians,’ she explained.
The agents said that while they couldn’t tell her not to get a lawyer, they just wanted a ‘little bit of information’ to help them with the investigation.
‘So, I naively went along with it. The whole time they were setting me up for a perjury trap,’ she told Kilmeade. ‘Because Brian, they seized all of my files, my documents, text messages, cell phones from the period I was in government…They had control of them. They wouldn’t let me have control of them.’
The FBI was relentless in its pursuit of her. They found absolutely nothing. She and her husband finally left the country. She reflected on what had happened during a radio interview:
‘We went to the remotest islands of Scotland,’ she said. ‘And I just tried to think about, ‘what is happening to my country?’
The bureaucrats are in control.
‘They’re a certain group of people who have gotten used to governing and they think it is their divine right,’ she told WMAL. ‘And even if the American voter votes for somebody that wants to get rid of them or change their policies, they feel they have the patriotic duty to overrule election results.
‘And to me, we’re in a very dangerous place.’
If you want a summary of McFarland’s credentials, you’ll find them here:
* * * *
K.T. McFarland has returned to the US and is taking her life back, but what were the emotional and financial losses that she endured through this witch hunt? What about Michael Flynn who was entrapped, or George Papadopoulos or Carter Page or all the others connected to the President who were targeted as a way to destroy Donald Trump? What about all the people who lost everything because of the revolting and disreputable actions of these members of the FBI?
I think it’s time that we stop throwing up our arms in exasperation and saying that nothing can or will happen. These government megalomaniacs must pay a price, whether we are talking about prison time, firing, losing their retirement funds, and public condemnation. Are we going to let our government terrorize not only our public representatives, but the people whom they serve? Since many of them not only lied but committed fraud, they must have consequences. I’m counting on John Durham and AG William Barr to finally dole out punishments that take steps to make whole the people who suffered at the hands of these conspirators.
K.T. McFarland is spoiling for a fight. Will we join her?
Published in Politics
I understand. I was responding to Bill Gates.
And you not talking them is just proof of your guilty.
I saw part of that interview. I had had the impression that HR McMasters had brought her in to NSC.
McMaster replaced Flynn, and asked McFarland to resign. He probably wanted his own people working with him.
Also worth noting that McMaster was in place because Pence was responsible for firing Flynn for “misleading” him. I get that the FBI treated Flynn poorly (to say the least) but there are certain aspects to this that should not be ignored. Pence, going with the wind, recently said that he now believes that Flynn did not “intentionally” lie to him.
In all these stories, you will eventually find that its not merely their association with Trump that earned them retaliation. Its something they said or did that annoyed someone important.
When my older brother graduated from law school many moons ago, the commencement speaker pleaded with the graduates not to follow in the footsteps of their elders who, he said, were the protagonists of the two great moral evils of the day: corruption and abortion. (Can you imagine a commencement speaker saying that today?) This remonstrance has nested in my consciousness for decades as if uttered yesterday. Sadly, it is as true now as ever.
Any lawyer who defends what happened to K.T. McFarland should be deeply ashamed. And yet there are many.
Very impressive, @cicerodeltufo. We need that commencement speaker to speak out today. But conservatives are rarely invited to give those speeches, unfortunately. Thanks.
I agree with the idea. I disagree with the “many.” if you’re going to cast a wide net, name names to support “many.”
I’m not clear on your point, @hoyacon. Are you saying that Pence is now speaking up because of the overwhelming backing that Flynn is finally getting? I could see that happening, if so. Go with the winds of change . . .
I’m saying one of two things–and can’t go with one or the other (yet). Either Pence fired Flynn for cause originally or he has reassessed his original firing because Flynn has become a sympathetic figure. Given the FBI’s overbearing conduct, this chapter in the saga is being overlooked.
We hear that the FBI agents (one of whom was that insect Strzok) either didn’t think Flynn was lying or didn’t agree that he was. The 302 report on their conversation has been edited, by Strzok, by Page, and by who knows who else. The “conversation” was a perjury trap: the FBI already had a transcript of the conversation (where did they get that?) and were just looking for Flynn to contradict it with his recollection of a conversation he had while on vacation with Kislyak while on vacation weeks before. If Flynn misrecalled the conversation in the same way when he talked to Pence, then there was no lie.
It would be nice to get a look at that original, unedited 302. The FBI can’t find it. Probably in the same box as the hard copies of Hillary’s emails. For a top-flight investigative organization, they sure have a hard time keeping track of stuff.
What could the FBI have possibly been investigating where they asked a participant of a conversation what was said when they already knew what was said? Perjury trap, straight up.
What exactly was this lie, anyway? Why haven’t we ever been told that? If you say “sources and methods,” I will laugh at you.
This goes justifiably to the interactions between Flynn and the FBI. Query about the communications between Flynn and Pence.
How would Pence know he was lied to? That would be a question I would ask, if I were a journalist.
I share your curiosity. But at the time I just assumed that the FBI told Pence (and Trump) that Flynn lied to him, and in the heat of the FBI’s onslaught, they didn’t know any more than what they were told. When it became obvious Flynn was going to plea out it seemed inevitable that Flynn was toast, so they ‘cut bait’. Not very admirable, but understandable. (Obviously Pence didn’t ‘fire’ him, he just delivered the verdict, right? )
What I most want to know is how they threatened his family and son to make him willing to cop a plea. That is the real filth here, no matter what else went on. They got something on his family and used it to destroy him, humiliate and bankrupt him, and ultimately jail him, just to get some negative press for Trump. That is as low as it gets. They used a fathers love to force him to betray himself and his reputation.
Because, Trump.
About a month or two ago on Ricochet, I proposed that lying to law enforcement should no longer be against the law. I said that the only legal sanctions for lying would be if you were in court under oath, and in limited circumstances of aiding and abetting when the police were in hot pursuit.
I caught a lot of crap for my stance. I still haven’t changed my mind.
Robert Mueller’s entire staff of lawyers.
I agree. But given that it is against the law to tell a non truth to government employees the only rational response is to stop talking to government employees without a lawyer.
I tried that, but my brothers told me to cut the crap and just talk to them directly.
My wife is not very happy when I invoke that rule either.
Or even with a lawyer, unless in court proceedings where testimony is compelled and recorded by a court reporter. I’ve never felt as adversarial and less trusting towards law enforcement agencies as I do today. I don’t buy the “99% of them are honest” line either. I think it was Mark Steyn who said that if someone offers you some ice cream and assures you that it’s 99% pure with no more than 1% dog cr@p mixed in, you’d be smarter to treat it as 100% dog cr@p and forego tasting it.
I hadn’t heard that proposal, but I don’t know any good reason why lying to the FBI should continue to be illegal. It was an extraordinary thing to make it illegal in the first place, and the law that did that should be undone.
But as to your original proposal, what about lying on an affidavit? That should be illegal, no?
1) An affidavit is sworn testimony so that is already illegal.
2) I cannot recommend any book on these topics more highly than Sydney Powell’s book “Licensed to Lie”. Ms. Powell is a distinguished appellate attorney who now represents General Flynn.
Her book starts by exposing DOJ malfeasance in the Enron prosecutions, and then goes on to the Ted Stevens prosecution (persecution). Dishearteningly, the DOJ bad actors (Weissman, Mueller) reappeared in the Russia collusion “investigation” . Apparently, a record of spectacular malfeasance is not a disqualification for advancement at the DOJ.
I would like to see Weissman receive a punishment equivalent to three felons, at least. The man is a monster.
And I would think it should continue to be illegal, even if we adopt some of Al Sparks’ proposed reforms.
Her book did a lot to confirm my opinion that the extraordinary powers of the FBI need to be reined in. And that something needs to be done about prosecutorial abuse.
I do not see Pence as a strong figure. As Governor of Indiana he did a quick about face on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act when the left threatened retaliation.
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/trump-vp-pick-mike-pence-evangelicals-225623
From a leftist POV but:
In 2015, Pence initially signed a Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA. He then backpedaled on language that critics feared could be discriminatory against gay people, but that some evangelicals felt was essential to defending religious freedom.
Social conservatives saw the move as a disappointment at best, and at worst, a betrayal—and some are still smarting over it.
Politico is, of course, hard left.
I live in Alaska, and have never voted for Ted Stevens in the Republican primary, though I’d vote for him in the general.
Ted Stevens was railroaded. He was also guilty. Both can be true.
The fact is, he was appointed to the Senate when a vacancy occurred, and he never ran for office as a non-incumbent.
And when he entered office, he was a career civil servent who was paid fairly well, but wasn’t rich.
He certainly was a rich man long before he left office.
But it’s no excuse what the federal prosecutors did to him.