Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
53 Transcripts: Flynn Flam
Catherine Herridge of CBS News has the full unredacted version of Susan Rice’s famous “by the book” memo, written to herself, on January 20, 2017, regarding the January 5, 2017, meeting involving President Obama, VP Biden, herself, Sally Yates, Comey, Clapper, and Brennan. The previously redacted paragraph reads:
Director Comey affirmed that he is proceeding “by the book” as it relates to law enforcement. From a national security perspective, Comey said he does have some concerns that incoming NSA Flynn is speaking frequently with Russian ambassador Kisylak. Comey said that could be an issue as it relates to sharing sensitive information. President Obama asked if Comey was saying the NSC should not pass sensitive information related to Russia to Flynn. Comey replied “potentially”. He added that he has no indication thus far that Flynn has passed classified information to Kisylak but he noted “the level of communication was unusual”.
My guess is the memo went through several careful drafts before reaching its final version.
I believe its purpose fourfold.
- Justify withholding of sensitive information during the last two weeks of the transition.
- Creating an “I told you so” if it turned out Flynn was compromising national security (Obama warned Trump against appointing Flynn)
- Justifying Comey’s continued investigation of Flynn.
- Making sure Comey was the fall guy if it all went wrong.
It was no secret the intelligence community and President Obama had no use for General Flynn since he’d left the administration in 2014. He’d been public about his opinion of the quality of the intelligence agencies’ work product and leadership and having him as NSA meant their shortcomings would become public and the current organizational structure and embedded careerists threatened.
It is evident that from the time he left government service the intelligence community (including friendly foreign intelligence services) were keeping an eye on Flynn and he did himself no favors by miscues such as accepting payment from RT TV to attend a December 2015 dinner in Moscow where he was seated next to Putin.
According to a story that broke yesterday, a whistleblower at the Treasury Dept. claims that officials there were improperly tracking Flynn’s finances as far back as 2015. While we only have the anonymous source at this point it is certainly worth investigating to see if the story can be confirmed.
In addition, in early 2017, just after Flynn’s resignation, a story broke, first in the UK and then in the US, that Flynn was having an affair with a Russian emigre at Cambridge who was an intelligence operative for the Kremlin. What is of particular significance is that while the story only became public in 2017, I learned from reading the recently released House Intelligence Committee transcripts, that David J Kramer, an associate of Senator McCain, was told in September 2016 by Christopher Steele about the alleged affair (p.57) meaning the story was already in circulation in intelligence circles and a planned operation to destroy Flynn’s reputation. The Russian in question is Svetlana Lokhova, who quite strongly, with documentation and, I think, convincingly, denied having an affair and being a Russian operative and has had her career destroyed as a result of the story. Moreover, the Mueller Report does not confirm the story and, as we know well, if it had the tiniest scrap of evidence otherwise it would have played it up.
Flynn was having frequent contact with Kisylak during the transition. In fact, Rice testified to the House Intelligence Committee, that in late November 2016, the head of Trump’s National Security Council transition team, Marshall Billingslea, expressed concerned to her and her staff about Flynn’s frequent conversations with Kisylak and asked for background on the ambassador, “that he seemed to want to use to persuade General Flynn that perhaps he should scale back the contacts“. (p.44)
However, as Rice’s memo notes, as of January 5, Comey had no evidence Flynn shared classified information with the Russians. Moreover, the dislike of Flynn had another basis beyond the mutual disdain between he and the intelligence community — there was a basic policy disagreement. Flynn thought China a bigger threat than Russia; the Obama administration thought the opposite.
In her House Intelligence Committee testimony of September 8, 2017 Rice complained:
“We spent a lot more time talking about China in part because General Flynn’s focus was on China as our principal overarching adversary. He had many questions and concerns about China. And when I elicited – sought to elicit his perspective on Russia, he was quite, I started to say dismissive, but that may be an overstatement. He downplayed his assessment of Russia as a threat to the United States. He called it overblown. He said they’re a declining power, they’re demographically challenged, they’re not really much of a threat, and then reemphasized the importance of China.” (pp.46-47)
Ironic, coming from the administration which ridiculed Mitt Romney in 2012 for his claim that Russia was our #1 adversary (Mitt was wrong, but that’s another story) while at the same time President Obama was caught on mic with Medvedev telling him to pass on a message to Putin that he’d have more flexibility after the election to screw our allies in Eastern Europe.
Let’s not forget the operation to “get” Michael Flynn had two sequentially independent components. The first was to remove Flynn as NSA, a position where he could do damage to the intelligence community bureaucracy and the legacy of the Obama administration. That was accomplished when he resigned in February 2017 and the conspirators had no further interest in pursuing him. After that, Comey and McCabe were relaxed enough to admit in testimony that the interviewing FBI agents had not thought Flynn lied in his interview.
Things changed when the Mueller gang arrived on the scene. They wanted to pursue Flynn in a criminal investigation to pressure him to turn on Donald Trump. When he refused to do so, they pursued an alternative course, bringing a criminal prosecution to provide added fodder for the Russia collusion narrative to be used by the media in order to help the Democratic Party in the 2018 midterms.
Published in General
Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo…:
I don’t know how many times Flynn called the Ruskie, but I doubt it was unusual given that Obama was provoking Russia during the transition. We would have heard if there were many calls, so there probably were not. That means (according to the memo) that Comey lied twice to Obama (frequency of calls) and sort-of-lied twice that Flynn was passing info to Russia. Did Comey really lie to Obama 4 times or did Rice lie in the memo? I bet it was Comey.
Comey certainly gave Obama information on the frequency of calls but I would also assume Rice did in the same meeting if her testimony regarding Billingslea is accurate and, according to her testimony, her knowledge of frequent contacts came from a source independent of Comey. Regarding the Billingslea story, after reading Rice’s testimony, this was the additional information I was able to find:
This incident involving Billingslea became public in early May 2017 as part of the avalanche of press reports about the alleged collusion of the Trump campaign and administration with Russia. Here’s a typical example. All of the stories contain the same note regarding sources;
That implies four of the sources did not have key roles in the Obama Administration. Whether they were officials in that administration who did not have key roles, served in the Bush administration, or were now in the Trump administration cannot be determined. And they are collectively cited as sources for the article which contains information beyond the Billingslea incident.
Billingslea has never publicly commented on the matter. He is currently Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing at the Treasury Dept. and on May 4 was nominated to be Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs. During the Bush administration, Billingslea held a number of senior positions at the Department of Defense.
I think it is so interesting that her son is president of the College Republicans at Stanford. What does he know that we don’t ?
I guess I shouldn’t continue being so naive*, but, once again we learn that certain items initially withheld as “classified” are either embarrassing, or erroneous. (Or both)
* nevertheless, I persist.
By the book?
I don’t know how many times Flynn called the Ruskie,
I believe it is thought it is the Ruskie Kisylak who was calling Flynn seeking assurances that Obama’s provocations at the last minute of his term were not from Trump.
Fine post Gumby.
I believe its purpose fourfold.
All that and :
a. A discrediting of Flynn to prevent the needed reforms of the intelligence community that Flynn wanted to make.
b. A way to continue spying on Trump while he was in office.
Great post.
There may be a teeny, tiny problem with this. According to Sally Yates, Rice wasn’t there:
The unit that Billingslea has been tapped to lead at State is apparently more concerned about the PRC than about Russia. (See recent presentations by Christopher Ford et al.) So it would seem that Gen. Flynn’s strategic worldview gained subscribers on its own merits during the past several years anyway.
Similarly, it’s a gift of Providence that a Gen. Flynn hire for the NSC, China expert Matt Pottinger, not only managed to hang in there from early 2017 through this point in time, but also that he (Pottinger) more recently was promoted by current NSA Robert O’Brien to the role of Deputy NSA for Asia.
Take that, “Lightworker”…
#8 Ontheleftcoast
Mao Zedong periodically used to subject individual members of his support staff to loyalty tests (not explicitly specified as such, but understood to be such) by having them carry out relatively unremarkable assignments — usually involving attending a number of meetings hither and yon — and reporting back to him on their impressions and takeaways. The key to passing the test was reporting on these assignments strictly through the Mao-preferred prism of political comprehension and discourse.
What Rice did in this case was memorialize Comey’s passing a loyalty test with respect to Obama. Rice’s own actual presence there at the 05 January 2017 second meeting or not was in all likelihood immaterial — Rice wasn’t aiming to record the indisputable facts of her own role in the meeting as the principal purpose of the email.
What Obama accomplished in this second meeting was obtaining confirmation that Comey had coordinated with Brennan in the manner Obama desired (i.e., Brennan had clued Comey into the CIA’s own independent recording of the 29 December phone call between Kislyak and Flynn, where Flynn’s name was never masked in the first place), that Comey was fully willing and able to rattle off the same story as Brennan even when Brennan wasn’t in the same room, that Comey was committed to the whole enterprise and Obama’s directives for its implementation post-20 January, and that the force of Comey’s commitment was such that Yates/Main Justice would require no persuading to close ranks.
I don’t find #2 believable. I don’t believe anyone in the Obama administration ever thought Flynn was passing classified information to the Russians and compromising national security. I don’t even believe national security was a high priority for anyone in the Obama administration (“Tell Vlad I’ll have more flexibility after the election. . .”). Their own security (legacy) was another matter.
I think Obama administration officials rightly saw Flynn as an existential threat to their whole project of a) getting Hillary elected to preserve aforementioned legacy and advance the progressive agenda and b) destroying Trump’s presidency once a) was no long feasible. As has been said, Flynn knew where the skeletons were buried; he had to be neutralized. Everything else is just cover up and whitewashing after the fact.
I believe we have found what is called the “designated felon”. Indict Comey and see how quickly he becomes the “designated whistleblower” . . .
I dunno, Stad, I can’t recall another person so convinced of his righteousness. I think he’d be so shocked by an indictment he would have a hard time coming up with anything to admit, even if it helped him avoid punishment.
I think the main thing here is, if he didn’t already know it, Comey knows now that he’s the designated fall guy for the Russian collusion story and the Flynn spying efforts from the rest of the Obama crew. But the former FBI director may still think he’s 6-foot-7 tall and bulletproof thanks to his pretty substantial ego, or may have his own info about the Obama people he thinks might make any accusations stronger than the Rice memo go away.
I still wouldn’t expect any of the knives to come out among the co-conspirators until at least close to Election Day, since the hope still undoubtedly is Biden wins in November and all these investigations are dropped by the new administration, even if Durham returns initial indictments before then. Nobody’s going to line up to make a deal until they’re worried about Trump being in office for another four years, so for now the Rice letter lets you know where the future battles may lie, but doesn’t guarantee there are going to be any.
I hope that Trump and the GOP are observing what is now the new standard on what is allowed by intelligence community and place operatives to use the exact same authority to do the same back more so.
Many families have survived civil wars by having family members in influential positions on both sides. Sometimes this was a deliberate scheme, sometimes it probably just indicates a certain flexibility and resilience that is a useful trait.
This is the way of it. Twas ever thus. Our government is stock full of fallible, hypocritical human beings. It is hard to avoid since that is all there are to recruit from. It is a bit of a blow for the Leftist perfecter of all things to be unveiled as a craven and corrupt bungler. They really do believe in the perfectibility myth, no amount of exposure to reality shakes their Platonic vision. But there we are.
If he says he is without sin, he is a liar and the truth is not in him.
Oh, I bet he has a lot to admit – his own actions, and those of others . . .
Because I cannot edit my post without sending it back to the Member Feed, I wanted to correct a couple of misstatments in the OP:
Unauthorized access of financial records is a very big deal in Treasury Dept terms. Details like these reported in the account I read in an Ohio newspaper lend support to the whistleblower’s assertion that surveillance of Flynn was political and not tied to legitimate criminal or national security concerns:
Reportedly, the whistleblower’s observations of what was going on at Treasury were corroborated by another individual from intelligence community who had been detailed to Treasury. Important not only as a second witness, but also because of this factoid mentioned in the article:
The person in charge of the Treasury division running unauthorized surveillance on Trump’s main people had very close ties to former president Obama, and to the agency at the center of this mess (CIA). I hope John Durham looks into this whistleblower’s allegations while he’s investigating what the previous administration did and whether they had sufficient predicate to do it.
Great post, @gumbymark. It can be hard going slogging through Flynn stuff past few weeks, and your post pulled several threads together neatly.
Wonder when #2 on your list happened, and if it had anything to do with Treasury’s flurry of interest in Flynn’s communications around December 14, 2016 described in the Ohio news article I mentioned in comment #20:
Flynn recusal motion:
https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.191592/gov.uscourts.dcd.191592.261.0_1.pdf
Docket:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6234142/united-states-v-flynn/?filed_after=&filed_before=&entry_gte=&entry_lte=&order_by=desc
The proposed order is interesting.
https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.191592/gov.uscourts.dcd.191592.261.9_1.pdf
Not only does it recuse, it grants dismissal and requires disclosure of Sullivan’s extrajudical communications, etc. (for possible civil suits?):
Further amicus briefs are coming in to the Flynn case.
This one, in favor of dismissal, is joined, inter alia, by Trey Gowdy, Ken Starr, and Ron Coleman:
https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.191592/gov.uscourts.dcd.191592.289.0.pdf
Leave to file at least one more against dismissal is pending.