Tag Archives: Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn

A Positive Move

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On Friday, The Epoch Times reported that retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice (DOJ), FBI, and others, alleging he was maliciously prosecuted. He is demanding at least $50 million in compensation.

The article reports:

“Defendant maliciously investigated and prosecuted General Flynn by initiating and continuing a baseless counterintelligence investigation and by filing a criminal information lacking probable cause,” says the suit, filed on March 3 with the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida (pdf).

The former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) under the Obama administration was investigated by the FBI starting in August 2016 for supposed ties to Russia. In 2017, he was charged with lying to the FBI during an interview earlier that year.

The suit alleges that the FBI, and later prosecutors from the office of special counsel Robert Mueller, investigated and prosecuted him for political reasons, considering him a threat.

“General Flynn—who already had a reputation as a hands-on disruptor at DIA, who had publicly excoriated the politicization of the intelligence community, and who had made clear his desire to overhaul the national security structure and the ‘interagency process’—was a direct threat, not only to the self-interest of entrenched intelligence bureaucracies and the federal officials involved, but to exposing their prior and ongoing efforts to derail and discredit President Trump,” the suit says.

The case against Flynn was riddled with contradictions and inconsistencies. FBI agents had already decided to close his case by early January 2017, but higher-ups intervened to keep it open on the justification that Flynn may have violated an obscure and antiquated law called the Logan Act by discussing with a Russian ambassador the priorities of the incoming administration during the transition period. DOJ officials at the time rejected the legal theory. The 1799 Logan Act, which prohibits certain kinds of unauthorized diplomacy, may in fact be unconstitutional, several lawyers previously told The Epoch Times. It has never been successfully prosecuted, much less aimed at an incoming national security adviser.

I would like to remind people that in 2018, CNN reported the following:

Gowdy (Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican) also pushed Comey (former FBI Director James Comey) on comments he had made in a New York forum earlier this month, in which he told a moderator his decision to send two FBI agents to the White House without notifying the White House counsel’s office was something he “probably wouldn’t have done or maybe gotten away with in a more organized administration.”

“I’m just kind of hung up on the phrase ‘gotten away with,’ ” Gowdy told Comey on Monday in the private Capitol Hill interview, according to the transcript.

I am in favor of this lawsuit. I am also in favor of someone wiping that arrogant grin of James Comey’s face.

This Was Not An Individual Effort

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On Saturday, Michael Flynn posted an editorial in The Western Journal about some of things that are being revealed in the federal trial of Igor Danchenko. Please follow the link to read the entire editorial. I will try to  highlight it, but there is a lot of good information in the piece.

The editorial notes:

The FBI is not alone in this coup perpetrated against our nation.

For years, Americans were force-fed lie after lie by the propaganda press doing the dirty work of the Obama-Biden gang and their half-wit minions at the Department of Justice, FBI and others that caused havoc across our country and sought to destroy lives and families. Mine included.

…Now, Americans learned the FBI offered to pay $1 million of taxpayer money to a foreign spymaster conspiring with the Clinton campaign and others, plotting against America and striking at the heart of democracy and the republic. The extent to which they would go to destroy America had no boundaries.

The editorial concludes:

It matters less to me if these thugs spend the rest of their lives in jail, for this is the most consequential time in our nation’s history, and if we don’t correct the path this country is headed down, we may be seeing the last vestiges of the America our Founders envisioned — a free nation of self-governed citizens emboldened with their God-given rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Thank God the truth has broken through since the Durham trial began. Truth has no fear and will always surface to the top. And there are no more disguises of righteousness for those who seek to dismantle the American way of life. No hiding places, no rocks to climb under — America is informed.

The relentless and brutal attacks on me and my love for God and country will continue, but these are whistles in the wind. They will not deter me from honoring my oath and duty to protect this country from harm or my love for my family — my children and grandchildren — for whom I will give my last breath so that they will live free.

The ongoing trial is giving us a lot of insight into the bad behavior of what is now known as the ‘deep state’ during the Trump administration. General Flynn is correct in stating that the actions of those involved in undermining the Trump administration were also undermining our republic. There need to be some consequences for everyone who was involved.

Slowly But Surely The Truth Quietly Comes Out

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The Friday-night news dump is a tradition of politicians and Washington types who are forced to release information they don’t want to release and are hoping no one will actually notice it. The latest Friday-night news dump has to do with redactions made on the FBI Russia report that have more to do with protecting the mistakes of the FBI than protecting national security (as claimed by those doing the redacting).

Andrew McCarthy posted an article at The National Review today citing some of the redactions and why the reasons for them are invalid.

The article cites a number of examples:

When the House first issued its report on the Russia investigation, a heavily redacted portion (pp. 53–54) related that Trump’s original national-security adviser, Michael Flynn, had pled guilty to a false-statements charge based on misleading statements to FBI agents about his December 2016 conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

…But there was one intriguing disclosure in the redacted report: Flynn pled guilty “even though the [FBI] agents did not detect any deception during Flynn’s interview.” There was no elaboration on this point — no discussion of why Flynn was interrogated by FBI agents in the first place; no insight on deliberations within the FBI and Justice Department about whether Flynn had deceptive intent; no explanation of how he came to be charged months later by Mueller’s prosecutors even though the trained investigators who observed Flynn’s demeanor during the interview did not believe he’d lied.

This is what the unredacted Russian report reveals:

  • Elaborate on why the FBI did not believe Flynn had lied, including quotations from Comey’s testimony.
  • Reveal that for some period of time during 2016, the FBI conducted a counterintelligence (CI) investigation of Flynn.
  • Note that top Obama Justice Department and FBI officials provided the committee with “conflicting testimony” about why the FBI interviewed Flynn as if he were a criminal suspect.
  • Illustrate that the FBI and Justice Department originally insisted on concealment of facts helpful to Flynn that are already public.

Meanwhile Flynn’s reputation has been ruined, his finances wrecked, and his life turned upside down. I recently posted an article about the Special Prosecutor‘s dealings with Michael Caputo, a campaign worker for President Trump. He has also had his life ruined and his financial stability destroyed by the Mueller investigation. The Mueller investigation has now reached the point where its goal is intimidating and ruining the lives of people who hold political views different from those on the investigating team. It is long past time for this charade of an investigation to stop.

Please follow the link above to the article at The National Review to see what else the FBI really didn’t want the American public to know.

Some Background On The Indictment Of Michael Flynn

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Michael Flynn is expected to plead guilty this morning of lying to the FBI. Seems as if a lot of other people have done that in the past with limited consequences, but that was then and this is now.

Fox News is reporting the details this morning.

These are the details of the charges:

  • “On or about Dec 29, 2016, FLYNN did not ask the Government of Russia’s Ambassador to the United States … to refrain from escalating the situation in response to sanctions that the United States had imposed against Russia that same day; and FLYNN did not recall the Russian Ambassador subsequently telling him that Russia had chosen to moderate its response to those sanctions as a result of his request.”
  • “On or about December 22, 2016, FLYNN did not ask the Russian Ambassador to delay the vote on or defeat a pending United Nations Security Council resolution; and  that the Russian Ambassador subsequently never described to FLYNN Russia’s response to his request.”

At this point I am not going to mention that this information was probably obtained through the illegal surveillance by the Obama Administration during and after the election. That alone would result in the case being thrown out in a legal court.

I want to mention a few other things about Michael Flynn. Unfortunately, he is a pawn in a much larger attempt to end the Trump presidency before it can be successful. Since the economic success of the Trump Administration is already becoming obvious to anyone who is paying attention, those who want Trump impeached are starting to get desperate. I would also like to note that the FBI has a past history with Flynn that might influence those doing the investigating.

In September, I posted an article that included the following:

When the FBI launched an investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, one of the bureau’s top former counterterrorism agents believed that FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe would have to recuse himself from the investigation.

Former Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Gritz was one of the bureau’s top intelligence analysts and terrorism experts but resigned from the bureau five years ago after she said she was harassed and her career was blocked by top FBI management. She filed a formal sexual discrimination complaint against the bureau in 2013 and it was Flynn, among many others, who publicly came to her aide.

In her first on-camera interview she described the retaliation from McCabe and others in the bureau as “vicious.”

…She told Circa, current senior level management, including McCabe, created a “cancer like” bureaucracy striking fear into FBI agents and causing others to resign. She eventually resigned herself, but her case is still pending.

Lying to the FBI is not a good idea, but I would like to note that the Clintons have done it consistently over the years with very little consequences. The indictment of Flynn is nothing more than the deep state at work. Those responsible for the illegal surveillance need to be held accountable, and all conflicts of interest in the office of the special prosecutor need to be revealed and dealt with. Unfortunately, Flynn has been caught up as a pawn in a much larger witch hunt. It should also be noted that Flynn was fired after about a month in his job in the Trump administration for lying to Vice-President Pence.

Something To Consider

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I am getting tired of the Michael Flynn controversy, and I suspect you are too, but there are some aspects of this incident that need to be considered. There are two stories that I think contain important information.

The first story is from The Week, a magazine not known for its conservative leanings.

Some highlights from that story:

In a liberal democracy, how things happen is often as important as what happens. Procedures matter. So do rules and public accountability. The chaotic, dysfunctional Trump White House is placing the entire system under enormous strain. That’s bad. But the answer isn’t to counter it with equally irregular acts of sabotage — or with a disinformation campaign waged by nameless civil servants toiling away in the surveillance state.

As Eli Lake of Bloomberg News put it in an important article following Flynn’s resignation,

Normally intercepts of U.S. officials and citizens are some of the most tightly held government secrets. This is for good reason. Selectively disclosing details of private conversations monitored by the FBI or NSA gives the permanent state the power to destroy reputations from the cloak of anonymity. This is what police states do. [Bloomberg]

Those cheering the deep state torpedoing of Flynn are saying, in effect, that a police state is perfectly fine so long as it helps to bring down Trump.

It is the role of Congress to investigate the president and those who work for him. If Congress resists doing its duty, out of a mixture of self-interest and cowardice, the American people have no choice but to try and hold the government’s feet to the fire, demanding action with phone calls, protests, and, ultimately, votes. That is a democratic response to the failure of democracy.

John Podhoretz, also not a supporter of Michael Flynn,  posted an article at The New York Post.

He stated the following:

This information might have come because the US intelligence community has an active interest in the Russian official to whom he talked.

Or it could have come because the FBI had been pursuing some sort of secret investigation and had received authorization to monitor and track his calls and discussions.

If this was intelligence, the revelation of the Flynn meeting just revealed something to the Russians we shouldn’t want revealed — which is that we were listening in on them and doing so effectively.

And if it was an FBI investigation, then the iron principle of law enforcement — that evidence gathered in the course of an investigation must be kept secret to protect the rights of the American being investigated — was just put through a shredder.

Keeping our intelligence-gathering assets hidden from those upon whom we are spying is a key element of our national security.

And as for playing fast and loose with confidential information on American citizens: No joke, people — if they can do it to Mike Flynn, they can do it to you.

The danger in this situation is not whatever relationship Michael Flynn has or had with Russia; the danger is the means that the opponents of Donald Trump will use to take down one of his appointments.

We know that former President Obama has organized a nonprofit group called Organizing for Action (OFA) for the purpose of ‘protecting the Obama legacy from President Trump.’ Aside from the fact that this is highly unusual, it is simply classless. This group may or may not be involved in what happened to Michael Flynn, but I suspect that they have a few contacts within government that they might have encouraged along the way. OFA also has a press secretary and the ear of the major media. OFA also has an office paid for with taxpayer dollars because Barack Obama is a former President. The taxpayers are paying to undermine their own government!

Be prepared for more media attacks on members of the Trump Administration.

 

 

An Interesting Choice

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The Washington Times is reporting today that Donald Trump has asked Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn to be his national security advisor. General Flynn is an interesting character who speaks very bluntly and has the background for the position.

The article reports:

Flynn, who turns 58 in December, is a native of Middletown, Rhode Island. He graduated from the University of Rhode Island in 1981 with a degree in management science and was commissioned a second lieutenant in military intelligence. He held various positions in military intelligence throughout his career, including director of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the top intelligence officer for the commander of the U.S.-led international military coalition in Afghanistan in 2009-10.

According to a biography published by the DIA during his time as its director, Flynn’s academic credentials include three graduate degrees: a master’s in telecommunications from Golden Gate University; a master’s in military arts and sciences from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; and a master’s in national security and strategic studies from the U.S. Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island.

He drew public attention in January 2010, during his time in Afghanistan, for his unorthodox decision to have a Washington think tank, the Center for a New American Security, publish his critique of the U.S. intelligence system in Afghanistan.

The report said: “Having focused the overwhelming majority of its collection efforts and analytical brainpower on insurgent groups, the vast intelligence apparatus is unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which U.S. and allied forces operate.”

I disagree with General Flynn on Turkey. The article states:

Flynn’s dark warnings about Islam have not extended to the Islamist-leaning authoritarian Turkish government headed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In an op-ed for the Washington newspaper The Hill just before the election, Flynn wrote that “our ally Turkey” needs support and echoed Erdogan’s warnings that a “shady” Turkish leader now exiled in Pennsylvania should not be given safe harbor in the U.S. Erdogan has called for the extradition of the exile, Fethullah Gullen, but the Obama administration has made no move to comply.

Under President Erdogan, Turkey is moving toward becoming an Islamic state. The only advantage in supporting the current government of Turkey is that a change of government through a revolution might result in a civil war and failed state similar to what we have seen in Syria.

Overall, I think General Flynn is a very good choice as national security advisor. He will oppose the spread of radical Islam in ways that the Obama Administration did not. He is also someone who is going to be honest as to what we are up against and the current risk of terrorism.