Here are my observations on Michael Flynn’s guilty plea and some background that will put things into perspective for you.
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn (Ret.) pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. (conservativetribune.com)
IT DEPENDS ON WHAT THE MEANING OF “LIES” IS – Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn is said to have lied to the FBI while a member of President Trump’s transition team. I’ll give you my observations on that, but first, you should know that its okay if the FBI “lies” whenever convenient to the agency.
For example, when Judicial Watch requested all documents relating to the “secret” airport meeting between former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton, the FBI told JW “No records responsive to your request were located.” That was on October 21, 2016, when that information might have benefited the Trump campaign.
Mysteriously, on August 10, 2017, JW was informed by the FBI that “Upon further review, we subsequently determined potentially responsive documents may exist,” and the request for documents had been reopened. Oops, not a lie, they were just overlooked.
And, let’s not forget the multitude of other unanswered questions the FBI has failed to supply regarding Benghazi, the Clinton e-mails and, more recently, its possible complicity in the use of the Trump dossier to seek surveillance permits.
ABC’s Brian Ross has been suspended for his false reporting on Flynn. (realclearpolitics.com)
BACK TO THE MICHAEL FLYNN SITUATION – The media would have you believe his guilty plea is a big deal, as the left-leaning USA Today published Saturday in a weak report, “5 Reasons Michael Flynn’s guilty plea is a big deal.” But it was ABC’s Brian Ross who jumped at the opportunity to interpret Flynn’s plea as a promise to flip on Trump, his family and White House staffers. On Saturday, Ross was suspended by ABC for four weeks without pay for his irresponsible reporting that Flynn had communicated with the Russians during Trump’s campaign. The band of “sore losers” at the other networks couldn’t resist predicting the end of the road for the Trump presidency.
A LOOK BACK – Following the mass shooting in the Colorado theater, it was Brian Ross who alluded that the shooter could be a member of the Tea Party after someone with the same name as the shooter appeared on a membership roster. It turned out not to be true.
NO INDICTMENT – Calmer heads prevailed at The Wall Street Journal, where the editorial board reminded readers that “Prosecutors signaled Mr. Flynn’s cooperation by filing an ‘information’ rather than an indictment, on charges of making false statements about this meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in two December 2016 meetings.”
NOTE that the meetings took place after the election and thereby cannot be considered to be part of any collusion with Russia to sway the election.
While the so-called mainstream media have labelled this as another Watergate, “There is nothing scandalous, or even unusual, about a presidential transition meeting with a foreign ambassador,” the Journal explains. “Diplomacy after the election not the same as collusion before the election.”
ANOTHR LOOK BACK – If you know that Flynn was despised by President Obama while he was at the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he regularly clashed with the former president over militant Islamic terrorism, you can easily understand why he was being surveilled by the Obama administration. Obama told Trump not to bring Flynn into his administration (that was enough to ensure that Trump would do so) and it was Obama holdover Sally Yates, acting attorney general, who gleefully testified on the surveillance.
EVEN THE WASHINGTON POST on January 23, 2017, reported “The FBI in late December reviewed intercepts of communications between the Russian ambassador (Kislyak) to the United States and retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn – national security advisor to then-President-elect Trump – but has not found any evidence of wrongdoing or illicit ties to the Russian government, U.S officials said.”
Certainly, the Journal points out, “a seasoned intelligence officer, Mr. Flynn had to know that the U.S. would be listening to Mr. Kislyak’s conversations and have transcripts. A Congressional source also tells us that former FBI Director James Comey told the House Intelligence Committee on March 2, that his agents had concluded that Mr. Flynn hadn’t lied, but had forgotten what had been discussed.”
MY ADVICE to y’all is to keep your powder dry. While much of the media has this all billed as a scandal that “has reached inside the gates of the White House,” according to Holman W. Jenkens, Jr. of the Journal, “the crime the media are trying to make out of these events is the crime of having diplomatic relations with Russia.”
