Obama meeting behind corrupt probe
How officials used their media allies to spin phantom Russia-collusion tale
INFORMATION released in the Justice Department’ s motion to dismiss the case it brought against Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn confirms the significance of a Jan .5,2017, meeting at the Obama White House. It was at this meeting that President Barack Obama gave guidance to key officials who would bet asked with protecting his administration’ s utilization of secret ly funded Clinton campaign research, which alleged Donald Trump was involved in a treasonous plot to collude with Russia, from being discovered or stopped by the incoming administration.
“President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia,” National Security Adviser Susan Rice wrote in an unusual e-mail to herself about the meeting, which was also attended by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, FBI Director James Come ya nd Vice President Joe Bid en.
A clearer picture is emerging of the drasticsteps that were taken to accomplish O ba ma’ s goal in the following weeks and months. Shortly thereafter, high-level operatives began intensely leaking selective information supporting a supposed Russia Trump conspiracy theory, the incoming national security adviser was ambushed, and the incoming attorney general was forced to recuse himself from oversight of investigations of President Trump. At each major point in the operation, explosive media leaks were a key strategy in the operation to take down Trump.
Not only was information on Russia not fully shared with the incoming Trump team, as O ba ma directed, the leak sand ambushes made the transition chaotic, scared quality individuals away from working in the administration, made effective governance almost impossible and materially damaged national security. When Comey was finally fired on May 9, in part for his duplicitous ness regarding his handling of the Russia-collusion theory, he orchestrated the launch of a special counsel probe that continued his efforts for another two years. That probe ended with Robert Mueller finding no evidence of any American colludingwith Russia to steal the 2016 election.
This analysis of the timeline from early 2017 shows a clear pattern of behavior from the federal officials running the collusion operation against the Trump campaign. It also shows how essential media leaks were to their strategy to cripple the ability of the incoming administration to run the country.
JAN. 4: Following the closure of a pretextually dubious and politically motivated FBI investigation of Flynn at the beginning of January, the leadership of the FBI scrambled to reopen a case against Flynn, the man who, in his role as national security adviser would have to review their Russia-collusion investigation. FBI officials openly discussed their concern about briefingthe veteran intelligence official on what they had done to the Trump campaign and transition team and what they were planningto do to the incoming Trump administration. Flynn had to be dealt with. The FBI’ stop counter intelligence official would later memorialize discussions about the FBI’s attempts to “get [Flynn] fired.” No reopening was needed, they determined, when they discovered they had failed to close the previous investigation. They found this mistake“amazing” and“serendipitouslygood” and said“our utter in competence actually helps us .” Even more note worthy were texts from the FBI’s No .2 counter intelligence official, PeterS trzok, to FBI lawyer Lisa Page noting that the “7th floor ,” a reference to Come ya nd his deputy director, Andrew McCabe, was running the show.
Jan. 5: Yates, Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper briefed Obama on Russia-related matters in the Oval Office. Bid en and Rice also attended. After the O ba ma briefing, the intelligence chiefs who would be leaving at the end of the term were dismissed and Yates and Comey, who would continue in the Trump administration, were asked to stay. Not only did O ba ma give his guidance about how to perpetuate the Russia-collusion-theory investiga
ti ons, he also talked about Flynn’ s conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, according to both Come ya nd Yates. Interestingly, Clapper,Come ya nd Yates all said that they did not brief Obama about these phone calls. Rice likely briefed O ba ma on the calls and would have had access to the intelligence. Comeyment ions the Logan Act at this meeting.
It was this meeting that Rice memorialized in her bizarre Inauguration Day e-mail to herself that claimed Ob am at old the gathered to do everything“by the book .” But Rice also noted in her e-mail that the key point of discussion was whether and how to withhold national-security information, likely including details of the investigation into Trump himself, from the incoming national-security team.
Jan. 6: An ostensibly similar briefing about Russian interference efforts during the 2016 campaign was given to President-elect Trump. After that briefing, Comey privately briefed Trump on the most salacious and absurd “pee tape” allegation in the Christopher Steele dossier, a document the FBI had already used to obtain a warrant to spy on Trump campaign affiliate Carter Page. He did not mention the dossier was completely unverified or that it was the product of a secretly funded operation by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
JAN. 10: In an amazing coincidence, CNN found the excuse to publish the Russia claims after a high-level Obama intelligence operative leaked that Comey had briefed Trump about the dossier. This selective leak, which was credulously accepted by CNN reporters Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto, Jake Tapper and Carl Bernstein, may have been the most important step in the operation to harm the incoming administration. The leak of the briefing of Trump was used to legitimize a ridiculous dossier full of allegations the FBI knew to be false and that insinuated he was being black mailed by Russia.
Jan .12: The next part of the strategy was the explosive leak to David Ignatius of The Washington Post to legitimize the use against Flynn of the Logan Act, a likely unconstitutional 1799 law prohibiting private individuals, not public incoming national-security advisers, from discussing foreign policy with foreign governments. Ignatiusaccepted the leak from an O ba ma official. He wrote that Flynn had called Kislyak. “What did Flynn say, and did it under cut the US sanctions ?”
Flynn’s routine and appropriate phone call became fodder for a developinggrand conspiracy theory of Russia collusion. In discussions with investigators, both DO J’ sM aryMc Cord and Comey conspicuously cite this Ignatius column as somehow meaningful in the approach they would take with Flynn. The leak-fueled Ignatius column would later be used by FBI officials to justify an illegal am bush interview of Flynn in the White House.
Jan. 24: Comey later admitted he broke every protocol to send agents to interview Flynn and try to catch him in a lie. FBI officials st rategize dhow to keep Flynn from knowing he was a target of the investigation or asking for an attorney to represent him in the interview.A leak-based Jan .23 Washington Post article that false ly stated that Flynn was not an FBI target was key to that strategy. Although the interviewing agents said they could detect no “tells” indicating he lied, he later was induced to plead guilty to lying in this interview. Presumably in light of what Flynn had told them about the calls, Yates would go to the White House the next day and insinuate Flynn should probably be fired.
Feb. 9: The strategy to get Flynn fired didn’t immediately work so another leak was deployed to Greg Miller, Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima of The Washington Post. That article, headline “National Security Adviser Flynn Discussed Sanctions with Russian Ambassador, Despite Denials, Officials Say,” was sourced to people who happened to share senior FBI leadership’s views on the Logan Act. This article was also based on criminal leaks of top-secret information of phone call intercepts and laid out the FBI’s case for why Flynn’s contacts with a foreign adversary were a problem.The fact that such phone calls are routine, not to mention Flynn’s case that improved relations with Russia when China, North Korea, and Iran were posing increasing threats, never made it into these articles for context.
Feb .13: The operation finally succeeded in getting Flynn fired.
March 1: Flynn was the first obstacle who had to be overcome. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was the next. The Trump loyalist with a strong Department of Justice background would also need to be briefed on the anti-Trump efforts unless he could be sidelined. Comey admitted that early in Sessions’ tenure, he deliberately hid Russia-related information from Sessions because “it made little sense to report it to Attorney General Sessions, who we expected would likely recuse himself from involvement in Russiarelated investigations.” To secure that rec us al, yet another leak was deployed to The Washington Post’s Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller. The leak was intended to tar Sessions as a secret Russian agent and was dramatically spun as “Sessions Spoke Twice to Russian Envoy: Revelation Contradicts His Testimony at Confirmation Hearing.” One meeting was in passing and the other was in his function as a US senator, but the hysteria was such that the authors could getaway with suggesting Sessions was too compromised to oversee the Department of Justice’ s counter intelligence operations involving Russia. It is worth noting that the special-counselidea was pushed in this article.
March 2: Sessions recused himself from oversight of the FBI’ san ti-Trump operation, providing no meaningful oversight to an operation that would be spun into a special counsel by mid May.With the removal of Trump’ s national security adviser and his attorney general, there was no longer any chance of Trump loyalists discovering what Obama holdovers at the FBI were actually doing to get Trump thrown out of office. After Trump fired Comey for managerial in competence on May 9, deceptively edited and misleading leaks to The New York Times, ordered by Comey himself, were used to gin up a special-counsel run exclusively by left-wing antiTrump partisans who continued the operation without any meaningful oversight for another two years.
This stunning operation was not just a typical battle between political foes, nor merely an example of media bias against political enemies. Instead, this entire operation was a deliberate and direct attack on the foundation of American governance. In light of the newly declassified documents released in recent days, it is clear that understanding what happened in that Jan. 5 Oval Office meeting is essential to understanding the full scope and breadth of the corrupt operation against the Trump administration. It is long past time for lawmakers in Congress who are actually interested in oversight of the federal government and the media to demand answers about what really happened in that meeting from every single participant, including O ba ma and Bid en.