Piecing together the ‘phony’ case against Michael Flynn: Goodwin
The best way to understand the dismissal of the phony prosecution case against Gen. Michael Flynn and the release of secret congressional testimonies is to imagine a giant jigsaw puzzle. We know the final picture will show a broad conspiracy by law enforcement and intelligence agencies under Barack Obama to undermine Donald Trump’s campaign and help Hillary Clinton win the 2016 election.
When that failed, many of those same people turned their efforts to sabotaging Trump’s presidency. Some are still at it.
That’s the big picture, and last week two more significant pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
The congressional testimonies were more shocking because they go to the heart of the Russia collusion narrative spun by Democrats and their media handmaidens. The witness took the oath in 2017, but what they said was hidden ever since.
Now we know why. Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Dem, didn’t want the public to realize that top members of the Obama administration had blown the collusion narrative to smithereens.
One after another, James Clapper, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Loretta Lynch, Sally Yates and others said some version of “I know of no evidence linking the Trump campaign to Russia.”
This was terrible news for Schiff, who released the documents only because the White House threatened to if he didn’t. Schiff, recall, relentlessly insisted he had seen lots of collusion evidence. Maybe he needs an eye test.
Clearly, there is no such evidence because there was no collusion. That means the three years spent on finding it was an enormous waste of time and money and created an unfair cloud over Trump, his campaign and his administration.
But the Russia wild goose chase also involved the corruption of the probe by special counsel Robert Mueller and that’s where the Flynn piece fits into the puzzle.
Briefly Trump’s first national security adviser, Flynn was a pawn, a loyal American soldier initially targeted by James Comey’s FBI and his band of dirty cops in the effort to upend Trump’s presidency. If you don’t consider the possibility that this was an attempted coup, you will find it impossible to understand what happened early in 2017.
In formally dropping the Flynn prosecution, the Department of Justice released a trove of documents showing there was no crime. They prove the FBI knew Flynn had done nothing wrong in talking to the Russian ambassador after the election. They also show agents knew he didn’t lie to them in a meeting they tricked him into holding.
Yet still the odious Peter Strzok and others kept the case open and eventually forced Flynn to plead guilty to something he hadn’t done by threatening his son. Most of that happened under Mueller, who comes off looking like a dupe at best and a coup participant at worst.
Either way, Mueller leaves the public stage in disgrace, his final work exposed as a sham that railroaded an innocent man and covered up bigger crimes than it uncovered.
Mueller doesn’t exit alone. Comey and his crew already are unmasked as goons, but if there is any justice in Washington, they will face prosecution.
The Flynn documents also show that Obama himself was actively engaged in the case and highlight again the suspect Oval Office meeting on Jan. 5, 2017. Comey, Rice, Clapper, Yates and Vice President Joe Biden all were there when a trap was set for Comey’s meeting with President-elect Trump the next day.
Instead of telling Trump about the investigation into his campaign, they agreed Comey would show Trump only the two pages from the infamous Steele dossier that made salacious allegations against Trump. After pulling the president aside to do that, Comey raced to his car and typed a memo about Trump’s reactions, proof the briefing was actually a setup.
The documents’ mention of Obama’s role probably helped spark his Friday attack on Trump. He knows the fawning and biased Washington media will play up his criticisms on the Flynn case and the pandemic response rather than deal with the evidence that he participated in spying on his successor.
While there are many key players in the effort to get the full picture of 2016 and early 2017, none is more important than Attorney General William Barr.
His fundamental view — that something didn’t smell right about the Russia probe — led to the collapse of the Flynn case. It also led to the inspector general report that found abuses of the FISA court when the FBI got a warrant to spy on Carter Page, a Trump associate.
Barr, for his splendid service, has been attacked mercilessly. The common refrain, that he is politicizing Justice, is another example of Dems accusing others of doing what they themselves actually did.
In truth, Barr is de-politicizing the FBI and Justice Department the Obama administration corrupted.
His work is not finished. John Durham, the US attorney Barr named to examine the many tentacles of the Russia probe, is now pursuing a criminal case, though no charges have been filed.
Barr also must resolve the conduct of former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. When former AG Jeff Sessions recused himself, Rosenstein took over the Russia probe and appointed Mueller as special counsel.
A highly questionable move then, it now looks far more sinister, given the misconduct by Mueller’s team on the Flynn case and other issues.
Moreover, Rosenstein himself was involved in the FISA court abuse, having signed an extension of the Page warrant without admitting that the FBI failed to verify the Steele dossier or that Clinton’s campaign commissioned it.
Any of these was sufficient reason to pull the plug on Mueller by early 2018. Yet Rosenstein allowed the probe to continue into 2019.
The impact was enormous. It is possible, for example, that Dems would not have taken the House if voters knew by the fall of 2018 that the collusion charge was false.
In that case, Nancy Pelosi would not have become Speaker and Schiff would not have had the power to conceal the 2017 testimonies.
Flynn would not have lost two more years of his life and there would have been no phony Ukraine impeachment last year. In short, America would have been a very different place politically.
So as the hunt for pieces of the puzzle continues, add Rosenstein to the list of those who have some serious explaining to do.
Just the facts, not the ‘liars’
Reader Anita Mule spots an ugly trend. She writes: “The word liar used to have shock value, especially if it involved a public figure. No more. Now there is never a question of being misinformed or mistaken. People immediately conclude the other person is a liar. I want to go back to the civility of stating facts, as you see them, and not name-calling.”
It’s the economy!
Many Saturday headlines went like this: Decade of job gains erased in April
They show the economic shutdown replacing the body count as the top coronavirus story.
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