Ace:
Stephen Green has a good post rounding up information about the Deep State’s undemocratic, illegal war of leaks against democratically elected officials.
He concludes:
In normal times, the idea that U.S. officials entrusted with our most sensitive secrets would selectively disclose them to undermine the White House would alarm those worried about creeping authoritarianism. Imagine if intercepts of a call between Obama’s incoming national security adviser and Iran’s foreign minister leaked to the press before the nuclear negotiations began? The howls of indignation would be deafening.In the end, it was Trump’s decision to cut Flynn loose. In doing this he caved in to his political and bureaucratic opposition. Nunes told me Monday night that this will not end well. “First it’s Flynn, next it will be Kellyanne Conway, then it will be Steve Bannon, then it will be Reince Priebus,” he said. Put another way, Flynn is only the appetizer. Trump is the entree.
One of the reasons the Democrats are delaying Trump appointees is that they want Obama holdovers in positions of power so that they can use their power undemocratically and illegally to fatally wound the new administration in the moments of its birth. (I know, strange the Democrats of all people would be keen to do that.)
But it’s also the careerists of the Deep State itself.
Trump has to get both serious and ruthless about firing all Obama holdovers and firing as many careerist members of #TheResistance as possible — or, if he can’t fire them, assigning them to very isolated and unhappy places.
There are already national “reporters” talking about “what did the president know and when did he know it” in regard to Flynn. Sound familiar? After Nixon’s landslide in ’72 at least the media and their congressional allies had the decency to wait a few months before moving on impeachment. And who is demanding a Senate investigation? Why McCain and his butt-boy Graham, of course. Ultimate insiders. It’s rarely about Democrats vs. Republicans, it’s about those in control and those who aren’t
Flynn was politically assassinated, next they’ll go after Conway and Bannon…and of course, ultimately Trump.
If KT MacFarland resigns or is asked to resign, that will be a major, major mistake by the administration…….the media already smells blood in the water and are gathering for the anticipated frenzy……..will just have to wait and see, but Trump must learn he can’t throw out a bone, they will devour the bone and come out after him…….that ZERO, Barack O, is obviously chortling with glee……
Flynn was part of the Russian question, which the right refuses to acknowledge or look into. Sally Yates privately warned Trump that there was worrisome evidence regarding inappropriate and possibly illegal contact between Flynn and Russian officials weeks ago. Trump’s response was to attack her, accuse her of betrayal, and fire her.
Justice Department warned White House that Flynn could be vulnerable to Russian blackmail, officials say
I don’t know how long people can continue to pretend there’s not a serious problem. At some point, for the sake of both national security and their own political survival, republicans are going to have to seriously examine the situation.
@Greg:
Sorry to rain today on your parade but chaffetz said today he has no interest in conducting an investigation.
Flynn did nothing wrong. The hold overs in from the obama regime are leaking intentionally to politically harm.
Trump should fire any obama appointee. They are alt-left alinskyites and do not have the best interests of this country.
@Greg:
Sorry to rain today on your parade but chaffetz said today he has no interest in conducting an investigation.
Flynn did nothing wrong. The hold overs in from the obama regime are leaking
Trump should fire any obama appointee. They are alt-left alinskyites and do not have the best interests of this country.
Of course not. Why would the republican head of the House Oversight Committee want to investigate the circumstances leading to Flynn’s resignation? Flynn was nothing more than Trump’s National Security Adviser. Russia isn’t relevant to that. So what if Trump had been warned about evidence of improper contacts, and then decided it was better to behead the messenger than to investigate the message?
Anyway, it’s not like the House Oversight Committee is actually responsible for oversight or anything.
GOP chairman: Oversight won’t investigate Flynn
The Washington Free Beacon is reporting that former Obama officials waged a secret campaign against national security adviser Mike Flynn which ultimately lead to Flynn being forced to resign. The report says that Flynn was targeted because he was strongly opposed to the Iran Nuclear deal which former President Barack Obama wants protected. The Obama loyalists conducted a behind the scenes attack against Flynn by injecting damaging stories on Flynn into the national media. According to the Free Beacon the attack was lead by former Obama administration adviser Ben Rhodes.
JUST IN President Donald J Trump signs repeal of Dodd Frank provision
What we had was the NSA moles using ILLEGAL WARRANTLESS ( no FISA court REVIEW) wire TAPS on a civilian breaking absolutely no law ( the Logan act is bull crap) AND then releasing that illegal criminal wire tap to the media. This is punishable by firing squad. This is a huge story of treasonous proportions.
This is a priority focus for Congress and law enforcemrnt. First , Flynn did nothing. Iy is not a violation of any law.
What happened here was NSA of CIA ILLEGAL wiretap without FISA warrant on a US citizen, doing his job. That is a FELONY!! This is an attempted Coup d’ Tat on our elected president by leftist traitors. Flynn quit because he made a false statement to Pense ( AND NO OTHER REASON), It makes perfect since that he was talking to his Russian Counterpart getting ready to take his position. He had no authority and spoke with no authority and everyone knew it .Trump should have REJECTED his resignation!! But in the mean time we need very a swift and strong crackdown on those insurgents in those agencies that committed these felonies to undermine our great president. I am certain we will see this very soon. Our form of government is at stake as well as the constitution of the Unites States!!
@July 4th American, #9:
Perhaps, then, the republican-led House Oversight Committee should investigate the circumstances surrounding Flynn’s resignation, to expose this Obama-orchestrated conspiracy. Yeah, definitely, they should investigate. Let’s get to the bottom of this!
In the final hours before his resignation, now-former White House National Security Adviser Michael T. Flynn said he “crossed no lines” in his discussion with Russia’s ambassador, but ultimately he was most concerned about the steady streamy of leaks to reporters based on classified information.
“In some of these cases, you’re talking about stuff that’s taken off of a classified system and given to a reporter. That’s a crime,” Flynn told The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group during a telephone interview from his White House office on Monday.
“You call them leaks. It’s a criminal act. This is a crime. It’s not just a wink and a nod,” Flynn said.
“Over the weekend,” Bloomberg’s Eli Lake reports, Flynn “was instructed not to speak to the press when he was in the fight for his political life. His staff was not even allowed to review the transcripts of his call to the Russian ambassador.”
On Monday morning, he spoke with TheDCNF at length, saying he was told to “go out and talk more.”
“He [President Donald Trump] expressed confidence,” Flynn told TheDCNF, just hours before his resignation. “That’s when he told me that we need to go out and talk more. So I’m going to do that.”
“I haven’t been fighting back because I’m not that kind of guy. I’m behind the scenes. I’ve always been behind the scenes. But this is ridiculous. It’s so out of control. I’ve become an international celebrity for all the wrong reasons.”
Flynn said he didn’t know where the leaks originated. “One has to wonder, ‘Are they coming out of people in the National Security Council? Are they coming out of people in the intel community? Or State? Or Defense?’”
The politicization of intelligence and the release of classified information for use against political opponents is likely to spark a fierce firestorm in Washington.
President Donald Trump tweeted early Tuesday on leaks from officials within his administration, saying, “The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington? Will these leaks be happening as I deal on N.Korea etc?”
White House press secretary Sean Spicer said at his daily briefing on Tuesday that the president “is clearly upset” about leaks and that past leaks affected earlier administrations, including Obama’s.
“People who are entrusted with national security secrets, classified information, are leaking it out. That’s a real concern for this president,” he said.
“We have to wonder that people who work for our government, who are entrusted with classified information, decisional-based materials are leaking that information out. That, I do believe is a big story.”
Spicer did not spell out any steps Trump might take to stem the flow of leaks, however.
Before his post in the administration, Flynn was in charge of military intelligence in combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was appointed to the highest levels within military intelligence, including as director of intelligence for the U.S. Central Command. After that, he was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
President Barack Obama fired him as DIA director in 2014 after Flynn delivered testimony before Congress that was at odds with Obama’s contention that radical Islamic terrorism, including ISIS, was not a major threat. Since then, Obama administration officials have openly held low regard for him.
Since Trump and Flynn entered the White House, anonymous sources have given select reporters information about telephone intercepts conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA).
The classified information secretly given to reporters purportedly showed that Flynn discussed sanctions on Dec. 29, when 35 Russian diplomats were being expelled that same day by the outgoing Obama administration.
Other intelligence leaks have revealed Trump’s private discussions with heads of state soon after he became president-elect.
In a Feb. 9 story, The Washington Post cited unnamed “current and former U.S. officials” who accused Flynn of violating the law in a Dec. 29 telephone conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislvak.
Flynn called the leaks of classified information against government officials “unprecedented,” and predicted those would be the focus of future congressional investigations.
“Members of Congress are very concerned because these are leaks from classified systems. The House and Senate are looking into those things, as they should,” he told TheDCNF.
The issue of government leaks is an issue for House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes. On Monday, Nunes told Bloomberg News that he views leaks about Flynn’s private conversation as part of a pattern.
“There does appear to be a well-orchestrated effort to attack Flynn and others in the administration,” said Nunes, who is a California Republican. “From the leaking of phone calls between the president and foreign leaders to what appears to be high-level [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] information, to the leaking of American citizens being denied security clearances, it looks like a pattern.”
A Wall Street Journal editorial Tuesday asked, “Did U.S. spooks have a court order to listen to his conversations?”
Former intelligence and military officers told TheDCNF they agree Flynn was the victim of a highly orchestrated “disinformation campaign” generated by current and former intelligence officers, many with loyalties to former President Obama.
Intelligence officials are supposed to use their expertise in psychological warfare and disinformation campaigns against enemy states, but never against an occupant of the Oval Office.
“Who pulled the NSA tapes on Mike Flynn?” asked retired Col. James Waurishuk, a 30-year intelligence officer who once served in the National Security Council. “Who compiled it? Who released it?” the retired Special Forces veteran asked in an interview with TheDCNF.
Waurishuk argued the many leaks meant the public is seeing the politicization of intelligence. “There are those in the intelligence community that are more concerned with their agendas than with national security,” he said.
“Notice how the intelligence community can leak Flynn’s conversation, but there are no leaks on Hillary Clinton and Benghazi,” he added.
Another former intelligence official, retired Col. James Williamson, told TheDCNF, “What is illegal is that Flynn has his conversations eavesdropped on. Who at NSA leaked the transcript?”
Williamson called it an “egregious overstep” by current and former intelligence officials.
Flynn insisted that he crossed no lines in his telephone conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak: “If I did, believe me, the FBI would be down my throat, my clearances would be pulled. There were no lines crossed.”
Flynn said there was a brief discussion of the 35 Russian diplomats who were being expelled by Obama in retaliation for Moscow’s alleged interference in the 2016 campaign.
“It wasn’t about sanctions. It was about the 35 guys who were thrown out,” Flynn said. “So that’s what it turned out to be. It was basically, ‘Look, I know this happened. We’ll review everything.’ I never said anything such as, ‘We’re going to review sanctions,’ or anything like that.”
Flynn said he apologized to Vice President Mike Pence about his earlier contention that there were no discussions about the expulsion order, which was part of the Obama sanctions.
“For the vice president, I feel terrible. I put him in a position. He’s a man of incredible integrity. I think the world of him. He is so good for our country,” he said. “I should have said, ‘I don’t know. I can’t recall,’ which is the truth. Looking back, that’s what I should have done.”
The December conversation “was not to relieve sanctions. It was basically to say, ‘Look, we’re coming into office in a couple of weeks. Give us some time to take a look at everything.’”
Before he submitted his resignation, Flynn said the president urged him early Monday morning to speak out more frequently.
“That’s when he told me that we need to go out and talk more.” Flynn told TheDCNF he intended to do that.
“I haven’t been fighting back because I’m not that kind of guy. I’m behind the scenes. I’ve always been behind the scenes. But this is ridiculous. It’s so out of control. I’ve become an international celebrity for all the wrong reasons.”
Flynn has been silent since tendering his resignation.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/14/exclusive-defiant-flynn-insists-he-crossed-no-lines-leakers-must-be-prosecuted/#ixzz4YhSVDvtB
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) said Tuesday that those who leaked the contents of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s phone calls “belong in jail.”
“That’s nine leakers that all belong in jail,” Nunes said. “Those nine people broke the law, clearly, by leaking classified information to anybody.”
Nunes said he also wanted to know how U.S. intelligence agencies were wiretapping Flynn’s calls, which he said may also have been illegal.
The chairman said there are only two ways that intelligence agencies can listen in on an American’s phone call — after obtaining a warrant, or inadvertently, such as in the case of Flynn speaking with a foreign official being spied on, which the report suggests was the case.
18 § 798 of the U.S. Code:
Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates … or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes … any classified information … obtained by the processes of communication intelligence from the communications of any foreign government … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/798
The leakers and the Washington Post journalists who published the material should all be prosecuted and jailed.
@Greg: Why do you need to investigate? Just get all the information from Obama’s spy that leaked the information. If there was anything illegal in it, we’d already know it. It’s not like he sold them our uranium in exchange for lucrative “speaking fees” or anything.
@Bill, #15:
You didn’t have any trouble when leak after leak involved Hillary Clinton, did you? It didn’t even bother you when the leaked information turned out to be false. Nor did you seem to be adverse to investigation after investigation, even after prior exercises on the same matter had repeatedly come up empty. Where did we end up with regard to Benghazi—investigation No. 7 or 8? By that point, they’d worn the carpet so thin that they didn’t even bother with a formal summary or conclusions. For however many millions of taxpayer dollars this final act of the GOP’s pre-election partisan circus cost, we got “Let the public make up their own minds.”
Evidently the requirements necessitating full investigations are pretty damn minimal.
So, here we have multiple indications that a geopolitical adversary of the United States may have materially assisted with the election of a U.S. president who is inexplicably sympathetic to their authoritarian leader—a suspicion based not only the repeated targeting of Democratic Party functionaries by Russian-controlled hackers and the coordinated release of information through Wikileaks, but also upon the revelation that Trump campaign associates had unexplained contacts with high-ranking members of Russia’s intelligence services during the course of the campaign. It does not inspire confidence that at least one such person lied about it.
Not only that—we also have contradictions regarding the possible extent of Trump’s past business involvement with Russian investors, and a refusal to release promised tax documents that would allow that issue to be examined and resolved.
“Don’t worry about it” is not an adequate response, given the potentially serious consequences of ignoring such obvious questions. The GOP knows that as well as anyone. They’re nervously realizing that they’re in the same leaky rowboat with this guy. I doubt if they’re going to be willing to tie him to their feet like a concrete block. Shouts of Hey! Look at Obama! is not going to get them out of this predicament.
Anonymous sources are now saying Trump associates were in constant contact with Russians known to U.S. intelligence services during the campaign. It’s going to be virtually impossible to avoid a full investigation.
Second report says the Trump campaign was in ‘constant’ contact with Russia, and Trump was informed
Even the NY slimes admits there is no evidence to support the claim.
The fake news media continues to dupe the alt-left so they will keep their panties in a wad.
Meanwhile, obama continues to demonstrate his treasonous activity by instructing his faithful followers to ignore the results of the November election where America repudiated his radical agenda.
New Report Claims President Obama Heads ‘Shadow Government’ 30,000 Strong Against Donald Trump
Obama is a traitor and should be brought up on charges of treason
Michael Flynn Fallout ‘Looks Like The Steps Leading To A Total Meltdown’
Republicans had better start connecting the dots and taking control of this situation, before the situation suddenly spirals out of anyone’s control. We’ve got Russian spy ships calmly watching 30 miles off the coast, Russian aircraft buzzing our warships in the Black Sea, talk about maybe putting a ground force in Syria, and an increasingly paranoid North Korean dictator lobbing ballistic missiles in the general direction of Japan. We don’t need an Executive Branch that could either go rogue or come unglued at the drop of a rumor.
Mslsd with mo Yarborough and Mika
If mika had a brain she would be in the street playing with it
Yeah, right. A lot of people are so busy and distracted with the business of rationalizing that they’re going to get run over by reality.
I remember this same sort of denial as the Nixon administration came apart—and they were a lot more competent at crisis management than the Trump people seem to be. If nothing else, this is a test of how well they manage under stress.
Seems I remember a certain candidate for Prez that had ties to a terrorist nation hmmm 2008 sometime around then…http://investmentwatchblog.com/2008-candidate-senator-obama-sent-u-s-secret-emissary-to-iran-telling-t
not just a sec o defense a candidate
seems that cost taxpayers billions
Sure you do. Can you find a single 2008 news source that reported this? Or any source prior to 2014?
The only source seems to be a 2014 radio conversation between conservative talk radio host Mark Levin and his neo-conservative guest, Michael Arthur Ledeen.
@Greg: Problem with that is there are no news sources main stream that would investigate Obama or negatively report on him it would be attacked as racist.
Levin is a very good news source.
And I agree with you about the investigation of this leak, this was secret there are national security secrets being leaked to the press, no wrong doing by the General. This is something a worthy of a life sentence stretch in Levenworth by someone in our agencies.
I keep hearing accusations followed by “we dont know” coming from MSLSD.
They are throwing everything against the wall and seeing what might stick, and you seem to have been splattered.