606

Per Seth Abramson, during the campaign Trump’s foreign policy/national security team was the equivalent of Nixon’s CREEP. He conjectures persuasively that the real-rather than official-heads of Trump’s NatSec team was: Erik Prince and Michael Flynn.

It certainly was quite a team-Papadopoulos and Page were together the two bookends of the Russia investigation, Sessions is who Papadopoulos stated to a Chicago bar patron in March, 2018 he had told about Mifsud’s incriminating Russian emails on Clinton.

FN: To be sure there remains a discrepancy as the Coffee Boy has continued to insist publicly that he told no one in the Trump campaign about said incriminating emails-as his lawyer asserted in the sentencing memo.

Then there is Schmitz who searched the dark web for Clinton’s deleted emails and went to the FBI in the Summer of 2016 with material he thought might in fact be the emails.

In (Chapter A) I consider Schmitz’s client may in fact have been:  the late Peter Smith who it now appears may have had foreknowledge of the Podesta emails-it’s quite possible he paid the hackers. Peter Smith was also himself, at a minimum, very tight with both Michael Flynn and his son.

FN: To be precise this is Seth Abramson’s conjecture that I find persuasive.

In any case, Michael Flynn was pretty important in the Trump campaign and the Russians bragged that they had cultivated a close relationship with Flynn and could use him to influence Trump:

“Russian officials bragged in conversations during the presidential campaign that they had cultivated a strong relationship with former Trump adviser retired Gen. Michael Flynn and believed they could use him to influence Donald Trump and his team, sources told CNN.
The conversations deeply concerned US intelligence officials, some of whom acted on their own to limit how much sensitive information they shared with Flynn, who was tapped to become Trump’s national security adviser, current and former governments officials said.”

“This was a five-alarm fire from early on,” one former Obama administration official said, “the way the Russians were talking about him.” Another former administration official said Flynn was viewed as a potential national security problem.”

Again, when you’re trying to figure out wether or not you believe if there was collusion, just consider how important and integral Flynn was to the Trump campaign-and then realize how close Flynn was to the Russians. There’s certainly good reason to believe that while Sam Clovis officially hired both Carter Page, George Papadopoulos-as well as Joseph Schmitz-It was Flynn who really chose them.

FN: Again Abramson’s plausible conjecture.

In light of Flynn’s role and his connection to Russia, all the allegedly ‘coincidental’ connections between the Russians and the Trump campaign begins to make sense.

“The conversations picked up by US intelligence officials indicated the Russians regarded Flynn as an ally, sources said. That relationship developed throughout 2016, months before Flynn was caught on an intercepted call in December speaking with Russia’s ambassador in Washington, Sergey Kislyak. That call, and Flynn’s changing story about it, ultimately led to his firing as Trump’s first national security adviser.”

And, of course, there was Flynn’s conversations with Kisylak in late December 2016-don’t worry about the sanctions, we’ll revisit them when we get in.

The Obama Administration had warned Trump about Flynn during the campaign-naturally, Trump hired Flynn anyway.

“The Obama administration had been skeptical of Flynn, who is under criminal investigation by the FBI for his foreign contacts and payments, since last year. President Barack Obama warned Trump against hiring him in November, but Trump hired him anyway — even after Flynn informed Trump’s transition team that he was being investigated by the FBI over his lobbying work for Turkey, according to The New York Times.

(A White House spokesman told Business Insider on Thursday that the Times story “is flat wrong. Neither Michael Flynn nor his attorneys told Transition Counsel ‘that he was under federal investigation for secretly working as a paid lobbyist for Turkey during the campaign.'”)

Well if that’s true-and I’m skeptical-that means the Trump campaign showed to paraphrase James Comey ‘extreme carelessness’ in their vetting. I mean, if this were Clinton, just having such a shady person run her campaign would be grounds for impeachment: the GOP would say so, the media would say so, much of the Democratic party would say so.

UPDATE: This remains something of a disconnect but has been virtually universally accepted as true not just by the MSM but Mueller himself-that Flynn lied to poor, trusting Mike Pence. 

But Pence led the transition so it sure makes you wonder how he missed that Flynn was a foreign agent. If so, then he did a shoddy job.

“Flynn’s previous appearances on, and payments from, Russian state media — including an event in which he appeared sitting next to Russian President Vladimir Putin — were also seen as red flags. Flynn agreed to testify before the House and Senate intelligence committees in late March in exchange for immunity from prosecution, but neither committee has agreed so far.”

That’s because they were run by Trump’s GOP co-conspirators. In January that should change…

“The many controversies surrounding Flynn raise further questions about why Trump was so determined to bring him into his Cabinet and overlook his considerable baggage, which included including a falling-out with the Defense Intelligence Agency and his lobbying work for a Dutch firm linked to Turkey’s government throughout the end of 2016.”

“Trump’s team knew about [Flynn’s] ties to Russia and they knew about his work with Turkey,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat who sits on the House Intelligence Committee. “What’s most concerning is that it looks like they just didn’t care. So you have to ask yourself — were Flynn’s prior relationships an asset?”

Congressional lawmakers have asked Flynn for documents related to their Russia-related inquiries, but Flynn has not yet responded to those requests.

Soon Swalwell and his friends can ask Flynn these questions firsthand.

UPDATE: In Jerrold Nadler’s list of 81 Trump associates his Judiciary Committee wants documents from, Michael Flynn’s  now defunctlobbying firm is listed. 

For a long time it bothered me that-in such a big book!-there is relatively little about Flynn. But that’s actually not surprising as Flynn cooperated early and often and there were no leaks. When his memo came out there were a great deal of redactions.

UPDATE: Indeed he did everything right until he got too cute by half at his sentencing and tried to argue that ‘Yes I lied but no one told me it was against the law’-right because that’s not something you’d expect the former Director of the DNI to know…

But this is why the MSM presumption-discussed in detail in Chapter A-that Mueller will be done soon, there are no more indictments, and nothing dramatic concerning Russian Conspiracy will be in the book. What about  Flynn”s memo that was largely one long redaction?

Speaking of which while it looks as if Mueller’s report won’t be coming out on the Ides of March after all-Ok technically there’s a little under 3 and a half hours left-there was some major Michael Flynn news today. Yes his cooperation is done but:

Federal prosecutors in Virginia want to restrict sharing some special counsel memos of interviews with Flynn because of the “ongoing investigation” into matters he shared with investigators.

In court Friday, the prosecutor said the ongoing probes were unrelated to Flynn’s Turkish lobbying case — raising the possibility it touches on Flynn’s ties to the Trump campaign, transition, administration or the Russian government.

 

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