The media are mostly ignoring the news that 39 Obama officials sought to read the transcripts of Michael Flynn’s conversations with foreigners, but here and there they’ve asked a question. The unpersuasive answers suggest there’s more to learn.
Unmasking the Michael Flynn Unmaskers
Take Joe Biden, who “unmasked” Mr. Flynn only a few days before leaving office as Vice President. Last week Mr. Biden told ABC that he knew “nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn.” George Stephanopoulos reminded Mr. Biden that he attended a Jan. 5, 2017 Oval Office meeting when the FBI’s Flynn investigation was discussed. Mr. Biden replied that he’d misheard the question and admitted he was “aware that there was, that they’d asked for, an investigation. But that’s all I know about it.”
This was more straightforward than what Mr. Biden told MSNBC when he was asked about his “involvement in the investigation of Michael Flynn.” Mr. Biden replied: “I was never a part or had any knowledge of any criminal investigation into Flynn while I was in office.”
Except at the time there was no criminal investigation into Mr. Flynn—as Mr. Biden knows. In 2016 The FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn, and it was under that pretense that it conducted the interview in which it later claimed that Mr. Flynn lied. The lack of a criminal investigation is the primary reason the Justice Department moved this month to drop its prosecution. Mr. Biden still hasn’t explained why he personally unmasked Mr. Flynn.
James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, defended his unmasking of Mr. Flynn as “perfectly legitimate.” Mr. Clapper told CNN that he had a professional duty to investigate the “numerous engagements by representatives of the Trump camp with Russians.” As he told Sirius XM’s “The Joe Madison Show”: “People would be derelict if they didn’t have enough curiosity to inquire what was going on.”
In other words, it’s OK to eavesdrop on your political opponents if you’re curious about their conversations with foreigners. We doubt that justification would have played well had the George W. Bush Administration spied on Barack Obama’s incoming team. Officials of incoming administrations routinely talk with officials of foreign governments.
Such exchanges don’t justify the widespread scale of Obama Administration unmasking of Mr. Flynn. And they certainly don’t justify the leaking of the conversations that Mr. Flynn and Attorney General Jeff Sessions had with the Russian ambassador. Leaking those classified conversations is a felony.
Then there’s John Brennan, the Obama CIA director, who claimed that the real scandal is releasing the names of the unmaskers. Mr. Brennan told MSNBC that President Trump is guilty of “egregious abuse” and “manipulation” of “the instruments of our intelligence and national security organizations.”
This is the same John Brennan who in August 2016 was frustrated that the Trump-Russia collusion narrative he’d been pushing inside the Administration hadn’t become public. He briefed then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who wrote a letter to FBI Director James Comey, laying out the “connection” between Mr. Trump and Russia and demanding an investigation. The letter leaked to the press.
The 2016 and 2017 spying on Trump officials and then leaking to promote a false narrative of collusion is one of the dirtiest tricks in the history of American politics. It is not “perfectly legitimate,” and the public needs to know the full story behind it.
Link: Deep State Rats
want Biden to win the election 2020 (which is no brainer to China for its national interest), Biden' claim that China is our threat and Hunter Biden's connection with China. Once counterintelligence investigation kicks off, we order surveillance on Biden campaign. Periodically we unmasked the names from surveillance intel and leaked them to media and send FBI agents to interview campaign staffers. Any answer saying I can't remember will be deemed as lying to FBI....
I'm convinced that using D's way/playbook is the only way to go.
them to help Biden, all of the contacts between the Biden campaign and China, including the Biden Tower meeting, and the sharing of campaign info with China by the campaign. Needs to be opened up right now.
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illegally helping Orange win. Despite Orange’s lies there had been many contacts between the campaign and them. There was an open counter intelligence investigation. I would want to know everyone talking to their officials. Flynn was also distrusted and had been fired well before Orange. He was also a foreign agent of Turkey. I would damn well want to know all of the Russians and Turks he was talking to if his name was revealed. WTF is he doing anyway talking to them about sanctions that had just been imposed? And if there was nothing wrong with it, why did he lie to the FBI and then to Pence and why did Orange fire him?
That they each independently requested an unmasking?
That’s the argument Flynn supporters want to run with? Really?
Period just before leaving office.
And there was a counter intelligence operation underway. At what point before they leave office are they supposed to stop working on it? At the election? Christmas?
They'd have been leaked by one of those 39 concerned citizens if they were bad. Isn't that obvious?
the UN.
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Because so many Deep State rat fink bastards sought to unmask Flynn (all independently!), he MUST have been dirty. Why else would so many seek to unmask him?
Simply amazing.
They only knew the other side. Therefore, it was suspicious enough that they all asked. How is that hard to understand?
deep state bastards” acting wrongfully in concert. Get a grip man. You are turning into Alex Jones.
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