The Russia Hoax was originally aimed at Flynn, not Trump.

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I am more and more coming around to the opinion of David Goldman and Michael Ledeen.

The Russia hoax was aimed at Michael Flynn and his role as a Trump advisor.

It was all about General Flynn. I think it began on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, when Flynn changed the way we did intelligence against the likes of Zarqawi, bin Laden, the Taliban, and their allies.

General Flynn saw that our battlefield intelligence was too slow. We collected information from the Middle East and sent it back to Washington, where men with stars on their shoulders and others at the civilian intel agencies chewed it over, decided what to do, and sent instructions back to the war zone. By the time all that happened, the battlefield had changed. Flynn short-circuited this cumbersome bureaucratic procedure and moved the whole enterprise to the war itself. The new methods were light years faster. Intel went to local analysts, new actions were ordered from men on the battlefield (Flynn famously didn’t care about rank or status) and the war shifted in our favor.

I read Dakota Meyer’s book. He was denied permission to accompany his Civil Affairs unit into an Afghan village because he was being punished for shooting at Taliban tribesmen firing mortar rounds into his base camp. The reason ? They were “not in uniform.” The ROE of the Obama administration saved his life as the unit he should have been with was ambushed and killed. He made attempts to rescue them, resulting in his award the Medal of Honor.

On 8 September 2009, near the village of Ganjgal, Meyer learned that three Marines and a Navy Corpsman, who were members of Meyer’s squad and his friends, were missing after being ambushed by a group of insurgents. Under enemy fire, Meyer entered an area known to be inhabited by insurgents and eventually found the four missing servicemen dead and stripped of their weapons, body armor and radios. There he saw a Taliban fighter trying to take the bodies. The fighter tackled Meyer, and after a brief scuffle, Meyer grabbed a baseball-sized rock and beat the fighter to death.[8] With the help of Afghan soldiers, he moved the bodies to a safer area where they could be extracted.[9] During his search, Meyer “personally evacuated 12 friendly wounded and provided cover for another 24 Marines and soldiers to escape likely death at the hands of a numerically superior and determined foe.”

In his account of the battle in his book, he relates how it took hours to get permission for artillery to respond to the ambush.

In the book, Meyer makes a case for Army Captain William D. Swenson to be awarded the Medal of Honor. Swenson had criticized Army officers at the nearby Forward Operating Base Joyce for not providing fire support, the resulting political fallout not conducive to awarding him the medal. Those same officers were later cited following a military investigation for “negligent” leadership leading “directly to the loss of life” on the battlefield. Swenson was awarded the Medal of Honor on 15 October 2013

Obama’s Army. Flynn got into this argument.

By the time he was made head of DIA, Flynn had a real problem with the intelligence community, first because he had marginalized them, and for another reason: Flynn was determined to do a full-scale analysis of the (many) secret missions that had not been carried out over the years, and he wanted an accounting of the considerable funds allocated for them. He was not “A Team Player,” more than ever a major consideration to the Obama team. For example, the Benghazi attack on the consulate.

Barack Obama replaced General Carter Ham at AFRICOM after the general made a move to help the US security officials at the Benghazi consulate and annex. Ham was replaced by Gen. David Rodriquez on October 18.

The information I heard today was that General [Carter] Ham as head of Africom received the same e-mails the White House received requesting help/support as the attack was taking place. General Ham immediately had a rapid response unit ready and communicated to the Pentagon that he had a unit ready.

General Ham then received the order to stand down. His response was to screw it, he was going to help anyhow. Within 30 seconds to a minute after making the move to respond, his second in command apprehended General Ham and told him that he was now relieved of his command.

The story continues that now General Rodiguez would take General Ham’s place as the head of Africom.

Sure enough Obama nominated Gen. David Rodriguez to replace Gen. Carter Ham as commander of U.S. Africa Command.

Flynn got caught in this crossfire.

After Flynn was driven out of his post at DIA, things got even more threatening to the intelligence officials, as he became a prime advisor to candidate Trump and, early in the campaign, other Republicans. After the 2016 elections, the IC officials went all-out to keep him out of the White House, sometimes resorting to spreading ridiculous stories. President Obama warned Trump not to appoint Flynn as national security advisor, and Susan Rice actually warned the president-elect that Flynn might be in violation of the Logan Act, for which nobody has ever been prosecuted, and hence blackmailable by the Russians. Meanwhile, the Bureau had opened a counterintelligence investigation of Flynn’s activities. His digital communications were monitored, “unmasked” at the request of Obama officials, and leaked to friendly journalists.

Then Trump got involved in this war of the IC on Flynn.

Why did the Deep State throw caution to the winds in an desperate effort to frame Donald Trump for alleged collusion with Russia–and failing that, to entrap him in an obstruction of justice case? There are a lot reasons for the Establishment to hate Donald Trump, but one of them stands out. During the campaign, Donald Trump denounced the Obama administration for having created ISIS. That claim drew ridicule from the mainstream media, but it is entirely correct. Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, Trump’s campaign adviser, was head of Defense Intelligence Agency in 2012 when the DIA blew the whistle on CIA backing for Sunni Islamists fighting the Assad regime during the then-raging Syrian civil war. As my friend Michael Ledeen wrote at PJ Media on March 26, the Mueller investigation was all about Flynn.

Flynn was bankrupted by Mueller at the urging of the Intelligence Community, led by Brennan and Clapper.

If the proper authorities turn over the CIA’s rock and examine its underside, the result will be the exposure of an intelligence failure of galactic proportions. The CIA channeled Saudi money into al-Qaeda fronts in Syria and helped move a large part of the late Col. Qaddafi’s massive arsenal to Syria. The jihadists backed by the CIA eventually formed a good deal of ISIS. Heads would roll at CIA. And when I say “proper authorities,” I mean Gen. Flynn in his capacity as National Security Adviser, a job in which he lasted a month before the Deep State set him up and persuaded President Trump to fire him.

The Benghazi incident never explained why the ambassador was in that consulate that night after complaining about security. What was going on ? As part of a revived Hillary Clinton investigation, we might find out.

Trump needs to pardon Flynn and reinstate him.

31 thoughts on “The Russia Hoax was originally aimed at Flynn, not Trump.”

  1. Nah. The facts are clear, just none of them have appeared in the MSM.

    The Russia hoax was an attempt to justify ongoing illegal surveillance of Trump and associates.

    They were using NSA access to spy on the Trump campaign, they were cut off by Mike Rogers, so they had to go the FISA route, which required some justification, so they put together the dossier to claim they were looking at foreign agents.

    These same people hated Flynn for lots of reasons, but they haven’t upended global politics to go after him. They were spying on Trump.

    And of course one has to suspect that that means they were probably also spying on every GOP candidate.

    We already know they were spying on Congress even during Obama’s first term. (https://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/spying-israel-congress-netanyahu-217207)

    It’s easily the gravest political scandal in American history.

  2. My point is that it began as a way to get Flynn and the Benghazi story is likely a big part of it, Goldman and Ledeen are pretty serious people.

    This is also worth reading.

    The former number two at the CIA contradicts Flynn’s account of the intelligence report, writing that “it was simply wrong in its facts when it indicated that the West was supporting extremists in Syria.” Morell wants you to take his word for it: “The administration went to great lengths to ensure that any aid provided by the United States to the opposition would not fall into the hands of extremists, including the Islamic State and Al Qaeda.” Morell adds his voice and insider credentials to a chorus of others assuring the public that Trump is spouting debunked conspiracy theories in claiming the memo points to Obama and Hillary “support” for ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Syria.

    While Trump mustered this document to back his usually bizarre and hyper-sensationalized rhetoric on President Obama’s supposed ideological sympathies with Islamic extremism, the DIA document itself is quite substantive and worthy of public scrutiny and debate. Middle East analysts and academics have been discussing the document for the past year since its court-ordered declassification through FOIA , though it has remained largely outside of US media’s notice until recently.

    Benghazi is going to come up in this if Trump keeps peeling back the lies,.

  3. No. Flynn is a small fish. This was always about Team Obama spying on Team Trump. Flynn was collateral damage.

  4. I don’t know if this is a chicken and egg situation or not, but we know they definitely went out of their way to get Flynn and personally hurt him. It was particularly McCabe who wanted revenge for Flynn calling him out on some bureaucratic shenanigans from years earlier.

    Maybe it was just that a lot of factors – personal, political, hegemonical – came together to create the perfect storm of the Russia hoax.

  5. I lean towards Brian’s interpretation. The Flynn matter was going on parallel to Crossfire Hurricane and the other surveillance of Trump and anybody associated with him. The only intersection seems to be that they got after Flynn for a perfectly legitimate chat with the Russian ambassador but in hindsight they could have picked a diplomat or minister from any country. Some of the same people were involved but I think that’s more these ‘investigations’ were being run out of FBI HQ.

  6. VDH predicts the future,.

    With the end of the Mueller investigation, thousands of government documents, mostly unredacted, will be released. The result may be that the hunters of Trump soon become hunted by federal prosecutors. Sworn statements of Obama administration officials in the Justice Department, CIA, FBI and other bureaucracies will contradict newly released documents.

    Oh Oh.

    The media sensationalism and optics will play out in reverse as the “noose tightens” and “the walls close in” on people such as former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

    There will also be more infighting over the collective embarrassment of the Russian collusion hoax.

    Pretty good forecast, I would guess.

  7. Brian – I do not think that in any scandal of the size under discussion you will ever have the unity of purpose that you seem to think exists. People take the opportunity to stick the knife into their personal enemies under cover of doing dirty work for the powers that be.

  8. I think the actual goal more insidious than those mentioned above. A multitude of threads suggest/declare his the investigation of Trump never actually intended to indict him.

    The investigation of Trump intended to roadblock/subvert the investigation of Hillary. The Trump investigation diverted attention from Hillary. The Trump investigation kept investigators working at something other than investigating Hillary. The Trump investigation gave time for interest in what everybody knew Hillary had done to become weak and very secondary. And the investigation of Trump provides a means to argue that choosing now to investigate Hillary flows from revenge.

    Other folks attacked along with Trump were fringe benefits. Success at attacking Trump himself would have been a fringe benefit. Cover for Hillary had so much importance that it was worth even the mockery that came with the defeat of the Trump investigation.

  9. There are a lot of players, each with their own axes to grind and scores to settle. While we did not exactly lose the Iraq war, it was extremely ugly. A lot of what is going on is shaping the battlefield for the historians as the egos protect their legacy by whatever means necessary.

    This is a culmination of the decline of personal and national morality from a time when Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail to the time when serial lying to Congress and the American people can be done without shame. With that many snakes in the pit, bad things were bound to happen. It wasn’t so much a conspiracy as a pile of dung reaching critical mass.

  10. Isn’t the timeline an indication that the hoax was begun early. These seem to be streams (though Mrs Davis’s dung heap seems a more apt analogy): one fear and real anger at what would appear to be Flynn’s integrity both at war and with the smarmy McCabe; two, their desire to defang Trump with a dossier that might have made another malleable or to get him out and away from any ability to uncover the graft, dishonesty and I suspect disloyalty in the structure. I suspect a further motive might be to make sure no “outsider” – coming from business no less – would ever again come fresh to the presidency.

  14. TMLutas Says:
    April 4th, 2019 at 7:19 pm
    Brian – I do not think that in any scandal of the size under discussion you will ever have the unity of purpose that you seem to think exists. People take the opportunity to stick the knife into their personal enemies under cover of doing dirty work for the powers that be.

    …

    In which case no more resistance may be expected, and the truth will out. Yes? Somebody (more than one) needs to step forward and take the bullet. Or a number of people need to have accidents cleaning their guns or feeding their sharks or whatever. Or, investigate and extirpate the evil root and branch. Pick one.

    How can the American people be expected to tolerate this? I thought The X-Files was supposed to be fiction.

    We haven’t even gotten to FVEY culpability. What did the Queen know, and when did she know it? Are we supposed to accept the resignation of one lousy intelligence chief as atonement, as payment in full? My God, I’d rather make a deal with the stinking Russians! That might even be less bad than ignoring/surrendering to the Chinese at that.

    Did Europe have one iota of culpability?
    Where TF does this rabbit hole go?!

  15. We haven’t even gotten to FVEY culpability. What did the Queen know, and when did she know it?

    It’s highly unlikely any British Intelligence role in this was known about even by a government minister, never mind the British Prime Minister. As for the Queen, well that’s nuts. She’s a constitutional monarch, which means she’s 100% ceremonial. She opens fetes, and rides side saddle. (Which is harder than you think.)

    Moving back to reality, how much do you think the CIA tells Trump about what it’s up to ? Squat. The UK permanent government administration, like its US equivalent is composed of lefties who like a fat steady paycheck, and enjoy making policy without the trouble of getting elected. Including the intelligence services. Don’t be thinking James Bond.

    A UK Conservative government, though not actually “conservative” by any measuring spoon you could bring to bear, is still Domestic Enemy Number One for the UK government bureaucracy. Why on Earth would the Brit intelligence bods tell their No. 1 Enemy – Conservative Ministers – if they’d been doing a few favors for the US Democrats against the US Republicans ? You think the CIA would be telling The Donald if it was spying on foreign conservatives and handing the dirt to their left wing opponents ? When they and their FBI buddies are happy to spy on the man himself, when he’s President !

  16. Part of “Why Flynn?” goes into Flynn’s taking the side of a female FBI agent who was making a sexual harassment claim against the FBI, specifically McCabe.

    https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2017/06/27/real-journalists-uncover-the-fbis-vendetta-against-michael-flynn/

    This may be the real reason these assholes have done this; simply in order to placate McCabe and get back at someone who had the temerity to call the FBI powers-that-be on their bullshit.

    Truth be told, we absolutely must put the FBI and most of the other “letter agencies” down like the rabid dogs that they’ve become, or we’re going to lose our nation to their petty power-seeking ways. None of them are responsible enough, as agencies, to resist the politicians giving them power. As such, they’re a clear and present menace to us all. Fast and Furious only got reported by a whistle-blower because they were horrified that a Federal agent, Bryan Terry, was killed by it. All the other Mexican nationals or US citizens who died because of it, or who were victims? No problemo; one of the anointed gets killed? Oh, we can’t have that…

    If we don’t do something about this, the result is going to be horrifying. It would be one thing if these assholes were even halfway competent, but they are not. The level of sheer stupidity on display by Strzok et al is enough to blow your mind. These people need to be taken out of power, and the entire operation shut down.

  17. Allying Obama’s Ayers/Chicago-style gangster-terrorism with Brennan’s explicitly comsymp CIA, for all purposes an Islamo-fascist ISIS front under Valerie Jarrett as Iran’s agent-of-influence, puts National Security Advisor Gen. Flynn’s ordeal in context of Clapper’s DIA and Comey’s FBI.

    Over time, this story will emerge at length and detail. But as Boss Tweed put it when faced with irrefutable evidence of extraordinary corruption: “What are you going to do about it?”

  18. So the well documented Russian-sponsored hacking of the DNC and the publicly reported but RNC-denied hacking of that party, and of Hillary cronies and campaign officials, and into Hillary’s private email server containing classified, was all part of a big Russian conspiracy to target Michael Flynn?

    Sure. Seems plausible. Like a lot of Ledeen’s theories. You gotta look at them in just the right light though, and from just the right angle. Otherwise they appear sort of ephemeral. Grand Unified Field Theories of All Conspiracies are generally not plausible, starting from the premise that it’s really hard to arrange something that complex and to have things work out your way.

    BTW, if he’s such a rocket surgeon, why did Flynn take $500k from the Russian state-sponsored media arm, RT, to give a one hour speech, and why did he lobby on behalf of our frienemy, Turkey, without registering as a foreign lobbyist all while serving as President-elect Trump’s national security advisor? Was he playing some sort of five dimensional chess here that we’re just not smart enough to grok? Occam’s Razor, it’s much more likely that Flynn, who had some bright spots, was at heart a not very brilliant or sophisticated guy, and he was serving in a role a couple paygrades above his competence level, and this is a well-meaning but not very credible effort by some of his friends to rehabilitate him.

  19. So the well documented Russian-sponsored hacking of the DNC

    Seth Rich could not be reached for comment. You might check on such things as transfer rates that are not possible with on-line “hacking.”

    Are you suggesting that Russians infiltrated the DNC ? We know Pakistanis did.

  20. In a healthy functioning society with a decent news media the testimony from last year that Doug Collins has been putting out over the last few weeks would be the only thing anyone would be talking about.
    From the most recent release:

    Mr. Meadows. So one last followup. So you say that this was one
    of several things that the team discussed in the aftermath of James
    Comey’s firing. Discussed to do what? I guess my question is, was
    there the feeling that the President needed to be removed from office?
    I mean, what were the other things? If this is a list, you know, in
    a litany of long items that you discussed in terms of action items,
    what were the other action items?
    Mr. Baker. So I’m going to pause and just to ask the Bureau if
    there’s any issue with me responding to that question here.
    Mr. [redacted] May we can confer with the witness?
    [Discussion off the record.]
    Mr. [redacted] Congressman Meadows, at this time, we’ll instruct
    the witness not to answer. I anticipate that you will ask us to seek
    clarity from our chain of command in reference to this question.

    The only thing that makes one not completely lose hope is that there surely must be a plan at this point to hold these people accountable and make sure this can never happen again, right? Right?

  21. Brian: “The only thing that makes one not completely lose hope is that there surely must be a plan at this point to hold these people accountable and make sure this can never happen again, right?”

    The thing which makes me not lose hope (very long-term, future generations-type hope) is that the same crew of clowns are sawing away at the very branch on which they sit. Hollowing out the economy is not sustainable; importing masses of illiterate aliens is not sustainable; running up debts they can never repay is not sustainable; degrading the legal system into a partisan joke is not sustainable. Eventually, their world will collapse, and they will get swept into the dustbin of history.

    We have to remember that bad people unfortunately sometimes get away with their evil deeds. Stalin and Mao lived long lives and died of natural causes. It is a bummer that they did not get punished during their lifetimes, but they are gone and increasingly forgotten. And Russia & China have improved substantially since their unlamented departures. So will it be with the incompetent degenerates in DC.

    But I admit it would still be heartening to see some of them dangling from lampposts.

  22. Gavin: I guess I see things opposite from you. In the long run we (America) are doomed. Way more people want security over liberty, and it’s not a close run thing. The places most inhabited by people who want liberty have had their political power completely stripped away, and there’s no getting it back.

    But I actually do think that in the short term people up to and including Comey, Clapper, Brennan, etc., are going down.

  23. I actually get 3 newspapers delivered–one local small town, one nearby small city, one nearby medium city. Today they had stories on Barr’s spying comment nowhere, B4, and A16, respectively. The first one noted Barr was just “echoing Trump” and they both put “spying” in quotes. Of course last week they had massive Page 1 headlines saying stuff like “Mueller does not exonerate Trump.” The MSM really is an enemy of the people.

  24. Is it paranoid to think that it’s awfully convenient that the day after Barr announces he’s investigating spying on Trump, Assange gets taken into custody? “See, there was Russian hacking!” One has to remember that the anti-Trump conspiracy was international in scope.

  26. you thought so too, note it was a south African paper that highlighted this, also points out manuel’s fight with maluma eff, the haklyut director discovers the scorpion

  27. A bit more on the Flynn attack by Obama and co.

    The Mueller report indicates that General Flynn was under broad surveillance long before. Now comes news that there was an open, Russia-related investigation of Flynn before the Kislyak conversations ever took place during the 2016 transition period:

    Previously, the FBI had opened an investigation of Flynn based on his relationship with the Russian government.

    Michael Ledeen reported before the release of the Mueller report that, in fact, the entire investigation was predicated on ruining General Flynn because of his valid critiques of the sclerotic incompetence of the intelligence community.

    Stories by reliable analysts suggest that it was only because Flynn riled the intelligence community by criticizing in 2012 the CIA backing for the Sunni rebels fighting Assad, the basis for Trump’s claim that Obama had created ISIS:

    As Clapper knows, Trump was exactly correct, although Trump didn’t quite spell out how the Obama administration had aided the formation of ISIS. For that he needs Flynn. Flynn was the only head of a major U.S. intelligence agency who knew just how badly the CIA had bungled, who had done what to whom, and where the bodies were buried. He was the broom with which Trump proposed to clean house. I am convinced that the Deep State put the finger on Flynn and tried to frame Trump, in the belief that the best defense is a good offense.

    Even refers to this post in that article.

  29. The Flynn connections in the Russia Hoax keep trickling out of the Mueller Report.

    The first redaction listed under “personal privacy” does not appear to represent an individual, rather it’s an organization. However, The second related redaction is a specific person, Michael Flynn Jr.

    In combination with the October timing, the addition of Flynn Jr to the target list relates to the ongoing 2016/2017 investigation of his father, General Michael Flynn, for: (1) possible conspiracy with a foreign government; (2) unregistered lobbying; (3) materially false statements and omissions on 2017 FARA documents; and (4) lying to the FBI.

    This October 20th, 2017, request from Weissmann and Mueller aligns with the time-frame were special counsel team lawyers Brandon L. Van Grack and Zainab N. Ahmad were prosecuting Michael Flynn and attempting to force him into a guilty plea.

    Getting Rosenstein to authorize adding Mike Flynn Jr. to the target list (scope memo) meant the special counsel could threaten General Flynn with the indictment of his son as a co-conspirator tied to the Turkish lobbying issue (which they did) if he doesn’t agree to a plea. Remember: “jointly undertaken activity“.

    The October 20th, 2017, expanded scope memo authorized Mueller to start demanding records, phones, electronic devices and other evidence from Mike Flynn Jr, and provided the leverage Weissmann wanted. After all, Mike Flynn Jr. had a four month old baby.

    The amount of twisted pressure from this corrupt team of prosecutors is sickening. A month later, General Flynn was signing a plea agreement:

    Also

    General Flynn was under investigation from the outset in mid-2016. The fraudulent FBI counterintelligence operation, established by CIA Director John Brennan, had Flynn as one of the early targets when Brennan handed the originating electronic communication “EC” to FBI Director James Comey.

    The investigation of General Flynn never stopped throughout 2016 and led to the second investigative issue of his phone call with Russian Ambassador Kislyak in December 2016:

    So, this was about Flynn before the election,

  31. More new developments in the Flynn story.

    I also suspect FBI Director James Comey has made specific notations about the Flynn FISA in his memos. You might remember in the David Archey declarations to the court, about the Comey memos, he was specific in his late 2017 reasoning why the Comey Memos must remain sealed and redacted:
    To this day the FBI is still fighting to keep the Comey memo content hidden and away from public review.

    Judge Sullivan has now extended the DOJ deadline for filing a response to his request until May 31st. It will be very interesting to see exactly what happens.

    With AG William Barr making inquires, and with the FBI’s inability to explain to AG Barr what was going on, the potential for the DOJ and FBI to be in conflict is very real. We know the disposition to hide information is still inherent within the FBI due to their recent attempts to hide evidence of FBI corruption within the Kavalec State Department memos.

    FBI Director Chris Wray, FBI Deputy Director David Bowditch, and more specifically FBI chief legal counsel Dana Boente are in the cross-hairs of these issues. They, along with the corrupt Washington Field Office FBI investigators, appear to be working against the interests of U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr; and thanks to Judge Sullivan these background schemes and plots are likely to be exposed.

    THis story is far from over.

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