General Flynn and the Widening Russia Connection

Discoveries leading to the firing of Donald Trump's National Security Adviser three weeks into his presidency have exposed a much wider story alleging extensive mystifying contacts with Russia by not just of his adviser, General Mike Flynn, but also of members of his campaign all across last year. Even if a case can be made that familiarization contacts with other countries by a candidate's staff is sensible, there is the question of why only Russia.

The administration has tried to deflect attention away from the Russia connection to making it a problem of leaks. In his lengthy news conference two days after Flynn was discharged, President Trump put forth the baffling contradiction that "classified information was given illegally" to the media, implicitly endorsing the validity of the information, yet the reporting of the leaked information about "Russia is fake news; this is fake news put out by the media". He continued his campaign to discredit the media as dishonest that is probably successful among those who don't read or watch that media to know how much more persuasive its facts are compared to his tweets. They only hear his tirades to the media sitting before him about "This whole Russia scam that you are building so that you don't talk about the real subject which is the leaks".

The daily revelations tumbling out from that media can make for a confused picture. The first job is to lay out the story:

On January 12th, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius revealed that on December 28th Gen. Flynn had called the Russian Ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, the day before President Obama was about to impose new sanctions on Russia and expel 35 of its diplomats in retaliation for Russia's trying to influence the American elections.

Reuters followed the Post a day later to say there had been five phone calls between Flynn and Kislyak.

The timing was suspect. Was Flynn calling to assure the Russian that, once president three weeks forward, Trump would make the sanctions go away? And, looking back to December, wasn't it curious that Putin uncharacteristically said he would not retaliate in turn against the sanctions? Trump had immediately tweeted, "Great move on delay (by V. Putin) — I always knew he was very smart!".

The intelligence agencies — all 17 — were already entirely convinced that it was the Russians who had hacked the DNC and Clinton campaign chief John Podesta's emails, with President-elect Trump strangely refusing to accept their verdict and smearing their competence, reaching back 15 years to the Iraq War for his only evidence. Clearly he was shielding the Russians, claiming it could have been any country or "somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds”. Now, with Trump elected, his national security adviser designate was secretly in contact with the Russian ambassador.

In the days immediately following the Post's story, both Vice President Mike Pence and Press Secretary Sean Spicer assured the public that Flynn had not discussed the sanctions and was merely making arrangements for a phone call after the inauguration between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Then came the Washington Post's February 10th bombshell reporting that acting Attorney General Sally Yates (Sen. Jeff Sessions was awaiting confirmation) had two weeks earlier, on January 26th, contacted the White House counsel to advise that an NSA intercept had recorded a phone call (one or more) between Gen. Flynn and the Russian ambassador and that Flynn had indeed discussed sanctions. It was a "heads-up", as Spicer put it, that Vice President Pence's contrary assurances to the public were therefore incorrect. Moreover, Flynn may have rendered himself vulnerable to blackmail.

Flynn, who had accepted the post of national security adviser to Trump, was already a controversial figure, not only for a sharp temper that brooked no dissent and a conspiratorial worldview, but for his unconventional connection to Russia. He had accepted an unexplained expenses-paid trip to the Kremlin in December, 2015, where he had even dined with Putin. The transcripts of the phone calls to the ambassador have not been released, but it is far from outlandish to suppose that private citizen Flynn was undermining the policy just enacted by the still-sitting president, Barack Obama.

When the Post story broke on the 10th, the President was asked questions aboard Air Force One:

Question: Mr. President what do you make of reports that General Flynn had conversations with the Russians about sanctions before you were sworn in?

Trump: I don’t know about it. I haven’t seen it. What report is that?

Question: (Repeated)

Trump: I haven’t seen that. I’ll look at that.

In the two weeks between Yates contacting the White House and the Post exposé, Trump did not tell his vice president, leaving him to think he was right to tell the country that Flynn never discussed sanctions with the Russian envoy. What does that say about the president's relationship with Pence? Three weeks after inauguration, has he already been cast adrift? He was certainly manipulated. Told the truth, the upright Pence might well have refused to advance the lie.

How are we to imagine that Gen Flynn was free-lancing — contacting the Russian ambassador on his own, without the knowledge of the president; indeed, without the instruction of the president to do so? Are we expected to think that Flynn did not tell the president what he and Kislyak had spoken about the moment Flynn hung up?

The White House counsel informed the president immediately about Sally Yates' knowledge that Flynn had discussed sanctions. For the president that only meant that others now knew what he had clearly known all along.

As for Flynn, when only the phone calls had been revealed and not the content, it seems clear that the president hoped to ride that out, to let the matter die as just innocent calls around Christmas. He had no intention of firing Flynn. Why would he? He'd been key in the plot to mollify the Russians. Then along came Sally Yates.

The White House tried to shift the narrative: Flynn was let go because he misled the vice-president. And the White House, with Spicer taking the lead, then shifted to making the real problem the leaks of sensitive information. Translation: we the public should never have learned of any of this.

It was Flynn who was hung out to dry for not telling Pence, not the president for keeping silent, of course. Flynn had equivocated, claiming that he couldn't quite remember what he had talked about with Kislyak. There was nothing wrong, nothing illegal about his talking to the ambassador. That was "immediately determined" by the White House counsel, said Spicer.

Question: That is not a problem, that General Flynn discussed sanctions with the Russians?

Spicer: No, there is — as I — I can't say it clearly enough. There was nothing in what General Flynn did in terms of conducting himself that was an issue. What it came down to, plain and simple, was him misleading the vice president and others and not having a firm grasp on his recollection of that.

Nothing illegal? It is an outright felony under the Logan Act for a private citizen, which Flynn was in December, to conduct foreign policy for the United States.

The New York Times reported the day after Spicer's insistence that trust was the only issue that the FBI had questioned Flynn back in January, probably taking their cue from Ignatius' Post reporting. The Washington Post has now reported that Flynn denied to the FBI that he had discussed with the Russian ambassador the lifting of sanctions. Lying to the FBI is a felony.

Then came the New York Times story that blew the lid off any pretense the White House was trying to maintain. On February 14th, the Times reported:

" Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials." In his press conference two days later he said about "big, long front page story. It's a joke".

In this story, " Putin Would Like You to Forget About Russia's Election Hacks", we had told of the FBI coming upon what they assumed to be Russian attempts to hack the Democratic National Committee, the Times being the source. The latest Times report says that it was that same intercepting work by the FBI and the intelligence agencies that had uncovered the DNC hacks that found the communications with Russian intelligence by Trump campaign staff and others.

The Times article says no evidence has been found of the campaign colluding with the Russians to affect the election, so far, but says the FBI is sifting through a "larger trove of information" and has obtained bank and travel records and conducted interviews.

David Ignatius, who broke the story of Sally Yeats warning the White House, said that the Post knows that FBI Director James Comey "was worried about her turning over this information, afraid that the White House would interfere with the FBI`s ongoing

investigation". The bright side hints that, with a thorough and unflinching investigation, Comey may be out to resurrect his reputation after his harmful finger placed on the scale to Hillary Clinton's detriment in the final days before the election; the dark side says Comey views Trump as someone whose power has already corrupted absolutely and would not stop short of trying to halt the investigation. He has just picked yet another Wall Streeter to conduct a "review" of the intelligence agencies.

fake news

We are witnessing two great newspapers doing some of the best and most important investigative reporting in years, reminding us of how indispensible is the press if we are ever to know the truth of what goes on in government. Meanwhile the idiot class yammers about fake news, believing a president who clearly wants to eliminate freedom of the press, and thinking that truth is to be found in his tweets.

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