Posted on 02/19/2017 11:41:03 AM PST by Kaslin
WASHINGTON -- Gen. Mike Flynn provided the first scalp in the Trump administration in record time -- he served as White House National Security Adviser for 23 fleeting days before he resigned Monday night. In the eyes of President Donald Trump, Flynn could be his team's first casualty of "fake news."
As Trump told reporters at his epic press conference Thursday, he asked for Flynn's resignation because Flynn didn't tell Vice President Mike Pence that he may have discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador during the transition period. Pence then told CBS' "Face the Nation," that of course Flynn had not discussed possibly lifting sanctions with the ambassador.
Flynn "didn't have to do that, because what he did wasn't wrong," Trump maintained.
Some critics contend that any discussion of sanctions with Russian officials would have been a felony under the Logan Act, which prohibits citizens from freelancing on foreign policy to prevent them from undermining the policies of an incumbent president. The thing is, no American has ever been prosecuted under that dubious law.
But if reporters are concerned about violations of the law, Trump continued, they ought to look at the federal officials who leaked his phone conversations with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. The calls are supposed to confidential, but someone leaked them. Trump added, "The same thing happened with respect from Gen. Flynn."
You see, a Justice Department and intelligence official had notified the White House legal counsel that Flynn had not leveled with administration higher-ups about what Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and he discussed. (How did intelligence officials know what Flynn and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak discussed? They apparently stumbled onto the conversation because they tapped Russian communications.)
Flynn resigned, according to Trump, because he misled Pence. But the timing -- weeks after the White House had been alerted and on the day the Washington Post reported on the disclosure -- suggests that Flynn had to go, not because he misled Pence in a very public way, but because he got caught doing so.
And yet, Trump has a point on the leaks. As Bloomberg columnist and national security expert Eli Lake wrote, "Selectively disclosing details of private conversations monitored by the FBI or NSA gives the permanent state the power to destroy reputations from the cloak of anonymity. This is what police states do." It's not pretty when bureaucrats decide to use their power to undermine elected officials.
The Flynn revelation follows a trail of leaks and questionable stories. Most notably, there is the smarmy and discredited Buzzfeed post of a so-called dossier on Trump and his associates' fictional ties with Russia.
The New York Times could not corroborate the same dossier and did not report on it. Yet the Times just ran a front-page story with the headline, "Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contact With Russian Intelligence."
The sources were unnamed -- "four current or former American officials" -- but named four individuals, including Flynn, reportedly under investigation. Otherwise the story provided a feast of innuendo: "The officials would not disclose many details, including what was discussed on the calls, the identity of the Russian officials who participated, and how many of Mr. Trump's advisers were talking to the Russians. It is also unclear whether the conversations had anything to do with Mr. Trump himself."
That's mighty thin gruel for the Gray Lady's front page. As far as Trump is concerned, the story is part of the glut of "fake news" fabricated to credit Russian intelligence for Wikileaks of emails from Hillary Clinton associates and thus discredit his win in the Electoral College.
The Wikileaks emails were embarrassing -- especially for former CNN contributor Donna Brazile, who passed on presidential debate questions to the Clinton camp -- but it's hard to see those small-change revelations determining the outcome of the election.
Washington and the news media are divided between those who are convinced the Russians helped Trump win -- which would de-legitimize his victory -- and those who, like Trump Thursday, are convinced the Russian spin is bogus.
The news media have run many stories that hint that Putin's Russia wanted to help Trump win. To date, however, no story has firmly established that Russia did more than make mischief.
That could change. "There's no hard facts yet about who talked to the Russians" or what they might have said, noted Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Clinton. Davis sees "a lot of sourcing without facts."
But then, he added, "These kinds of stories drive out facts."
Or they fizzle.
Either way, Flynn is out.
Flynn must not have been up to the task if Trump lost confidence in him so fast.
It was NOT the fact that he talked to Russia, nothing he said or did was illegal, he just (apparently) misrepresented it in such a way that Trump could not accept.
I think Trump should reinstate Flynn , right away , with apologies .
President Trump should NEVER give up any people to the media attacks
The dimocrats will dig up the corpse of a person dead for thirty years if it can be blamed on Trump’s dentist’s ex-son in law’s third cousin by the uncle of the bully in his fourth grade PE class. In other words, anything they can make up.
I don’t know how to post a link on FR...but a few days ago somebody posted a blog by Thomas Wictor....HE explains that Flynn was a part of a operation to catch the “leaker” red handed as it were with something that sounded like it was out of a Tom Clancy novel but seems to have worked. It’s called the Barium Meal or the Canary Trap...I am sure intrested folks can find it on here on keyword or just look for Thomas Wictor’s blog ....
Fascinating...Trump is light years ahead of these bozos...as someone in FR said a while back...Trump plays Three Dimensional Chess while the media and Dems and GOPe guys are playing old man checkers!
Wonder if Comey has the names of the so called intel people who violated the laws re their attempted lynching of Flynn and President Trump, when he had closed door meetings at the capitol with some of our $inators. As per the article below:
LEAKERS BEWARE: DONALD TRUMP HAS UTTERLY DEFEATED THE DISLOYAL COTERIES OF THE US INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY
President Trump has defeated Democrats in the intelligence community (IC) who were leaking classified information to the press. Such leaks have been a problem for many presidents, but Trump is the first who took a proactive approach and set up a sting operation that identified the leakers.
It’s highly illegal to leak classified information. It’s also illegal to PUBLISH this information, but Trump is too smart to try and prosecute reporters.
I thought that Trump would fire members of the IC until the leaks stopped, but the president solved the problem with a much more imaginative and deadly approach: He fed the IC false information. When this information was published, Trump was able to identify individual leakers.
How?
Each group or individual, who leaked was given a different version of events. This is CLASSIC spycraft. If nine individuals are told nine different stories, and then each of those stories is published, you know the identity of each person who talked to the press.
It’s called a “barium meal,” after the medical test used to detect problems in the gastrointestinal tract. Soft tissues don’t show up on X-rays. Barium salts are “radio-opaque,” meaning that they show up in a radiograph or X-ray.
Author Tom Clancy called it a “canary trap.” You give multiple sources multiple versions of events. When the sources repeat their version word for word, you can identify each leaker individually.
Magic
In World War II, “Magic” was the code name for the code-breaking done by the US Army’s Signals Intelligence Service (SIS) and the US Navy’s Communication Special Unit. Japanese military code was called “Purple.” Although Magic had been able to break much of Purple, some things were still a mystery.
Magic determined in early 1942 that the Japanese were close to carrying out a major attack. However, the location of the attack—which the Japanese called “AF”—could not be figured out. Therefore the Americans carried out a barium test: Using an underwater cable, they contacted Midway Island, telling the base to broadcast a radio message “in the clear” that the desalinization plant had broken down.
The Japanese immediately sent a coded message to their forces that the desalinization plant at AF had broken down.
Now the Americans knew that the target of the impending attack was Midway Island. The greatest admiral in the US Navy—Frank Jack Fletcher—was sent out to meet the Japanese before they arrived.
Excerpted go to link below for full story!
http://www.thomaswictor.com/leakers-beware/
I don’t think Pence was behind it, but I think he got behind it once it went in motion.
Pence could have emphatically shut this down the day it broke.
Flynn lied and got fired for it. That’s a firing offense anywhere in the real world. Nothing to do with the content of the phone calls, rats in the CIA or anything else.
If you’re my National Security Advisor and my VP asks you a question and you don’t tell him the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth, buddy you better clean out your desk, like yesterday.
This seems hard for FReepers to understand but that’s “it”.
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It appears that lying to president Trump or VP Pence is not acceptable and will cost you your job. I can live with that.
Instead of speculating what you think what happened, let the horses think they have larger heads.
Exactly.
Someone needed to take a fall for Team Trump in order to expose the leakers and Flynn, as a good and loyal soldier (with a great pension) was up for the task.
Bookmarked, copied to my page.
I know what you are talking about. I got an email from a freeper with the link to the blog. I read it, but later when I went back to it, the link was completely gone, as if it had never existed.
..........I too was disappointed that a 3 star general is fired so early in Trumps administration.
But, in his position, and nuclear weapons launch potentially only seconds away, a man in his position can’t decide to split hairs with his bosses. Absolute PURE TRUST in all communications is required BECAUSE TRUST is like a fine wine glass, throw it in the fireplace and it shatters and even humpty dumpty cannot put it back together again.
Pence IS a straight shooter. So, I believe him when he says Flynn pulled his punches. The glass was broken. It’s that simple. Ergo I agree with Trump firing him.
A lot of words in this article
Trump does not deal with people who lie. He doesn’t hire them doesn’t keep them. The media could not find an instance of dishonest or illegal business practice from Trump. It seems like there’s a lot tgere that the media just didn’t bother reporting on, but that’s not the case. The media couldn’t find anything
It’s beyond a lot of people’s imagination that Trump is honest in his dealings.
He likely let go of Flynn because Flynn lied.
I must be missing something.
Why aren’t their lines of people at NSA, CIA, FBI and State Dept. waiting to have polygraphs to find the leakers? Has the union rules outlawed them?
Check this out. We may have Reince as a traitor if this is true.
BREAKING: @Reince’s Gal & @WhiteHouse Chief of Staff @KMWalsh_GOP Is Source Of Trump Leaks To @NYTimes & Others
<< “Everyone knows not to talk to her in the White House unless you want to see it in the press,” says a source close to the president. “The only question is whether or not she’s doing it at the behest of [White House Chief of Staff] Reince Priebus or if she’s doing it to advance herself in DC media circles.” >>
(snip)
<< Walsh would have significant access as she controls the president’s schedule. There’s also reportedly a trove of e-mails where Katie Walsh and Reince Priebus discuss how to rid themselves of Trump, according to a former #NeverTrump consultant.
“The president and his allies have been deliberately feeding her fake information in order to find her network,” says a source close to the president’s family. “It’s been going well.” >>
I’m with Leo - Trump should not give an inch.
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