Posted on 05/26/2020 2:12:28 PM PDT by CaptainK
The infamous phone call between then-incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, like so many tales of Russian collusion, is not as it first appeared. In light of new evidence, it’s likely there’s no truth to the running narrative about the December 29, 2016 phone call that has been the basis of Flynn’s legal nightmare for more than three years. The case against the three-star general, concocted by Barack Obama’s corrupt FBI, centers on the accusation that Flynn discussed U.S. sanctions with Kislyak and later lied about it to the FBI.
And now that we know Flynn’s name in the call was never masked—as the Washington Post reported last week, it was surveillance conducted by the FBI, not by national security officials—Kislyak’s involvement deserves more scrutiny.
Let us first dispel with the notion that Barack Obama imposed “sanctions” to retaliate for the Kremlin’s alleged election interference. The word “sanctions,” in fact, never appears in Obama’s executive order, which was issued the same day as the Flynn-Kislyak call and more than seven weeks after Election Day; the (barely) three-page document is filled with irrelevant gobbledygook. It was a slap-on-the-wrist, or as one senior Obama aide called the measures, a “symbolic” gesture.
I repeatedly have suggested that Kislyak was a willing partner with the Obama White House in executing the Russian collusion hoax. Kislyak served as the Russian ambassador to the United States for the entirety of Obama’s presidency; he visited the Obama White House at least 22 times. Press reports describe Kislyak as a longtime Beltway insider, connected to the most powerful people in Washington. “I personally have been working in the United States so long that I know almost everybody,” Kislyak boasted in 2017.
He was especially tight with his onetime American counterpart, Michael McFaul, an Obama bestie who was sworn in as U.S. ambassador to Russia in 2011 by his then-boss, Hillary Clinton; McFaul is the architect of Obama’s “reset” policy with the Kremlin.
There are several reasons to suspect Kislyak not only was in on the collusion scheme from the start but also that his call to Flynn was part of the Obama White House’s set-up of Trump’s short-lived national security advisor: Kislyak contacted Flynn before the “sanctions” were announced: Obama issued his lame executive order on December 29, 2016—but Kislyak texted Flynn the day before asking him to call. The Mueller report confirmed that Flynn did not reply to Kislyak’s text; the Russian embassy also attempted to reach Flynn, who was out of town, on December 28.
The White House announced the measures on the afternoon of December 29 and after Flynn conferred with transition team officials, he connected with Kislyak later that day. “Flynn discussed multiple topics with Kislyak, including the sanctions, scheduling a video teleconference between President-elect Trump and Putin, an upcoming terrorism conference, and Russia’s views about the Middle East,” the Mueller report detailed.
“With respect to the sanctions, Flynn requested that Russia not escalate the situation, not get into a ‘tit for tat,’ and only respond to the sanctions in a reciprocal manner.” Kislyak called Flynn again on December 31, 2016 to confirm that “Russia had chosen not to retaliate to the sanctions in response to the request.”
Smell a rat? I do. It fits too perfectly with the pretext for the bogus Logan Act charge quickly concocted by Comey and others. The call, and the Logan Act case, was discussed during a pivotal January 5, 2017 Oval Office meeting with Obama and his key advisors. The dominoes began to fall.
It’s unlikely the government surveilled Kislyak: The gregarious and English-proficient Russian was quite the man about town. He met with top Obama advisors, including Susan Rice, at the White House twice in October 2016, oddly, at the same time Obama was accusing the Kremlin of attempting to meddle in the election.
Kislyak was the keynote speaker at the Detroit Economic Club on October 26, 2016. And two days after the election, Kislyak spoke at Stanford University with Mike McFaul. The two gushed over each other; it was hardly an appropriate display considering Kislyak represented a country that had just “attacked” our democracy.
Most people believe the Flynn-Kislyak call was intercepted by routine wiretapping of a Russian official living in the United States. This assumption, however, has never been proven. Considering Kislyak’s public profile, his accessibility to the Obama White House, and his coziness with Obama loyalists outside the White House, it would appear to be an unnecessary step.
Kislyak repeatedly reached out to Team Trump after the election: According to testimony by Susan Rice, the Trump transition team expressed concern about Kislyak’s frequent outreach. Rice told the House Intelligence Committee in 2017 that a member of Flynn’s staff asked for “background” information on Kislyak because they knew so little about him.
While Rice attempted to portray the contacts as bad behavior on Flynn’s part, it jives with other evidence of Kislyak’s ongoing solicitations to Team Trump. (Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security advisor, also testified that a Trump transition official asked if they “should be worried about Kislyak.”)
Kislyak requested a meeting with Jared Kushner after the election; the diplomat met with the president’s son-in-law and Flynn on November 30, 2016. According to the Mueller report, Kislyak pushed for more meetings: “Kushner declined several proposed meeting dates, but Kushner’s assistant indicated that Kislyak was very insistent about securing a second meeting,” the report stated. “Kushner told the [Special Counsel’s] Office that he did not want to take another meeting because he had already decided Kislyak was not the right channel for him to communicate with Russia.” Kislyak was quite the pest.
Foreign diplomats played a key role in the Russian collusion storyline. Alexander Downer, the Australian ambassador to the U.K., notified the FBI that George Papadopoulos allegedly told him the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton; that’s why, according to James Comey, his FBI opened a counterintelligence probe into the Trump campaign. Papadopoulos later accused Downer of setting him up. “Some organization or entity sent him to meet me,” Papadopoulos said in 2018.
Before the presidential election, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States publicly accused Trump of coddling Russia. “Trump’s comments are only speculative…they call for appeasement of an aggressor and support the violation of a sovereign country’s territorial integrity and another’s breach of international law,” Valeriy Chaley wrote in August 2016.
And Representative Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) noted in a May 14 interview that “Obama ambassadors across the globe [were] unmasking” Flynn’s name in intelligence reports then “leaking out about anyone within the Trump campaign and the Trump transition that they could.” Considering how Kislyak appears in nearly every collusion plotline, it’s hard to imagine the Obama folks weren’t pulling his strings, too.
As the Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross reminded us last week, the purported reason why the FBI scoured for Flynn’s call transcript is that they were perplexed why the Russians didn’t push back on Obama’s puny “sanctions.” That sounds like a cover-up story.
Here’s what is more likely to be true: Kislyak, like so many other Obama-friendly foreigners, was in cahoots with the Democrats to entrap Team Trump before and after the election. They prompted Kislyak to connect with Flynn to discuss the sanctions—a call that was either monitored as part of the FBI’s investigation into Flynn or a call that Kislyak briefed someone about since it’s unclear whether a call transcript exists—in order to create an internal and public case to oust Flynn. (The Washington Post revealed the call in a January 12, 2017 bombshell article by David Ignatius.)
People now are pushing for the release of the Flynn-Kislyak call transcript. Undoubtedly, it will expose new holes in the collusion falsity and perhaps reveal who raised the issue of sanctions in the first place. If it was Kislyak, it will add more substance to the idea he was just another collusion hoaxster doing Barack Obama’s dirty work.
Right now everything about this story is speculation until the authenticated transcript is released to the public.
If it exists.
The actual “Russia collusion” was always with the DEMOCRATS: Hilary’s “Uranium One” deal; Obama shutting down US oil production (which benefited Russia, which depends on oil exports), etc.
Then I came to this:
"It’s unlikely the government surveilled Kislyak
This author is an idiot.
I have wondered about this possibility myself. time, or unredacted, accurate transcripts might reveal more.
It’s at least, or more, believable than the official narrative, which always gets tagged on to any reporting on this matter.
If Kislyak was in contact with the Obamites to collude in the “get Trump” plan, then there should be a record of those calls that compare the timelines between his calls to them and his calls to Flynn. But without some miracle, then we will never know if they exist or not.
Flynn’s alleged “lie” was failing to rememember that he discussed sanctions with Kislyak. This supposedly occurred in the hastily arranged interview, where the FBI failed to warn Flynn that he was being investigated, and that lying to the agents was a crime, among other irregularities.
In any event, it is undisputed that both FBI agents who interviewed Flynn left the interview with the impression that Flynn genuinely failed to remember discussing the subject of sanctions with Flynn, and both had the distinct impression he was not lying.
The prosecution NEVER came forward with specific evidence of exactly what was actually discussed in the Flynn Kislyak call, or what exactly he supposedly said as recorded in the 302 (that had been extensively massaged by Strzok and his girlfriend after Plientka’s initial cut at it) that is supposedly inconsistent with what happened in the call.
Although we know it once existed, the prosecution has since lost/refused to produce Plientka’s original draft of the 302. And it has never produced a transcript of the Flynn Kislyak call.
So, just like there was never any evidence brought forward that “the Russians” accessed the DNC’s server, there has never actually been any evidence made public showing that Flynn and Kislyak actually discussed sanctions, much less that what they discussed is actually inconsistent with what Flynn told Plientka and Strzok in their little meeting.
Sidney Powell is linking this article on her twitter feed, so she doesn’t think the author is an idiot.
Fair question. The answer was revealed in one of bongino’s videos over the last two or three days, of course I am referring to last weeks’ episodes.
Logically, it is sort of a piece of triangulation. We know that there were 29 requests to unmask Flynn.... by the usual Clapper, Brennan, Biden, Comey Etc but also by the Secretary of Energy and I think the Secretary of the Interior. I can’t find you the exact spot where this was revealed. But I will look and see if I can.
In essence, the claim has been made that Flynn lied about discussing *sanctions* with kislyak on the telephone call which led to the multiple unmasking requests. That means that Flynn was masked prior to that date.
Now it may be true that at this moment in time the transcripts of Flynn’s call has not been released. However, I believe there is testimony to the effect that sanctions were not discussed nor mentioned in any way on the phone call that generated all those unmasking requests. Keep in mind, the sanctions that Obama imposed were not news at that point...... they had been imposed a few months earlier. This is kind of a subtle point, but the point is is that Flynn has been accused of lying about having discussed sanctions with kislyak. When the sanctions where the product of the Obama Administration. And it is certainly plausible that kislyak might have wanted to have those sanctions relaxed or removed. What WAS news, was the expulsion of the diplomats ordered by Obama. The Salient Point here is that Flynn is being accused of lying about sanctions, when sanctions were not mentioned in the call that generated all the unmasking requests. So it is kind of a case that if kislyak was concerned about sanctions, and presumably he would be, he didn’t talk to Flynn about that any earlier then the call he placed to Flynn when Flynn was in the Dominican Republic. To me it just seems quite a bit more logical that kislyak’S call to Flynn occurred as an immediate reaction to the expulsions, NOT over the sanctions which were old news at that point.
I will try to find you the spot in bongino’s episode where to my way of thinking this conclusion can be fairly safely reached.
If you folks are interested, I posted a thread a few days ago with a timeline you might find useful. There is a link to download a PDF of my collation of events with some contextual commentary, links to documents and articles, and ordered chronologically.
Here is the thread: Timeline of the Political Persecution of Michael Flynn (VANITY)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLYh4jljkaM
start ~~25:51
Flynn is i'viewed by the FBI (Strzok and Priestap) inside the White House. The notes from that meeting are to be placed upon the fabled "302" form.
We do not have the original 302. Instead, we have a Strzok-edited 302, created weeks later. We don't have the i'view transcript but we have that "post dated" 302.
The accusation of Flynn lying about [whatever] MUST originate from conclusions based upon one or the version of the Flynn 302. Would you agree? Stated differently, that interview is the time and situs of Flynn alleged lying to the FBI and thus the basis of bringing up of charges against Flynn.
Original 302 or not;
The notes taken by the FBI DO NOT MENTION THE WORD SANCTIONS. Not once. SO HOW CAN FLYNN BE ACCUSED OF LYING ABOUT SANCTIONS WHEN THE TOPIC OF SANCTIONS WAS NEVER MENTIONED IN THE INTERVIEW?. Riddle me that.
Answer: It never happened. Do you honestly believe that if there was a belief within the FBI that Flynn had lied about discussing "sanctions" with K, (something he has denied multiple times) that he would not be asked DIRECTLY AND POINTEDLY about same? Impossible to believe.
Sidney Powell knows we surveil the Russian ambassador as a matter of course.
If she's linking to this drivel maybe she thinks her followers are idiots.
Michael McFaul is a sleazy POS on Twitter.
ALWAYS attacking Trump.
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