Conservative Musings

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Showing posts with label FBI. Show all posts

Monday, May 11, 2020

When News Media Is Silent, Do They Not Want Us To Know The Truth?

“Obamagate” scandal silences media

MAY 11, 2020

Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was framed and unjustly jailed, critics say.

Upon his exoneration, political pundits are speculating on who is to blame over the reported abuse of power — and some signs point to former President Barack Obama as the one who orchestrated it all.

That’s according to Flynn’s attorney, who says evidence points right to Obama.

Flynn’s lawyer Sidney Powell appeared in an interview with Fox News’ Maria Baritomo with the claim over the weekend.

Powell said the smear campaign against the former general and White House aide “absolutely” went all the way to the top to Obama.

The bombshell accusation comes just one week after Attorney General William Barr and the Department of Justice dropped Flynn’s case when FBI documents showed there was a plot to trap the Trump ally.

The unsealed documents sent shockwaves across the political world — but received barely a mention in the mainstream media.

The Fox News segment between Baritomo and Powell has been the biggest cable news exposure for Flynn’s team. In the interview, Powell pointed to a January 5, 2017 meeting between Obama and his top allies, including former U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates, Jim Comey, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA boss John Brennan, as evidence that Obama was involved in the set-up.

Powell hinted that the meeting, roughly two weeks before Trump’s inauguration, was the springboard for the bogus investigation into Flynn.

Trump caught wind of the recent developments and quickly gave his soundbite, calling it “the biggest political crime in American history.”

“By far!” he added.

Obama, meanwhile, saying that the “rule of law” was at risk in response to the Department of Justice dropping Flynn’s charges.

The Horn editorial team

Friday, May 8, 2020

Obama (And Biden) Knew Details Of Flynn Tapes. Were They Involved?

President Barack Obama speaks as Vice President Joe Biden listens during a White House meeting on June 13, 2016. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

CROSSFIRE HURRICANE

Obama Knew Details From Wiretapped Flynn Phone Calls, Surprising Top DOJ Official: Documents

BY ZACHARY STIEBER

May 8, 2020 Updated: May 8, 2020

Outgoing President Barack Obama revealed in early 2017 that he knew details from phone calls incoming Trump administration National Security Advisor Michael Flynn made, surprising one of the Department of Justice’s top officials, according to newly released documents.

The department on Thursday moved to dismiss the criminal case against Flynn that rested on the phone calls.

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Sally Yates, the deputy attorney general at the time, recalled meeting with Obama at the White House on Jan. 5, 2017, along with a number of other officials, including then-FBI Director James Comey.

After dismissing everyone but Yates, Comey, then-National Security Advisor Susan Rice, and then-Vice President Joe Biden, Obama told them he had “learned of the information about Flynn” and the lieutenant general’s discussion with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Kislyak’s phone calls were being wiretapped by government officials, allowing them to hear what Flynn told him.

Obama told the trio he didn’t want additional information about the matter but wanted to know whether the White House should, in light of the information, treat Flynn differently.

Yates “was so surprised by the information she was hearing that she was having a hard time processing it and listening to the conversation at the same time,” FBI agents who interviewed her wrote in a report about the interview.

Yates told the agents that she didn’t know what Obama was talking about but figured it out based on the conversation. She did not know who told Obama about the details. She recalled Comey mentioning the Logan Act, a centuries-old law that’s never been successfully prosecuted.

Epoch Times Photo — FBI Director James Comey testifies as Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates listens during Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 8, 2015. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Flynn was head of the Defense Intelligence Agency during the Obama administration. The president fired him for alleged insubordination.

Comey told members of Congress in March 2017 that he briefed then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on the wiretapped phone calls in late December 2016 or early January 2017.

Clapper briefed Obama, Biden, and Obama’s senior team about the calls and other related matters, Comey said.

“We did not disseminate this [redacted] in any finished intelligence, although our people judged was appropriate, for reasons that I hope are obvious, to have Mr. Flynn’s name unmasked,” Comey said, according to a newly declassified transcript.

Unmasking is a term used by intelligence officials for revealing the name of a U.S. citizen.

The two documents were released on May 7 by the Justice Department as part of its motion to dismiss the case against Flynn.

trump and flynn — President-elect Donald Trump, left, stands with National Security Adviser Lt. General Michael Flynn at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, where he is holding meetings on Dec. 21, 2016. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

The Department of Justice moved Thursday to dismiss the case, arguing the Jan. 24, 2017, interview of Flynn “was untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn.”

The investigation itself was “no longer justifiably predicated,” said Timothy Shea, interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, in the motion to dismiss. “The FBI had, in the Bureau’s own words, prepared to close because it had yielded an ‘absence of any derogatory information,'” he added.

Flynn pleaded guilty to one count of lying during the interview but recently moved to withdraw his plea.

Because the interview wasn’t done as part of a legitimate investigation, “we feel really that a crime cannot be established here,” Attorney General William Barr told CBS on Thursday.

The call in question with Kislyak contained “nothing inconsistent with the Obama administration’s policies, and … was in U.S. interests,” he said.

Flynn Is Innocent--Always Was! Now We Need To Go After Those Who Brought The Charges

Flynn Was Innocent All Along: He Was Pressured to Plead Guilty

by Alan M. Dershowitz
May 8, 2020 at 8:00 am

From a legal and policy point of view, encouraging the FBI to misuse its legitimate authority to investigate past crimes, solely to create future crimes is both immoral and illegal.
Let us hear now from the former civil libertarians for whom any violation of law is permissible, as long as it is directed at a Trump associate.
Anyone who knows how the system works in practice would understand why an innocent man—or a defendant in a close case—might be coerced into pleading guilty.... in this case, it is alleged that the government threatened, if Flynn did not plead guilty, to indict his son.
There must be a single standard of justice and civil liberties -- including the presumption of innocence -- that transcends partisan politics. This message has been forgotten by both parties.

The Justice Department has agreed that General Michael Flynn did not, in fact, commit any crime. Let us hear now from the former civil libertarians for whom any violation of law is permissible, as long as it is directed at a Trump associate. Pictured: Flynn, then US National Security Adviser speaks during at a press briefing at the White House in Washington, DC, on February 1, 2017. (Photo by Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)

More than a year ago I wrote that it was clear General Michael Flynn should never have pleaded guilty because he did not commit a crime. Even if he lied to the FBI, his lie was not "material." For a lie to be a crime under federal law, it must be material to the investigation – meaning that the lies pertain to the issues being legitimately investigated. The role of the FBI is to investigate past crimes, not to create new ones. Because the FBI investigators already knew the answer to the question they asked him—whether he had spoken to the Russian Ambassador—their purpose was not to elicit new information relevant to their investigation, but rather to spring a perjury trap on him. When they asked Flynn the question, they had a recording of his conversation with the Russian, of which he was presumably unaware. So his answer was not material to the investigation because they already had the information about which they were inquiring.
From a legal and policy point of view, encouraging the FBI to misuse its legitimate authority to investigate past crimes, solely to create future crimes is both immoral and illegal. That is why Congress added the word material to its statute.
Because Flynn's answers were not material to what the FBI said it was investigating –- a violation of a never-used law, the Logan Act, that prohibits private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments -- they did not constitute a crime.
At the time, that argument was mocked by the usual suspects: fair-weather civil libertarians who would have supported the argument if it had been made on behalf of a liberal Democrat but who rejected it when made on behalf of a Trump Republican. They claimed there was no authority supporting this argument, despite the citation of several cases by eminent judges.
Now the Justice Department has agreed that General Flynn did not, in fact, commit any crime. Among the reasons given for belatedly dropping the case against General Flynn was that his answers did not satisfy the materiality requirement of the statute.
Let us hear now from the former civil libertarians for whom any violation of law is permissible, as long as it is directed at a Trump associate.
When I originally argued that Flynn had committed no crime, I was unaware of the exculpatory documents that the government had illegally withheld from his lawyers and him. He might well have considered them in deciding whether or not to plead guilty. This suppressed material might have bolstered his defense had he decided to go to trial.
Some may wonder why an innocent man would ever plead guilty. Anyone who knows how the system works in practice would understand why an innocent man—or a defendant in a close case—might be coerced into pleading guilty. The cruel reality is that if a defendant pleads not guilty and is found guilty, the sentence will be far greater than if he had pled guilty—perhaps even 10 times greater. Moreover, in this case, it is alleged that the government threatened, if Flynn did not plead guilty, to indict his son. These are the kinds of pressures routinely used by prosecutors. Civil libertarians have long been critical of these pressures, but fair-weather civil libertarians refuse to object when these improper tactics are used against Trump's associates. Partisan hypocrisy reigns.
The decision by the Justice Department to drop the Flynn case sends an important message to prosecutors that goes beyond the Flynn case. There must be a single standard of justice and civil liberties -- including the presumption of innocence -- that transcends partisan politics. This message has been forgotten by both parties. Flynn himself was among those who shouted, "Lock her up," regarding Hillary Clinton. Then when the Justice Department tried to lock him up, he got religion.

Cynics used to say that, "a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged." I would respond by saying that, "a civil-libertarian is a conservative who has been falsely accused." I would now add that an anti-civil libertarian is a former civil libertarian who is willing to ignore the law to get Trump and his associates.
The time has come, indeed it is long overdue, to de-politicize our criminal justice system and to forbid it from becoming weaponized by either side for partisan purposes. Dropping the case against General Flynn is an important first step, but it cannot be the last if we are to restore the criminal justice system to its rightful place as a non-partisan institution of justice.

Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School and author of the book, Guilt by Accusation: The Challenge of Proving Innocence in the Age of #MeToo, Skyhorse Publishing, November 2019. He is the Jack Roth Charitable Foundation Fellow at Gatestone Institute.