During a press conference on Thursday, President Trump was asked, in light of additional revelations over the FBI’s efforts to entrap former National Security Advisor Lieutenant General Michael Flynn (shown), whether he might bring Flynn back into his administration. Said Trump, “Well, it looks like Michael Flynn would be exonerated based on everything I see. I’m not the judge, but I have a different type of power [the power to pardon] but I don’t know that [I] would have to use that power. I think he’s exonerated.
Trump continued, “I think he’s a fine man. I think it’s terrible what they did to him. I would certainly consider [bringing him back] — yeah, I would. I think he is a fine man. I think he has got a great family.”
Fox News revealed the sum and substance of the new revelations that followed Flynn’s attorney’s efforts to bring them into public light: FBI director James Comey, working with his Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, decided to “target” Flynn by interviewing him under false pretenses, hoping to get him to incriminate himself under a 1799 law. McCabe ordered FBI’s head of counter-intelligence Bill Priestap to get Flynn “to admit to breaking the Logan act.” In seeking clarification, Priestap, in a personal handwritten memo, asked “What is our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?”
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One of those present during that interview — which took place just four days after Trump’s inauguration in 2017 — was Peter Strzok. Strzok, following the meeting, altered the official report of that interview numerous times, with assistance from Lisa Page, according to documents that were released earlier this week.
When Bernie Kerik, former New York City Police Commissioner under then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, reviewed the newly released documents, he told Newsmax that the two “intentionally went back and doctored the original [Form] 302. That’s because they were not looking for the truth. They were looking for a mechanism to trap Gen. Flynn, to prosecute him, to get him fired in order to go after the president. That was their motive; that was their agenda. It’s absolutely clear at this point that they were not looking for the truth.”
And not just the two low-level FBI agents, either. Said Kerik, “This was [ordered] at the highest levels of the FBI. At the most senior level of the FBI. They falsified records. They suppressed evidence.… They used and abused their authority to deprive Gen. Flynn of [his rights].”
Why? Why did Strzok, on his own authority, keep the file open on Flynn when it was clear early on that Flynn was innocent of any complicity with the Russians during the 2016 president campaign? Why did he risk his career — and ultimately possibly his incarceration — just to “get” one of Trump’s people?
Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), serving as Trump’s chief of staff, was interviewed on Fox & Friends on Thursday. Host Steve Doocy noted, “Somebody at the FBI and the Department of Justice was out to get Flynn.” The bureau, he said, was trying to “entrap him, have him tell a lie, charge him on that, prosecute him on that so that they could get rid of him and embarrass the Trump administration.”
To which Jordan responded, “Yes.”
But was it more than that? Did the people occupying the highest levels of the FBI and the DOJ just want to embarrass the president? Or did they see Flynn as not so much a “target” as an “obstacle” to their continued efforts to subvert the Trump administration and keep him from fulfilling his campaign promise to “drain the swamp”?
It is helpful to remember that former president Barack Obama fired Flynn in 2014 from his position as Defense Intelligence Agency chief and then personally warned incoming President Trump against rehiring him. He told Trump that he (Obama) was “not a fan” of Flynn.
Perhaps additional revelations that are promised to be released in the near future will shed more light on that. In the meantime, the president could do worse than to reinstate Flynn and order him to complete the job he was originally assigned to do.
Photo: AP Images
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American, writing primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
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