Tag: Mike Flynn

Mike Lindell made an insane election conspiracy diagram that has to be seen to be believed

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Former Trump national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn posted a photo of himself with Mike Lindell and others at an event on Tuesday only to prompt questions about what was behind him.

The men stood in front of a whiteboard that had a photo of Donald Trump’s head, floating in the middle. A series of lines, arrows, photos, names and a list of random thoughts swirled around it.

The arrows include things like: Andrew Whitney —-> Ben Carson —-> President Trump. Continue reading.

Peter Strzok would like to clear a few things up

Peter Strzok would like to clear a few things up

“I’m sorry to bother you. But it turns out Trump just accused me of treason.”

Peter Strzok, who was still an FBI employee that day in January 2018 and couldn’t respond to the president’s attack, was appealing to his boss: “The bureau can’t let this stand,” he pleaded.

“I’m sorry, Pete,” came the response. “We’re not going to say anything.”

Nearly three years later, Strzok — who led the FBI’s Russia investigation, dubbed Crossfire Hurricane, until he was removed over several anti-Trump texts he’d sent during the election amid an affair with a colleague — is finally able to speak publicly and on his terms for the first time since he joined the FBI more than two decades ago. Continue reading.

Appeals court orders judge to dismiss Flynn charges

The Hill logoA federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered a judge to grant the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) unusual move to drop charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

A three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals approved Flynn’s petition to intervene in the case after a district court judge had tapped an outside counsel to argue against the DOJ’s move.

The panel ruled 2-1, with two Republican-appointed judges carrying the majority, that U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan overstepped his authority in second-guessing the prosecutors’ decision. Continue reading.

Court-appointed former judge accuses Flynn of perjury, urges court to not drop charges

The Hill logoA former judge appointed to argue against the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) extraordinary decision to drop charges against Michael Flynn urged a federal judge not to let the Trump administration withdraw its case and accused the former national security adviser of perjury.

In an 82-page filing submitted Wednesday, John Gleeson, the former judge acting as an outside counsel, accused the DOJ of “gross abuse of prosecutorial power” in its handling of the case against President Trump‘s former adviser.

“The Government’s ostensible grounds for seeking dismissal are conclusively disproven by its own briefs filed earlier in this very proceeding,” Gleeson wrote. “They contradict and ignore this Court’s prior orders, which constitute law of the case. They are riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact. And they depart from positions that the Government has taken in other cases.” Continue reading.

Graham to start hearings on Russia probe, Flynn in June

The Hill logoSen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Thursday that the Senate Judiciary Committee will start hearings in June on the FBI’s investigation into Russian election interference and President Trump‘s campaign.

Graham said in a statement that the hearings will deal with the Justice Department’s decision to drop its case against former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn, the warrant applications against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and if former special counsel Robert Mueller should have been appointed.

“The Judiciary Committee will begin holding multiple, in-depth congressional hearings regarding all things related to Crossfire Hurricane starting in early June,” Graham said. Continue reading.

Storm builds around Barr over dropping of Flynn case

The Hill logoDemocrats and other critics are seizing on the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) decision to drop the case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, arguing it shows how heavily politicized it has become under Attorney General William Barr.

Anger over the extraordinary move by Justice to drop charges even after it secured a guilty plea has created a new political storm around Barr, who had previously angered Democrats for his handling of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

The latest surprise move approved by Barr makes him even more of a political lightning rod figure in Washington. Continue reading.

Another case Trump meddled in. Another unorthodox intervention from Barr.

Washington Post logoOn Thursday, Attorney General William P. Barr urged President Trump not to tweet about ongoing criminal matters, saying it makes it “impossible for me to do my job.”

On Friday, we got two separate reminders of just how many cases Trump has weighed in on. And one of them showed just how fruitful his efforts appear to have been.

The Washington Post confirmed that Barr has tasked a outside prosecutors with scrutinizing the case against Michael Flynn as well as other sensitive national security and public corruption cases. Trump has repeatedly decried the Justice Department’s actions regarding Flynn, who is awaiting sentencing. He has even doubted that Flynn lied, despite his pleading guilty to doing so. Continue reading.

Mueller says Flynn’s cooperation ‘complete’

Michael Flynn’s cooperation in Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation is complete, lawyers for the special counsel said in a Tuesday night report to a federal judge presiding over the former Trump national security adviser’s case.

In the same joint status report, Flynn’s lawyers asked for a 90-day delay in their client’s sentencing so he could continue to cooperate with the government in his former business partner’s upcoming trial in Alexandria, Va. Flynn expects to testify in the mid-July trial against Bijan Rafiekian, who faces charges of conspiracy and acting as an unregistered foreign government agent for Turkey.

“At this time, the defendant continues to request a continuance since the case in EDVA has not been resolved, and there may be additional cooperation for the defendant to provide pursuant to the plea agreement in this matter,” Flynn’s attorneys said in the report to U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, referring to the Eastern District of Virginia.

View the complete March 12 article by Darren Samuelsohn on the Politico website here.

Top Trump appointees promoted selling nuclear power plants to Saudi Arabia over objections from national security officials, House Democratic report says

The Trump White House has balked at endorsing intelligence reports suggesting that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was involved in the killing of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi on Oct. 2, 2018, in Istanbul. Credit: Bandar Algaloud, EPA-EFE, Shutterstock)

Key members of the Trump administration pushed a plan to sell nuclear power plants to Saudi Arabia in the months after the inauguration despite objections from members of the National Security Council and other senior White House officials, according to a new report from congressional Democrats.

The 24-page report from the House Oversight and Reform Committee is based on internal White House documents and the accounts of unnamed whistleblowers. It said the objectors — including White House lawyers and National Security Council officials — opposed the plan out of concern that it violated laws designed to prevent the transfer of nuclear technology that could be used to support a weapons program.

Of greater concern to some were potential conflicts of interest on the part of Michael Flynn, the retired Army lieutenant general who was President Trump’s first national security adviser and who had advised a firm pitching the nuclear plan. Yet the effort persisted even after Flynn resigned and left the White House, the report alleges.

View the complete February 19 article by Tom Hamburger, Steve Mufson and Ellen Nakashima on The Washington Post website here.

New Book: Trump Team, Not Deep State, Revealed Flynn’s Talks With Russians

The following article by Spencer Ackerman was posted on the Daily Beast website June 7, 2018:

Obama aide Ben Rhodes writes that he learned about Mike Flynn’s parley with the Russian ambassador not from ‘unmasked’ surveillance intercepts but from Trump’s own people.

Credit: Elizabeth Brockway, Daily Beast

The Trump transition team told Barack Obama’s White House about Mike Flynn’s fateful conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, according to a senior Obama aide’s new memoir. That account stands in contrast to oft-repeated claims that the Obama team unmasked Flynn’s name after learning of the Kislyak conversation from surveillance intercepts.

Ben Rhodes, an Obama deputy national security adviser and a long-time right-wing bĂȘte noire, often features prominently in accusations from Donald Trump’s allies that the outgoing White House improperly “unmasked” Flynn from surveillance intercepts and then leaked his name to discredit him. In October, Rhodes testified behind closed doors to the House intelligence committee probe controlled by Trump ally Devin Nunes about unmasking.

But in his just-released book, The World as It Is, the former senior National Security Council staffer writes that the Obama White House learned about the Flynn-Kislyak talks from the Trump team itself. If Rhodes’ claim is true, then Obama aides had no need to “unmask” any surveillance intercept of Kislyak’s phone calls to determine Flynn was the interlocutor. Continue reading “New Book: Trump Team, Not Deep State, Revealed Flynn’s Talks With Russians”