There are two stories that ought to be compared in order to understand just how the left and the media (okay it's the same thing) work.
The first story concerns the plea entered by General Flynn to the charge of lying to the FBI. Flynn plead guilty to an indictment that alleged that he had lied to FBI agents who questioned him in January of 2017 with regard to his contacts with Russian officials. Everyone know that. The thing that not everyone knows is that the FBI agents who questioned Flynn concluded and REPORTED that there was no indication that Flynn was lying in any way during the interview. That's doubly important because the agent who conducted the interview was Peter Strzok who is so notorious of a hater of everything Trump that he was fired from his role for the Special Prosecutor to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. In other words, the guy who would be most likely to make false charges against a Trump associate found that associate to be truthful. This conclusion was passed on to the FBI's leadership. Both James Comey and Andrew McCabe testified to Congress that they had seen the interview memo and that there were no documents in the FBI files that contradicted the conclusion that Flynn had told the truth. Then came the Mueller probe. Mueller's team got all the files from the FBI, so they had clear access to the notes of the interview with Flynn. Mueller's team, however, indicted Flynn for lying in that interview, so there cannot be any doubt that they read the interview notes and the summary memorandum for that session. Given that the FBI concluded that Flynn was not lying, how did Mueller's team come to indict Flynn for doing just that? It seems as if the Mueller team went after this former government official (Flynn) in order to try to either destroy him or to flip him to testify against his former associates including the President. The funny thing is that while the guilty plea has gotten a lot of press, the existence of the internal FBI memoranda confirming that Flynn did not lie are rarely mentioned. Indeed, the judge who must sentence Flynn has ordered Mueller to turn over the FBI memorandum and any other exculpatory evidence and that order a) has not been complied with by Mueller, and b) is being resisted by the Mueller team even as I write this. Remember, federal law requires the prosecutor to turn over exculpatory evidence, so this is not a minor point.
Many people point out that Flynn plead guilty, so he must have lied. Flynn himself, however, has made clear that he plead guilty to end the legal fees which he could not afford and to get himself and his family out of the never-ending spotlight in this circus. One wonders if he would have done so if he knew that the FBI had concluded he told the truth. After all, would any jury convict him for lying to the FBI if the FBI concluded that he told the truth? I doubt it.
The second story is quite different from the Flynn tale. For Flynn there is a trail of documentary and testamentary evidence that agents of the special prosecutor attacked a former official because of his relationship with president Trump. In the second story, there is scant information, most of it from unnamed sources. It is a confused mess that has been denied by nearly everyone supposedly involved. The story is that someone hired a company with ties to former Israeli Mossad agents. They were tasked with finding out dirt on former Obama officials who were supporting the continuation of the Iran agreement. The plan, supposedly, was to discredit those voices supporting the Iran agreement so as to make it easier to pull out of that deal. It's a conspiracy theory that has appears so far in the Observer and the New Yorker. Ah, but it's latest version is written by Ronan Farrow who outed the truth about Harvey Weinstein. Indeed, Farrow points out that Weinstein used the same company of former Israeli agents to try to keep women from coming forward to make charges against him. The problem with this second story about the Iran deal is that it makes no sense. It's probably safe to say that President Trump's decision on whether or not to stay in the JCPOA will not be affected by whether or not Ben Rhodes or some low level staffers from the Obama Administration are discredited. Can you imagine the phone call between Trump and Prime Minister May and President Macron?
Trump -- "I really felt compelled to stay in the JCPOA but then I hear that the assistants spokesman for the National Security Adviser under Obama who likes the deal was discredited and that changed my mind."
May and Macron -- "No, seriously, tell us what your actual reasoning is."
This whole story seems clearly bogus, a pipedream of the vast left-wing conspiracy. That's why the comment by Ben Rhodes (who supposedly was the most prominent target of the effort) is particularly interesting. Here's what Rhodes has to say according to Farrow:
Rhodes said that the campaign represented a troubling situation in which public servants were being targeted for their work in government. “This just eviscerates any norm of how governments should operate or treat their predecessors and their families,” he said. “It crosses a dangerous line.”
In other words, the special prosecutor actually targeted a public servant (Flynn) for his work for Trump and Rhodes just cheers him on. There is no proof that anyone targeted Rhodes for his work in the government and Rhodes basically melts down. Amazing!
The first story concerns the plea entered by General Flynn to the charge of lying to the FBI. Flynn plead guilty to an indictment that alleged that he had lied to FBI agents who questioned him in January of 2017 with regard to his contacts with Russian officials. Everyone know that. The thing that not everyone knows is that the FBI agents who questioned Flynn concluded and REPORTED that there was no indication that Flynn was lying in any way during the interview. That's doubly important because the agent who conducted the interview was Peter Strzok who is so notorious of a hater of everything Trump that he was fired from his role for the Special Prosecutor to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. In other words, the guy who would be most likely to make false charges against a Trump associate found that associate to be truthful. This conclusion was passed on to the FBI's leadership. Both James Comey and Andrew McCabe testified to Congress that they had seen the interview memo and that there were no documents in the FBI files that contradicted the conclusion that Flynn had told the truth. Then came the Mueller probe. Mueller's team got all the files from the FBI, so they had clear access to the notes of the interview with Flynn. Mueller's team, however, indicted Flynn for lying in that interview, so there cannot be any doubt that they read the interview notes and the summary memorandum for that session. Given that the FBI concluded that Flynn was not lying, how did Mueller's team come to indict Flynn for doing just that? It seems as if the Mueller team went after this former government official (Flynn) in order to try to either destroy him or to flip him to testify against his former associates including the President. The funny thing is that while the guilty plea has gotten a lot of press, the existence of the internal FBI memoranda confirming that Flynn did not lie are rarely mentioned. Indeed, the judge who must sentence Flynn has ordered Mueller to turn over the FBI memorandum and any other exculpatory evidence and that order a) has not been complied with by Mueller, and b) is being resisted by the Mueller team even as I write this. Remember, federal law requires the prosecutor to turn over exculpatory evidence, so this is not a minor point.
Many people point out that Flynn plead guilty, so he must have lied. Flynn himself, however, has made clear that he plead guilty to end the legal fees which he could not afford and to get himself and his family out of the never-ending spotlight in this circus. One wonders if he would have done so if he knew that the FBI had concluded he told the truth. After all, would any jury convict him for lying to the FBI if the FBI concluded that he told the truth? I doubt it.
The second story is quite different from the Flynn tale. For Flynn there is a trail of documentary and testamentary evidence that agents of the special prosecutor attacked a former official because of his relationship with president Trump. In the second story, there is scant information, most of it from unnamed sources. It is a confused mess that has been denied by nearly everyone supposedly involved. The story is that someone hired a company with ties to former Israeli Mossad agents. They were tasked with finding out dirt on former Obama officials who were supporting the continuation of the Iran agreement. The plan, supposedly, was to discredit those voices supporting the Iran agreement so as to make it easier to pull out of that deal. It's a conspiracy theory that has appears so far in the Observer and the New Yorker. Ah, but it's latest version is written by Ronan Farrow who outed the truth about Harvey Weinstein. Indeed, Farrow points out that Weinstein used the same company of former Israeli agents to try to keep women from coming forward to make charges against him. The problem with this second story about the Iran deal is that it makes no sense. It's probably safe to say that President Trump's decision on whether or not to stay in the JCPOA will not be affected by whether or not Ben Rhodes or some low level staffers from the Obama Administration are discredited. Can you imagine the phone call between Trump and Prime Minister May and President Macron?
Trump -- "I really felt compelled to stay in the JCPOA but then I hear that the assistants spokesman for the National Security Adviser under Obama who likes the deal was discredited and that changed my mind."
May and Macron -- "No, seriously, tell us what your actual reasoning is."
This whole story seems clearly bogus, a pipedream of the vast left-wing conspiracy. That's why the comment by Ben Rhodes (who supposedly was the most prominent target of the effort) is particularly interesting. Here's what Rhodes has to say according to Farrow:
Rhodes said that the campaign represented a troubling situation in which public servants were being targeted for their work in government. “This just eviscerates any norm of how governments should operate or treat their predecessors and their families,” he said. “It crosses a dangerous line.”
In other words, the special prosecutor actually targeted a public servant (Flynn) for his work for Trump and Rhodes just cheers him on. There is no proof that anyone targeted Rhodes for his work in the government and Rhodes basically melts down. Amazing!
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