SYDNEY WILLIAMS: MICHAEL FLYNN AND THE F.B.I.
On November 19, 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln went to Gettysburg to help consecrate a portion of that battlefield as a new cemetery. He spoke of the government, conceived in liberty, that had been formed eighty-seven years prior, a government in which people are the ultimate power – a government comprised of the people’s elected representatives and the appointees those representatives make; he spoke of the laws and regulations that are made by those elected representatives, and he emphasized that this government is for the people, to ensure the protection of their rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Such a government, Lincoln understood, is rare. It relies on trust that those who labor within it work for the people, not for a party, a cabal or an individual. Once that trust is gone, the fragile edifice that comprises democracy crumbles. The Michael Flynn story is one of government servants subverting their role. No matter one’s political affiliation, the story of what happened to General Michael Flynn should frighten any lover of freedom and democracy.
This story has been ably told by Andrew McCarthy in National Review, Kimberly Strassel in The Wall Street Journal and others, but its consequences are worth considering again, as it unravels. On May 1, Ms. Strassel wrote: “…evidence of law enforcement’s abuse keeps emerging in dribs and drabs. To grasp the outrageous conduct fully, the Flynn documents need to be added to what we already know.” Establishment Washington could not believe that the people had elected Mr. Trump – this allegedly insensitive deal maker, a man who speaks frankly and crudely to and about his political opponents. He was demonized as authoritarian. He was an outsider. He had never served in government, nor in the military. He was a television star, famous for saying, “You’re fired!” In a country where leadership had too often descended into elitism, arrogance and hypocrisy, the mercurial Mr. Trump arrived as a disruptor.
To Washington’s establishment, Mr. Trump was naive. He is smart and shrewd, but the intelligence community is a different milieu, as Senator Schumer observed to Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. “He was not,” as Andrew McCarthy wrote on May 2, “supported by the Republican foreign-policy and national-security clerisy, which he had gone out of his way to antagonize during the campaign.”
On November 17, 2016, a few days after the election, the newly elected President named General Michael Flynn to be National Security Administration (NSA) chief. The three-star retired General had served in military intelligence since the 9/11 attacks. In 2012, he was named director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in the Obama Administration. General Flynn was a scrappy, outspoken officer who at times clashed with subordinates and superiors. Critical of Mr. Obama’s Middle East policies, he was asked to leave in 2014. But he knew how intelligence agencies worked, which is why Donald Trump tapped him as NSA chief, and which was also why his political enemies wanted him out.
The “what” of what happened to Michael Flynn is clear – that the FBI set a perjury trap based on a meeting he, as newly named NSA chief, had had with the Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak, a conversation that the FBI had taped, so knew his conversation and knew he had said nothing wrong. In January 2017, the FBI “interviewed” Mr. Flynn, without telling him his rights or without a lawyer present – in fact, telling him one was unnecessary. However, handwritten notes from Bill Priestap, assistant director of the FBI’s Counter-Intelligence Division from 2015-2018, disclosed two weeks ago, made clear that the FBI “engineered” the “crime:” “What is our goal? Truth/Admissions, or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?” Without a lawyer present, they got him to contradict some of what he had said earlier to the Russian Ambassador. They got him fired.
The “why” is the question that concerned Andrew McCarthy and which he addressed in his May 2 essay in National Review. The Obama Administration had had a Trump-Russia collusion investigation underway for several months. And the FBI and former members of the Obama Administration wanted it continued after the election. Michael Flynn stood in the way. A new Administration might discover how the intelligence agencies had been weaponized against domestic political enemies. And General Flynn would see what had been done. As well, he was despised by the hubristic James Comey. The latter feared Flynn would hamper the FBI’s ongoing investigation into their contrived story – that Mr. Trump had colluded with Putin about the election. The investigation culminated in Robert Mueller’s query as Special Counsel, which became a persistent and constant nuisance to the Trump Administration. The investigation took two years and consumed $35 million. It ended in finding that no role had been played by Russia in helping Mr. Trump – a conclusion obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense. Why would Putin want an unknown, supposedly volatile man as President when he could have a woman he had worked with, who had given him a “re-set” button, and from whom he had acquired 20% of U.S uranium deposits in the Uranium One deal? The accusation never made sense. (My guess is that Putin was most interested in sowing seeds of suspicion and doubt about our electoral process. In that, he succeeded.)
However, because of the FBI’s entrapment, General Flynn’s days at NSA were numbered. He quit on February 13, 2017 and spent the next two years, and millions of dollars in legal fees, trying to clear his name. When the FBI threatened to go after his son, he relented and admitted to a plea deal, of lying to the FBI. We also know that the FBI used fraudulent means to obtain FISA warrants against two members of Mr. Trump’s campaign staff, George Papadopolous and Carter Page.
Yesterday, the Justice Department dropped all charges against Michael Flynn. While that news is welcome, the facts remain that the FBI exceeded its powers. It had framed General Flynn. He should receive financial restitution for legal costs incurred, and the guilty parties should be punished.
When government servants abuse their powers, when they put politics above the will of the people, democracy shudders. No American citizen should experience what happened to General Flynn. People must be responsible for their actions, and government agencies must be accountable to the elected representatives of the people; they cannot be a law unto themselves. We should all – Democrats, Republicans and Independents – be thankful that Attorney General William Barr is conducting a full investigation into what happened. In this case, the accused was exonerated. Nevertheless, three years of his life were destroyed. Mr. Flynn should be compensated. The guilty parties should not be allowed to retire; they should be jailed. Lincoln would be abashed.
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