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Ruth King

EDUCATION, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel’s Ambassador Danon interrupted by protesters at Columbia University By Camie Davis

By on February 15th, 2017

Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., Danny Danon, spoke to a crowd of 300 at Columbia University Monday night, hosted by the Columbia University chapter of Students Supporting Israel. A large anti-Israel crowd outside Lerner Hall protested the event.

The groups Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, Barnard Columbia Socialists, and Columbia Against Trump coordinated the protest on the Facebook page “Racists Not Welcome: Protest the Israeli Ambassador at Columbia.” Reasons given to protest Danon included his desire to “annex the West Bank” and his “abandoning even the pretence [sic] of the ‘two-state solution.'” They also accused Danon of being “a cheerleader for Trump and the Republican fight” and alleged that “from racist walls to repressive border policing, Trump copies Israel.” And that “Danon is the official representative of a state born, like America, through savage ethnic cleansing” and that “his is a state that has besieged and bombed the Palestinian people since its inception.”

The protesters outside Lerner Hall shouted slogans such as:

“Stop your murder, stop your hate; Israel is an apartheid state!”

“No peace on stolen land! Justice is our demand!”

“Danny Danon, you can’t hide; we charge you with genocide.”

…proving that at least an education at Columbia University ensures the ability to chant protest slogans that rhyme.

And although security tried to keep the protesters outside, about 100 made their way into Lerner Hall and disrupted Danon’s speech, chanting:

“Palestine, we’ll be free, from the river to the sea!”

“Israel is a terrorist state!”

“Israel has no right to exist!”

Not deterred by the protesters, Danon succinctly stated, “The age of Jews sitting quietly is over.” He proved that to be true as he went on to say, “We will not be quiet in the face of the lies that you spread about Israel. We will continue to make our voice heard and will continue to insist on our righteous truth.”

Before the hall could be cleared of the protesters, Danon suggested to them, “Instead of inciting and lying, sit down in the seats – and maybe you will learn something.”

He continued: “This is precisely the problem of the Palestinians. They lie, incite, and don’t recognize Israel’s right to exist. But I have an announcement for those students. The people of Israel will never leave the land of Israel.”

In the past, Columbia University has been ranked at the top of the list as the university with the “worst antisemitic activity in the United States,” according to the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Other universities at the top include Cornell University, George Mason University, and San Diego State University. The planned protest at Columbia University is a preview of what we can expect to see across college campuses and across the world in a few weeks, when BDS activists will be in full stride, during Israel Apartheid week. It will be a time when anti-Israel, anti-Semitic activity gives new meaning to March madness.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Making Policy in the New Administration By Shoshana Bryen

By on February 15th, 2017

The Trump White House continues to receive advice – solicited and unsolicited, in letters to the editor, op-eds, essays, and policy papers – as to what its foreign policy priorities should be. It is tempting to presume that problems called “priorities” can be resolved with just a little more savvy or a little more will. But if they could have been, they would have been. Instead, the administration might consider priorities for American behavior – political, economic, and military.

First, there are three questions to be asked:

What should the United States do to ensure that allies feel secure and adversaries don’t?
How can America encourage countries that are neither allies nor adversaries to cooperate on issues of importance?
How can Washington encourage countries to want to be “more like us” (politically and economically free with more transparent government) and “less like them” (totalitarian, communist, jihadist, and less transparent)?
And if they choose to be “more like them,” what are the limits of American encouragement or coercive capabilities?

OK, that’s four questions, but when they are answered, the first priority that emerges is creation of a clear statement of American goals and desired outcomes. In the broader Middle East, the United States is engaged in lethal operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia while being at war with none of them, and in each, the outcome we seek is unstated.

As the military and diplomatic objectives are formulated, the second priority is “public diplomacy,” stressing what made/makes America what it has been and should be – a beacon of hope for people around the world. Individual freedoms including rights to property and to profit from one’s creativity and work; constraints on government enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the checks and balances of the system; free expression, including the right to criticize the government; and opportunity for all resulting in (at least relative) prosperity for most are what people admire.

This should not be confused with “democracy promotion” – a failed concept. The U.S. should promote and advance specific human rights and freedoms for citizens without trying to determine the nature of the political system of any country.

Messaging is a two-way street. On the one hand, the United States should be clear and vocal about what it does support, and on the other hand, it must be clear about threats to the American body politic contained in the messages of radical Islamist-jihadist ideology. The U.S. must develop strategy to discredit and defeat Islamic triumphalism that includes clarifying the expansionist-totalitarian nature of jihadism.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Muslim Face of the New Democratic Party By Karin McQuillan

By on February 15th, 2017

Blacks, women, Millennials – liberals in each sub-group are now led by an uncompromising cadre of the hard left, who through their “mass actions” are attempting to turn the country against Donald Trump and brand him an illegitimate president.

Most Americans are concerned about unvetted refugees from jihadi countries. Those who are Democrats have no say in their party anymore. Obama yanked the party hard left. He personally championed the jihadi movement, be it by trying to install the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or giving the pariah state Iran billions of dollars and the obsequious Iran deal.

Obama’s legacy: Hard-left Muslim-Americans are rising to positions of prominence in the Democrats’ grassroots organizations. This alliance between Western socialists and Islamists dates back to the Cold War, but it has gained traction in America since 9/11.

One case, among countless others: The anti-Trump women’s march was co-led by an Islamist in a hijab. It is well worth reading the front-page exposé on Linda Sarsour, because she is a leader of so many of the causes that Obama promoted as president: Occupy Wall St., BDS, Black Lives Matter, the Muslim Brotherhood.

After 9/11, Sarsour rose in power by promoting the jihadi fiction of “Islamophobia.” The Democratic Party uses this accusation to fight Republican national security measures and accord itself unmerited moral superiority.

Sarsour’s Islamic group was a big success. It prevented the New York Police Department from conducting surveillance of Muslim groups and mosques the police suspected of promoting terrorism.

For her work, Ms. Sarsour was honored by President Obama as a “White House Champion of Change” and was invited to the White House seven times. She was a delegate to the Democrat National Convention.

Sarsour is a radical Palestinian who supports international terrorism and the destruction of Israel. There are photos of her on the web flashing the ISIS sign.

Sarsour is, as the New York Times puts it, “deeply involved in the Black Lives Matter movement,” a movement founded by three self-identified Marxist revolutionaries who revere the convicted cop-killer and longtime Marxist fugitive Assata Shakur.

Sarsour supports sharia law in America.

You’ll know when you’re living under Sharia Law if suddenly all your loans & credit cards become interest free. Sound [sic] nice, doesn’t it?

There are outstanding Arab-American women fighting the jihadi threat here at home, having suffered firsthand from Muslim barbarism in their native countries. Most prominent are Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Brigitte Gabriel. President Obama and the Democrats consider them enemies.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

San Bernardino Shooter’s Friend Enters Plea Agreement Enrique Marquez Jr. was not involved in the terror attack itself By Dan Frosch

By on February 15th, 2017

A friend of one of the shooters in the San Bernardino, Calif., terror attack agreed to plead guilty to a terrorism conspiracy charge and to lying about his purchase of the weapons used in the mass shooting, federal officials said Tuesday.Prosecutors said Enrique Marquez Jr., 25, bought the assault rifles used by Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, in the Dec. 2, 2015, attack on an office holiday party. The couple killed 14 people and wounded more than 20.

On Tuesday, Mr. Marquez admitted to making false statements in connection with his purchase of those weapons. Prosecutors have said Mr. Marquez served as a “straw buyer” of the guns.Mr. Farook and Ms. Malik died later that day in a shootout with police.

Authorities have said the married couple were Islamic extremists, and that Mr. Farook introduced radical Islamic teachings to Mr. Marquez, his friend and former neighbor.

Mr. Marquez also admitted to conspiring with Mr. Farook in 2011 and 2012 to attack Riverside City College, in Southern California, and target commuters on a Los Angeles-area freeway. Those plots were never carried out. Mr. Marquez’s federal public defenders didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Marquez was arrested following the San Bernardino shooting and has been in federal custody ever since. Mr. Marquez wasn’t involved in the shooting itself. He told authorities that he didn’t know about the San Bernardino attack and had distanced himself from Mr. Farook several years earlier.

“This defendant collaborated with and purchased weapons for a man who carried out the devastating December 2, 2015 terrorist attack that took the lives of 14 innocent people, wounded nearly two dozen, and impacted our entire nation,” said the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, Eileen M. Decker.

Ms. Decker added, “While his earlier plans to attack a school and a freeway were not executed, the planning clearly laid the foundation for the 2015 attack on the Inland Regional Center.”CONTINUE AT SITE

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FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

U.S. Drops Insistence on Two-State Solution to Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Trump administration’s policy shift comes on the eve of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House By Felicia Schwartz*****

By on February 15th, 2017

WASHINGTON—The White House said Tuesday that finding a solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians doesn’t have to include an agreement to establish two separate states, marking a dramatic break from decades of U.S. policy.

On the eve of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House to meet President Donald Trump, a senior administration official said the Israelis and Palestinians have to agree on what form peace between their countries will take—and that didn’t necessarily include two states.

“A two-state solution that doesn’t bring peace is not a goal that anybody wants to achieve,” the official said. “Peace is the goal, whether it comes in the form of a two-state solution if that’s what the parties want or something else, if that’s what the parties want, we’re going to help them.”
Two states for two peoples, Israelis and Palestinians, has been the official U.S. policy of Democratic and Republican administrations for decades, and was the tenet guiding historic talks at Oslo and Camp David. Most governments and world bodies back that principle as well and it had been embraced by the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started meetings with U.S. officials in Washington, ahead of a critical summit with President Donald Trump on Wednesday. Mr. Netanyahu said he expected the pair would “see eye-to-eye on the dangers emanating from the region.” Photo: AP

The U.S. historically has said it supports direct negotiations between the two sides that would end in a two-state solution. Toward that end, Washington has opposed Israeli construction of settlements in the Palestinian territories.

A spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the White House message, noting that Israel would wait for the meeting between Messrs. Trump and Netanyahu later Wednesday for more clarity on the U.S.’s approach to the conflict.

A spokesman for Mr. Netanyahu couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

The comments from the White House create a dilemma for the Israeli prime minister. Mr. Netanyahu has officially advocated for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since a landmark speech in 2009, but in practice he has continued to approve settlements that the international community believes undermine that goal.CONTINUE AT SITE

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MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Washington Post Whitewashes Hater Of Women, Gays, And Jews Because He’s A Muslim Convert By Ilya Feoktistov

By on February 15th, 2017

The Washington Post’s ‘hip, tolerant imam’ turns out to be a raving hater—and it’s all on tape.

What did it take for the Washington Post to accuse a Jewish man of racism for exposing a white man as an anti-Semite? That white man’s conversion to Islam.

That’s how reporter Bill Donahue treated Charles Jacobs, the president of my organization, Americans for Peace and Tolerance, in a January 17 puff piece on the influential Muslim convert and cleric, Imam Suhaib Webb: “An unlikely messenger becomes a guiding spirit to young Muslims.”

Jacobs marched with Martin Luther King Jr. and received the “Boston Freedom Award” from MLK’s widow, Coretta Scott King, for his work freeing black slaves in Sudan. But he is now apparently a racist because our organization’s research into the radical Islamic ideology of an Oklahoma-born white male conflicts with the Post’s portrayal of Webb as a cool former hip-hop DJ who knows how to hang with the kids while sharing his religious wisdom and liberal politics in rap lyrics.

I don’t quite get the hipness angle. Webb’s awkward affectations bring to mind Sacha Baron Cohen’s parodic character “Ali G,” a cringe-worthy mix of cultural appropriation, poseurism, and banality that would make Rachel Dolezal blush through her spray tan. But Donahue is a reporter on a mission.
Who’s Slandering Whom Here?

That said, his cool pose isn’t what makes the imam so objectionable, it just distracts from the underlying reality: Webb’s hateful rhetoric towards gays, women, Jews, and American society, and his connections to terrorism. So Donahue had to resort to outright falsehoods in ad hominem attack, claiming that Jacobs “alleged that Webb was anti-Semitic, homophobic and in cahoots with the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, even as Boston’s leading rabbis disagreed and one U.S. attorney, Carmen Ortiz, told the New York Times that Jacobs’s claims were ‘incredibly racist and unfair.’”

Some of these claims are demonstrably false. (Where is the Post’s editor?) Jacobs never accused Webb of being in cahoots with the World Trade Center bombers. In fact, in 1993, when the bombing happened, Webb was just beginning to explore Islam after a youth spent smoking weed and getting involved in drive-by shootings as a member of the Bloods gang.

Worse, perhaps: Ortiz said no such thing regarding Jacobs’ claims about Webb. She did pull that race card when Jacobs embarrassed her by pointing out that Webb’s former mosque, a partner in the Justice Department’s “Countering Violent Extremism” program that she led in Boston, is itself a major source of violent extremism.

It turns out Ortiz is not a credible source on matters of character, and this is not the first time she has slandered people. She resigned in disgrace after bipartisan outrage over her penchant for making baseless claims and “indicting the good guys” soon after Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz committed suicide after Ortiz indicted him on trumped-up charges.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

The art of the ‘no deal’ with the PA Ruthie Blum

By on February 14th, 2017

There is much speculation about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming meeting at the White House with U.S. President Donald Trump. Typically, rather than waiting to hear the outcome of Wednesday’s deliberation, Israelis have been analyzing a conversation that has yet to take place, and weighing in on the extent to which the Jewish state can count on the new administration in Washington to embrace the policies of the Israeli government, and on the level of personal chemistry that emerges between the two leaders.

The assumption is that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — the nuclear deal reached between Iran and world powers in July 2015 — will be on the agenda, and that the issue of achieving a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinian Authority will be raised. The second topic includes several directly related issues, such as the possibility of the relocation of the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and the newly passed Judea and Samaria Settlement Regulation Law, which retroactively grants permits to a number of outposts on privately owned Palestinian land.

Whatever the upshot of the meeting, however, one thing is certain: The Trump administration will not be able to broker an agreement that resolves the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, no matter how talented, smart or well-intentioned Jared Kushner — the president’s son-in-law who is purportedly being charged with this task — may be.

The charade in which Netanyahu has participated since he announced his conditional support for Palestinian statehood in a televised address to the nation in June 2009, is that there is a “solution” to the ongoing war waged by the Arabs in Judea and Samaria, Gaza and east Jerusalem against the very existence of the Jewish state. Netanyahu knows better than anybody else that this is as much an exercise in rhetoric as it is in futility. He is fully aware that the only way for peace to be possible is for the Palestinians to oust their corrupt and evil leaders in Fatah and Hamas and — in striving for the freedom and prosperity they have been denied by the honchos in Ramallah and Gaza City — emulate Israeli society.

If such a day ever comes, no more than five minutes will be required for the sides to agree on the technicalities — maybe 10, if the negotiators get stuck in traffic on the way to the table.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Cleaver Defends Zionism. Israel; Charges Arabs with Being Most Racist People January 22, 1976

By on February 14th, 2017

BOSTON (Jan. 21)http://www.jta.org/1976/01/22/archive/cleaver-defends-zionism-israel-charges-arabs-with-being-most-racist-people-says-moynihan-is-too-s

Eldridge Cleaver, the former Black Panther leader now in a California prison, has written an impassioned defense of Zionism against the UN General Assembly’s resolutions defining it as racist and declared that “having lived intimately for several years among the Arabs, I know them to be among the most racist people on earth.”

Cleaver’s article, written from his jail cell, was published in the Boston Herald-American. He said that many wealthy Arab families owned one or two Black slaves. “Sometimes they own an entire family. I have seen such slaves with my own eyes,” he wrote describing his experience in Algeria where he lived after fleeing the United States.

He bitterly condemned the most anti-Semitic, anti-Israel African leader, President Idi Amin of Uganda, as one of the “hired killers” and “the hatchet man of Uganda.” He also declared that the “so-called hard line” taken by the U.S. Ambassador to the UN Daniel P. Moynihan against Amin “seems too soft to me.”
UN RESOLUTION WAS A SHOCK

Cleaver wrote that two aspects of the UN’s anti-Zionist resolution shocked and surprised him. “Shocked because, of all the people in the world, the Jews have not only suffered particularly from racist persecution, they have done more than any other people to expose and condemn racism. Generations of Jewish social scientists and scholars have labored long and hard in every field of knowledge, from anthropology to psychology, to lay bare and refute all claims of racial inferiority and superiority. To condemn the Jewish survival doctrine of Zionism as racism is a travesty upon the truth.

“Secondly. “Cleaver wrote. “I am surprised that the Arabs would choose to establish a precedent condemning racism because it can so easily and righteously be turned against them. Having lived intimately for several years among the Arabs, I know them to be among the most racist people on earth. No one knows this better than the Black Africans living along the edges of the Sahara.”

Cleaver said that he had “the deepest sympathy for the Palestinian people in their search for justice, but I see no net gain for freedom and human dignity in the world if power blocs, because of their ability to underwrite sagging economies for a season, are able to ram through the UN resolutions repugnant to human reason and historical fact.”

The writer charged that “The combination of Communist dictatorships, theocratic Arab dictatorships, and economically dependent Black African dictatorships are basically united in their opposition to the democratic forces inside their own borders. It is not a combination deserving of respect by people from countries enjoying democratic liberties and traditions of freedom.”

Cleaves suggested that “the time has come to re-examine the credentials of all the members of the General Assembly. Why should all these little so-called countries with miniscule populations have a vote equal in weight to that of the United States? When such votes are cast in the reckless manner of the anti-Zionist resolution, it is time to sit up and take notice.” Cleaver observed that “The General Assembly is no longer filled with Mahatma Gandhis pleading the case of the downtrodden, colonized masses. It is now a forum for crude, hired killers like Idi Amin Dada, the hatchet man of Uganda.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

TRANSLATED! VIKTOR ORBÁN’S STATE OF THE NATION SPEECH. “A NATION BELIEVING IN ITSELF AND THE NUMBER OF CHILDREN IT WANTS TO RAISE”

By on February 14th, 2017

By Vincent van den Born

The English translation of Hungarian president Viktor Orbán’s State of the Nation Address of 10 February has been published. For highlights of his speech, see below.

“A common mistake among humanity’s rich and powerful is to believe that they can act like God and be immune from the consequences. They declare supposedly incontrovertible facts; they push utopias onto other countries and peoples; they decide what others can or cannot say, and what they can or cannot believe in; they decide on membership of elite circles and they believe their global power is unquestionable.

Money, the media, global governance and an open global society – in 2016 people in many places around the world had had enough of all this. There was Brexit, the US presidential election, the ejection of the Italian government, the Hungarian migrant referendum – and perhaps there is still more to come. Oh people, ‘you are finally beginning to be great’; but of course using the poet Petőfi as a shield will not stop the sinking liberals saying that listening to the people is an act of pure populism – which, as we all know, is a ‘bad thing’, and is in fact ‘harmful’. In Europe properly house-trained politicians must not say things like that.”

“There has been an uprising by those who are not usually asked, whose voices are not usually heard:(…) whose mouths have been gagged in the name of political correctness; (…). They demanded the return of their homelands, of their economies and social opportunities. They demanded the return of the world in which they once felt at home: the wide and diverse world of nations.”

“And we too are members of the European Union: we cannot distance ourselves from this either, and the bell also tolls for us. This is not a game, and the stakes are real – in fact they are the highest imaginable. The people of the West feel that the history of their generation and future generations could indeed be at an end. (…) Can they continue the way of life they inherited from their parents, or will something change forever without their consent – and indeed against their will? Will they have the right to their own culture? Will they be able to protect Europe’s non-material, intellectual assets? (…) And will there be security without the threat of terrorism, and will life in big cities be free of fear? Regardless of the prosperity and affluence of today, within the European Union the future is now casting a shadow on the present. That shadow is a long, dark one. And this isn’t being pointed out by envious Eastern Europeans or ludicrous old Soviet propaganda. This is different: Western Europeans are saying all this about themselves, about their own situations and their own future.”

“The issue of migration will also remain on the agenda. Despite the fact that illegal immigration raises an insoluble problem and the threat of terrorism, and despite the bloody reality and the terrible events seen throughout Europe, migrants can still move freely around Europe until their claims have been finally ruled on in the courts. The question for 2017 will be whether we should detain them and keep them in detention until there are final verdicts on their applications. And in 2017 we will also need to take up the struggle against international organisations’ increasingly strong activists. In addition, in 2018 there will be elections in several countries – including here at home. It is a problem that foreign funding is being secretly used to influence Hungarian politics. (…) We are not talking about non-governmental organisations fighting to promote an important cause, but about paid activists from international organisations and their branch offices in Hungary. Are we going to do something to at least ensure transparency, and make these issues publicly known?”

“They say that it is generally impossible to show a correlation between demographic indices and changes in the standard of living. But I believe that there is indeed a correlation between a nation’s will to live, a people’s discovery of themselves and changes in demographic indices: between whether a nation is capable of believing in itself and in the future of its offspring, and the number of children it wants to raise. It is my firm belief that there is a correlation between what over the past seven years we have been striving to achieve and the fact that the nation wants to become younger; because what individuals cannot achieve – turn their old age into youth – is possible for the nation. A people that has begun to age can still become a youthful people: it is up to its members, and it is a question of will.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Former Obama Officials, Loyalists Waged Secret Campaign to Oust Flynn Sources: Former Obama officials, loyalists planted series of stories to discredit Flynn, bolster Iran deal BY: Adam Kredo

By on February 14th, 2017

The abrupt resignation Monday evening of White House national security adviser Michael Flynn is the culmination of a secret, months-long campaign by former Obama administration confidantes to handicap President Donald Trump’s national security apparatus and preserve the nuclear deal with Iran, according to multiple sources in and out of the White House who described to the Washington Free Beacon a behind-the-scenes effort by these officials to plant a series of damaging stories about Flynn in the national media.
The effort, said to include former Obama administration adviser Ben Rhodes—the architect of a separate White House effort to create what he described as a pro-Iran echo chamber—included a small task force of Obama loyalists who deluged media outlets with stories aimed at eroding Flynn’s credibility, multiple sources revealed.
The operation primarily focused on discrediting Flynn, an opponent of the Iran nuclear deal, in order to handicap the Trump administration’s efforts to disclose secret details of the nuclear deal with Iran that had been long hidden by the Obama administration.
Insiders familiar with the anti-Flynn campaign told the Free Beacon that these Obama loyalists plotted in the months before Trump’s inauguration to establish a set of roadblocks before Trump’s national security team, which includes several prominent opponents of diplomacy with Iran. The Free Beacon first reported on this effort in January.
Sources who spoke to the Free Beacon requested anonymity in order to speak freely about the situation and avoid interfering with the White House’s official narrative about Flynn, which centers on his failure to adequately inform the president about a series of phone calls with Russian officials.
Flynn took credit for his missteps regarding these phone calls in a brief statement released late Monday evening. Trump administration officials subsequently stated that Flynn’s efforts to mislead the president and vice president about his contacts with Russia could not be tolerated.
However, multiple sources closely involved in the situation pointed to a larger, more secretive campaign aimed at discrediting Flynn and undermining the Trump White House.
“It’s undeniable that the campaign to discredit Flynn was well underway before Inauguration Day, with a very troublesome and politicized series of leaks designed to undermine him,” said one veteran national security adviser with close ties to the White House team. “This pattern reminds me of the lead up to the Iran deal, and probably features the same cast of characters.”

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