After all, I already know the outlines and many of the details of the attempt to prevent and then overturn the 2016 election of Donald Trump by the preceding administration and its allies in government agencies. I already knew that it had been covered up and lied about by Democrats and the press with a tremendous brazenness. And I already knew that, if the transcripts were ever released, they were likely to exonerate Flynn rather than implicate him.

I even already knew that, if that were so, the Democrats and the MSM would continue to lie about the transcripts and spin and spin and spin. In this, they would be relying on several factors. The first is the monolithic nature of the message that the press would back up, in a solid phalanx. The second is the fact that most people not on the right would be inclined to either ignore the whole story as too complex and boring, and/or take the press’s word for it. After all, most people probably think it would be bizarre for newspeople to lie about something so easily refuted. And yet, the press does it all the time, relying on – among other things – the fact that most people are not news junkies and would rather be out there living their lives (COVID notwithstanding).

But still, despite its predictability, seeing it all played out has been remarkably infuriating as well as frustrating. Part of my outrage is at what it signifies for the future of the republic, due process, and the peaceful transition of power on which we in the US have relied till now, and perhaps to a certain degree taken for granted. And still another part of my outrage is less general and is about what happened to one particular person named General Flynn. He may, however, get some good news this Monday, when his nemesis Judge Sullivan will be answering to the higher court and attempting to explain his bizarre recent rulings in Flynn’s case. At this point, though, nothing would surprise me.

A few days ago Andrea Widburg wrote this at American Thinker, which expresses some thoughts I’ve had for a long time:

One of the problems with Obamagate is that it’s incredibly complicated. It began under the Obama administration and involved the alphabet agencies (the CIA, the FBI, and the DOJ), as well as President Obama, the national security adviser, the director of National Intelligence, the FISA court, and overseas intelligence agencies.

The wrongdoing included false affidavits; spying on innocent people, including the president-elect; unmasking; and set-ups, such as perjury traps and spies inveigling people into ambiguous statements that could be used against them. It then escalated to an attempt to overthrow the Trump presidency through a two-year-long investigation that destroyed several people’s lives, even though the special counsel’s office knew from Day One that neither Trump nor his team had done anything wrong.

What I stated above is just the super-simple, short version. Meanwhile, on the other side, for three years, all that the left had to do was holler “Russia! Russia! Russia! Collusion! Ukraine! Putin!,” and everyone fell in line.

The problem for the forces of justice is that it’s tough to get people excited about wrongdoing that they can’t understand. Watergate was simple: a bumbling break-in followed by a foul-mouthed president who tried to cover it up. With Obamagate, though, within a few minutes of reciting multiple dates, dozens of names, three different continents, myriad documents, endless lies and cover-ups…well, people’s eyes glaze over, and they start thinking, “This really does sound like some sort of crazy conspiracy theory. There are too many moving parts.”

Absolutely. And the Flynn/Kislyak transcripts are another part – a very important part – of this larger and complex picture.

At any rate, here’s a roundup of some things to read on the subject of the Flynn/Kislyak transcripts.

From Sean Davis at The Federalist:

The transcripts, which were declassified by former acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Ric Grenell and current DNI John Ratcliffe, were provided to Congress by Ratcliffe, who began working in the position earlier this week following full Senate confirmation of his nomination. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairmen of the Homeland Security and Finance committees, respectively, had repeatedly called for the transcripts to be declassified and provided to Congress…

According to the charging documents from Mueller, Flynn allegedly falsely claimed to Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) agents that he did not ask Kislyak to “refrain from escalating” in response to U.S. expulsion of Russian diplomats and falsely claimed that he did not ask Kislyak to help defeat an anti-Israel resolution pending before the United Nations at the time. Mueller also claimed that Flynn lied when he said he didn’t remember Kislyak telling him that Russia would “moderate its response” to the expulsions.

The transcript of the December 29 conversation, which was cited by Mueller, does not include a request from Flynn that Russia “refrain from escalating” in response to U.S. expulsions of Russian diplomats. According to the transcript, Flynn asked Kislyak for Russia’s response to be “reciprocal” so that the U.S.–not Russia–would not be forced to escalate beyond the expulsions. The transcript makes clear that Flynn fully expected Russia to respond to the situation by expelling U.S. diplomats in response to the Obama administration’s move to expel nearly three dozen Russian diplomats from the U.S., and that his primary concern was preventing a situation where the U.S. would have to escalate tensions in response to Russia…

Mueller’s operation also conflated discussions of financial sanctions levied against Russian entities and individuals via executive order on December 28, 2016 with the expulsion of Russian diplomats, which were two separate and distinct issues. In fact, the specific executive order cited by Mueller in his charging documents against Flynn pertained only to Treasury-enforced financial sanctions against nine Russian intelligence individuals and institutions, not to the separate expulsions of Russian diplomats, which were enforced by the U.S. State Department…

The transcripts show that while Kislyak obliquely raised the issue of financial sanctions against certain Russian intelligence officials, Flynn himself never discussed the financial sanctions against Russian individuals and entities levied by the Obama administration. Instead, Flynn focused on preventing U.S. “tit-for-tat” escalation following the Obama administration’s expulsion of Russian diplomats. Although Obama officials claimed via leaks to the press that Flynn, a decorated combat veteran and retired three-star Army general, was illegally operating as a secret Russian agent, the transcripts show that Flynn’s primary focus throughout his conversations with Kislyak was ensuring that Russia and the U.S. could work together to defeat Islamist terrorist and the growing influence of ISIS throughout the Middle East. Obama officials never explained how working with international partners to defeat ISIS constituted a federal crime.

Here’s a piece at Red State by Nick Aramas that has a good roundup of reactions on Twitter.

I offer a couple here:

The Flynn-Kislyak call transcripts exonerate Flynn and indict Mueller for deceitful sleight-of-hand meant to obscure the truth. There's a reason Mueller refused to turn the transcripts over to Flynn's defense team. https://t.co/1ztzqWUPUI

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) May 29, 2020

Thread –

Flynn transcripts – material omissions by team Muller (Van Grack):

Flynn's concern was that if Moscow sent home 60 Americans in response to US actions, it would "shut down the [US] embassy."

You won't find that in the Court filings.

HT @CBS_Herridge pic.twitter.com/nTPXLMIJ1H

— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) May 29, 2020

You can find more in a series of tweets by TechoFog here.

About those false statement charges –

Flynn (transcript): "I know you have to have some sort of action… Make it reciprocal."

Flynn recollection to agents (302): my response to Kislyak "wasn't 'Don't do anything.'" pic.twitter.com/87CLYrBBzK

— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) May 29, 2020

Watching Russia hoaxers move from “he’s a traitor and Russian agent whose life we must destroy” to “he didn’t blow up delicate foreign relations by obsessing on the January 2017 ICA in his December 2016 phone call” sure is fun. https://t.co/t7uTksHZXo

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) May 30, 2020

Any reporter who says the release of the Flynn transcripts shows anything other than actual damn good diplomacy…is flat out lying. The sinister way we were told this phone call went…is nothing of the sort. As a foreign polic guy…I’m pissed at how we were misled

— Adam Housley (@adamhousley) May 30, 2020

THREAD: I'm angry. Beyond angry. I beg every American who cares about the truth and this country to read the transcript–THE TRANSCRIPT–of @GenFlynn calls with the Russian ambassador. Some points follow, but let me start with this out-take. /1 pic.twitter.com/rPMnFYDb60

— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) May 29, 2020

Margot Cleveland – who has written a lot of good stuff about this entire mess over a long period of time at The Federalist – can beg all she wants. I would join her in that begging, except I have a strong belief that it will never happen. As I said earlier – too complicated, too much energy required, and people’s minds have mostly been made up. And the left counts on that.

However, there are going to be more revelations of the sort as time goes on. Maybe – maybe, although I don’t count on it – the sheer weight of the evidence will be convincing enough to enough people that it will matter.

The post The release of the Flynn/Kislyak transcripts appeared first on The New Neo.

No wonder they tried to just talk about it, but never release it. It seems to be quite innocuous.

This is just my preliminary reaction, based on what other people are reporting. I plan to take a closer look myself later tonight.

And I assume that the left, the MSM, the Democrats – all of them – will continue to describe this call as some sort of outrageous action on the part of Flynn.

Also:

There are zero things wrong with this Dec 29 call between Kislyak and @GenFlynn. And the tone of the conversation is clearly about expulsions, not the wider economic and political sanctions. That @Comey and the Obama admin wanted to Logan Act this is a disgrace pic.twitter.com/amBv6hgg1P

— Undercover Huber (@JohnWHuber) May 29, 2020

The post Breaking: Finally, the transcript of the Flynn/Kislyak call appeared first on The New Neo.

Flynn was “persuaded” to plead guilty not just because of the FBI’s prosecution threats to himself and his son for supposed FARA violations, but on their say-so about the other evidence supposedly against him: that he lied to the FBI when they questioned him about the content of the Kislyak call. And I don’t think Judge Sullivan ever saw it either, nor has either set of Flynn’s attorneys.

Well, seems like we all might get to see the transcript(s) after all these years. Grennell has just declassified them on his way out, and it will be up to Ratcliffe his successor to decide whether to release them or not.

Interestingly, one of the people wanting the transcripts to be released is Adam Schiff, who must feel they bolster his case or can be successfully spun to bolster his case. Susan Rice asked for it to be done as well. And Sidney Powell, Flynn’s attorney, feels it will tend to exonerate her client. And this article says the push to release the transcripts was “bipartisan.” More information on that can be found here.

Releasing the transcript and related documents could be like opening the box in which Schrodinger’s cat languishes, either dead or alive. However, I must say that things are seldom that clear, and the MSM can spin anything, or try.

It’s not completely clear to me, either, who has actually seen any of this information up till now. I suppose Rice has, since she was Obama’s National Security Advisor at the time of the December 29, 2016 call. But who else among these players, in particular the members of Congress, has seen the documents?

[NOTE: Here’s the reference in the title of this post.]

The post Release the Kraken – I mean the transcript of the Flynn/Kislyak phone call appeared first on The New Neo.

Do you note a bit of a pattern here? I sure do. And it’s certainly not limited to those three victims. In a larger sense, of course, we’re all the victims. Not just potential victims; actual victims, because Americans have been subject to a vast and dangerous disinformation campaign in which falsehood masquerades as truth in order to hide truth and gain power.

[NOTE: Beria was the head of the USSR’s KGB (at the time the NKVD) under Stalin. Beria famously said: “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.” He practiced what he preached.]

The post Obamagate: our very own army of little Berias appeared first on The New Neo.

Well, the mystery is solved, at least if you can believe what the usual sieves — those courageously anonymous “former U.S. officials” — have told their notetakers at the Washington Post. As I surmised in last weekend’s column, Michael Flynn was not “unmasked” in connection with his controversial phone call with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. He was never masked in the first place…

Though I was right that Flynn was never masked in connection with the Kislyak call on December 29, 2016, I was off the mark in hypothesizing that the conversation may be been intercepted by an intelligence agency other than the FBI — perhaps the CIA or a foreign intelligence service. Sadly, this owes to my giving the FBI the benefit of the doubt: Had Flynn been picked up on a FISA surveillance of which he was not the target (i.e., a surveillance of Kislyak), I reasoned that the FBI would have masked his identity under statutorily required “minimization instructions.” Indeed, we now know that Flynn’s identity was masked (and then unmasked) dozens of times before and after December 29, precisely because the government knew those minimization rules applied to him.

Alas, in this as in so much else throughout the Trump–Russia farce, the Bureau played fast and loose with the rules. When investigators are so inclined, it turns out the privacy vouchsafed by the minimization rules is illusory. FBI officials — if they thought about it at all — figured Flynn need not be masked because they did not see him as an innocent American incidentally caught up in foreign surveillance. They purported to suspect that he was a clandestine agent of Russia.

Of course, they had no proof of that. And they knew they had no proof. That’s why they never sought a FISA-court warrant targeting Flynn. Doing so would have required showing probable cause that he was an operative of Russia; and as to Flynn, they didn’t even have a fabulist “dossier” to rely on for such a smear.

It’s hard to read that without getting sick to your stomach.

And, as commenter “AesopFan” wrote earlier today about McCarthy himself: “I think he is finally over his former admiration of his beloved agency, but it’s been a long hard battle.” Yes, a mind is a difficult thing to change. But I think McCarthy actually changed his – substantially if not entirely – at least a year ago, maybe more. And he’s mostly been spot on in recent years with his columns about Russiagate/Spygate/Obamagate/Flynngate. In the above quote from McCarthy, you can feel (at least, I can feel) the drip of his contempt and disgust for what the FBI did to Flynn.

Please read the whole thing. But here’s one more excerpt:

Here’s a more plausible explanation of motive. The Obama administration was actively constructing the Trump–Russia collusion narrative. Obama officials saw Putin’s “no retaliation” pose as an opportunity to float the fiction that the Kremlin had cut a sinister deal with Trump to gut Obama’s sanctions as a reward for Russia’s hacking of Democrats during the campaign. Obama officials and the FBI hoped to conceal the Trump–Russia investigation from the incoming Trump administration for as long as possible, and to continue the investigation of Trump’s campaign — remember, by December 29, they had already gotten a FISA warrant based on the representation that Trump’s campaign had conspired with the Kremlin, and they were preparing to reaffirm that claim in order to get a second 90-day warrant (the second of what would eventually be four).

The Flynn–Kislyak call was intercepted because the FBI had FISA coverage on Kislyak, and both the Bureau and the Obama White House instantly recognized that hyping the call could advance all these objectives. Then, they really hit the jackpot: Even though Flynn had done nothing wrong, Trump officials amateurishly misled the public about the call — claiming that Obama’s sanctions were not discussed, rather than that the topic came up but Flynn made no concessions to Moscow. This, naturally, stoked a few “Flynn discussed the sanctions, then lied” news cycles. These amplified the frenzy over publication of the Steele dossier — choreographed by Obama-administration leaks about the Russia briefing our intelligence agencies gave Trump. Flynn’s days were numbered. By Valentine’s Day, he was cashiered as national-security advisor . . . no longer an obstacle to the Obama-driven strategy of continuing the Trump–Russia investigation after Trump took office.

The point of all this was politics, not national security.

I repeat: please read the whole thing.

ADDENDUM:

It’s interesting to go back in time and read McCarthy. Some of his columns – particularly those that expressed his faith in the integrity of someone like Comey, with whom he’d worked long ago – don’t age well. But I think the majority age extremely well. Case in point, this one from March 3, 2017, after Sessions’ recusal (which McCarthy criticized).

McCarthy had not been a Trump admirer. But this is what he wrote only a little over a month after Trump’s inauguration [emphasis added]:

…[R]est assured, this does not end with Jeff Sessions. No more than it ended with Mike Flynn [he’d recently been forced to resign]. No more than it would end if the media-Democrat complex were to obtain the much coveted scalp of Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Seb Gorka, or one of the other Beltway gate-crashers we’ve come to know over the last six improbable months. The objective is President Trump: preferably, his impeachment and removal; but second prize, his mortal political wounding by a thousand cuts just in time for 2018 and 2020, would surely do…

Democrats…have an iron-cast stomach and an unseemly zeal for upheaval. They’re ready to build. All they lack is a case. No problem: They have made one up, and they are confident not only that they will build it into a national crisis of confidence in the presidency but that the Republicans will help them.

And lo and behold, Republicans are helping them. Unwittingly perhaps, but helping all the same…

it’s not like the FBI and the Obama Justice Department didn’t try to make a case against Trump. In fact, they scorched the earth.

Besides the illegal leaks of classified information that have fueled the “Russia hacked the election” scam, this is the most outrageous and studiously unmentioned scandal of the election. While the commentariat was rending its garments over the mere prospect that Trump might have his political adversary, Hillary Clinton, investigated if he won the election, Obama was actually having Trump investigated. [emphasis in the original]

There’s a lot more in that McCarthy column from over three years ago. It’s long, but fascinating and impressive. He didn’t get all the details right, but he can hardly be faulted for that, given the information with which he had to work.

The post Andrew C. McCarthy: Flynn was framed as a Russian agent appeared first on The New Neo.

And that’s one of the things the Democrats are counting on. People will throw up their hands in despair, and be more likely to embrace (with relief) the MSM designation of “conspiracy theory,” and just move on to something else.

I’m not about to do that, of course. But I note the fatigue phenomenon.

Fortunately, we have several intrepid souls who have written lengthy pieces about the process that so far appears to be the worst domestic political abuse of power in modern American (perhaps in American) history, and we haven’t even learned all of it yet. I refer you to this article by Eli Lake in Commentary about the whole vile thing, and this by Lee Smith in Tablet, which deals with one particular aspect of its origins and motives.

The Eli Lake article in particular is long, the most complete statement of what happened to Flynn at the hands of the FBI and the Obama administration that I’ve read so far. You may need to do some deep breathing exercises every few minutes as you read it, because of mounting fury.

The post Russiagate/Spygate/Obamagate overview appeared first on The New Neo.

…wanted to be sure “every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities ‘by the book.’”

The “issue” was Russian interference in the 2016 election, the investigation of Michael Flynn, and what to tell the incoming Trump administration about all of this.

Now we have what purports to be the full and unredacted memo, and today Rice is reported to have added this:

#BREAKING: @AmbassadorRice’s team confirms to #FoxNews that she was directed by White House Counsel to write the Jan 20, 2017 memorandum documenting an Oval Office meeting in which President Obama & National Security officials discussed #MichaelFlynn.

— Gillian Turner (@GillianHTurner) May 20, 2020

As Ace says:

Everyone knows that note-to-self CYA emails you write at the direction of a lawyer, weeks after the event allegedly being memorialized, is the Gold Standard as regards candor and truthfulness.

Right?

Ace’s sarcasm is highly justified.

My opinion? Guilt or innocence isn’t judged by memos like this, which are the equivalent of someone saying “We did everything just right.” Look at the actions, not the self-serving words. This is true of everyone, right or left or in-between.

The actions of the Obama administration and various agency officials (Comey, etc.) in this matter are highly irregular and extremely suspect in too many ways to list here. Obama, as president, apparently had a fair amount of knowledge of it. Whether or not he directed the finer points, or whether he allowed the lower-downs to do their dirty deeds knowing he could trust them to hurt the Trump administration maximally – but wanted to protect himself from the sort of specific knowledge and involvement that might implicate him too heavily – is unknown. It probably will never be known, because it’s not as though Obama wrote a memo to himself saying “I told Comey to lie to Flynn and to leak to the press…”

And calling something a “conspiracy theory” is merely a description, although it’s a description that carries a lot of baggage. Many conspiracy theories are preposterous. Some are correct, because you know what? Conspiracies do exist.

There is plenty of evidence now that there was a conspiracy – and a mostly successful one, at least until now – to taint Trump falsely as “Putin’s puppet,” to hector and threaten and legally abuse some of his confederates and family in hopes that they will implicate him (falsely, if necessary), to leak classified information to the press in order to harm him, and to set the (false) grounds to impeach him and/or hamper his re-election.

What role Obama played is unclear and may always remain unclear. That is by design.

But I think the “book” Rice was talking about was actually written by Alinsky or perhaps Machiavelli. And it’s only by a series of accidents – in combination with the fact that the GOP is still in charge of the Senate and the AG position – that the plotters have been exposed.

[NOTE: The title of this post is a reference to this passage from “Hamlet.”]

The post Susan Rice and the memo: the lady doth protest too much, methinks appeared first on The New Neo.

Most people are not even aware of this, because the MSM doesn’t cover it for the most part, and when they do it’s to act as though such behavior is normal. It’s not even remotely normal, and in fact I’d wager nothing like it has ever happened before. Surveilling the incoming first family? Surveilling the new administration in the waning minutes of the old administration? It should shock and outrage everyone.

But even if it were to be made crystal clear that it was completely abnormal, the MSM will continue to pretend it’s either normal, or justified in this case because the Trumps are all in league with Russia.
That’s how lies work – they feed on each other to form a seamless whole that offers an excuse for every offense.

The next thing I’m going to mention might seem to be a side issue, but it’s not. Last night I had heard something about the Obama administration unmasking people on Inauguration Day, and also about unmasking the Trump family (not clear when that happened), but I didn’t know the details. So I tried to Google it today, in an effort to get more information. I did a search just now for “obama unmasked trump family inauguration day.” The first article listed was this one from Fox, a very general announcement from five days ago about the release of the basic unmasking information, and expressing a neutral attitude and the idea that only Republicans are interested in this (and I guess, in a way, that’s the case).

The second article in the Google search was this one from NBC entitled “Trump allies push ‘Obamagate,’ but record fails to back them up: Trump and his supporters have charged that Barack Obama and Joe Biden conspired against Michael Flynn, but there’s no hard evidence to support the claims.” Not exactly responsive to my query, to say the least. But apparently it’s the sort of thing Google wishes readers to see. In fact, the entire first two pages of Google’s listings in that search are the tales told by the left, and it isn’t till I got to the bottom of page 2 that I found the first pro-Trump source (this).

And none of the Googled articles were actually responsive to my query, whether they were anti-Trump (the vast majority) or pro.

The list makes clear that Google’s algorithm yields the stories the left wishes to push. Google will say, of course, that the algorithm is based on something entirely different than that goal. But it clearly works that way and there is no reason to imagine it is not intentional, as well as useful for the left. It also is much less specific than it used to be in pointing the reader to articles relevant to his/her search, whether they be from left or right.

In contrast, DuckDuckGo is spot on. Here’s the search I did there. You can see for yourself (although of course it will change over time) that the list is specific to my quest. I only have looked at the first 10 articles, but that’s enough. They are all about Trey Gowdy’s interview or about things connected with what was revealed, and highly relevant. There were plenty of sources on the right – of course, because the story is only being reported on the right, as far as I can tell.

That’s no surprise either. The coverage of this one little fact stands as a good example of the coverage as a whole. I talk a lot about the press here, and there’s a reason for that – and the search engine Google has become part of the press. In terms of numbers, the influence of the MSM and things like Google’s algorithm have an enormous effect on public perceptions.

The polls might say that people don’t trust the press, but it doesn’t matter. It’s like advertising – the propaganda influences people whether they are aware of it or not. And if they don’t hear about a story, if it can’t even be found on Google despite pointed effort, it’s like that tree falling in an uninhabited forest.

The post Inauguration Day, 2017: your public servants in the Obama administration continually working for you, down to the last possible minute appeared first on The New Neo.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed. I’m not saying that to get sympathy, it’s just a statement of fact. It takes many hours to even follow the news each day, much less write about it and write about it clearly. The entire story so far is both horrifying and fascinating. So learning about it engenders several competing emotions at once: extreme interest and strong repulsion and outrage, a sort of approach-avoidance dilemma at reading about it at all.

Amidst the turmoil, I especially admire those who can write about it in a way that’s easy to understand, compact, and yet relatively comprehensive, knowing that it would take a several-volume book to cover it all. And it’s even better if that person is not just parroting the party line he or she wishes were true.

One of those rare people is Jonathan Turley – not a Trump fan, not a conservative, but someone who seems to be more than willing to face the truth. This piece by Turley points out how rare a trait that is. I suggest you read the whole thing, but here are a few excerpts:

For three years, many in the media have expressed horror at the notion of the Trump campaign colluding with Russia to influence the 2016 election. We know there was never credible evidence of such collusion. In recently released transcripts, a long list of Obama administration officials admitted they never saw any evidence of such Russian collusion. That included the testimony of Evelyn Farkas, a former White House adviser who was widely quoted by the media with her public plea for Congress to gather all of the evidence that she learned of as part of the Obama administration.

The media covered her concern that this evidence would be lost “if they found out how we knew what we knew” about Trump campaign officials “dealing with Russians.” Yet in her classified testimony under oath, she said she did not know anything. Farkas is now running for Congress in New York and highlighting her role in raising “alarm” over collusion. As much of the media blindly pushed this story, a worrying story unfolded over the use of federal power to investigate political opponents.

There is very little question that the response by the media to such a story would have been overwhelming if George Bush and his administration had targeted the Obama campaign figures with secret surveillance. That story would have been encompassing if it was learned that there was no direct evidence to justify the investigation and that the underlying allegation of Russian collusion was ultimately found to lack a credible basis.

But the motives of Obama administration officials are apparently not to be questioned. Indeed, back when candidate Donald Trump said the Obama administration placed his campaign officials under surveillance, the media universally mocked him. That statement was later proven to be true. The Obama administration used the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court to conduct surveillance of Trump campaign officials.

Yet none of this matters as the media remains fully invested in the original false allegations of collusion. If Obama administration officials were to be questioned now, the coverage and judgment of the media may be placed into question, as even this latest disclosure from the investigation of the unmasking request of Biden will not alter the media narrative.

Actually, nothing will alter the media narrative.

The post Jonathan Turley: on the MSM ignoring/hiding Obamagate appeared first on The New Neo.

That satchel that Acting DNI Ric Grenell personally delivered to the Department of Justice on May 7, 2020 was far too big for just a list of the 39 Obama administration officials, including his chief of staff and ambassador to Italy. Those higher ups have been exposed as requesting the unmasking of General Flynn. But there must have been a lot more inside, and that material was voluminous to require a briefcase-sized container, and that is the key to exposing the real extent of the spy operation that President Obama carried out on his political enemies, and the unmasking of General Michael Fynn is just the tip of the iceberg.

That is the basic message of this long and fascinating post by retired naval officer J.E. Dyer at Liberty Unyielding. I urge those who take a keen interest in the subject to read the whole thing, for it is full of technical points and complexities…

The key message is that for years the Obama administration was mining the incomparable database of the National Security Agency (NSA), which captured virtually all electronic communications – emails, text messages, everything – launched into the ether. The potential for abuse is breathtaking. Everything that political enemies said to each other, except in private in-person conversations or in snail mail letters, could have been spied upon. And now it looks like staggering numbers of intercepts were monitored…

The principals who directed the spying never on their own logged requests for unmasking, at least until the very end of the Obama administration, when 39 names urgently needed access to the means to discredit and get rid of Flynn, who alone among the incoming Trump crew, had the knowledge of the intelligence community to blow up the conspiracy and reform the gargantuan spy apparatus. They were protecting the much larger spy operation that lasted for years under Obama.

I don’t know whether the above is true, but I suspect and fear it is. I think it’s possible we may find out some day. If so, I hope that happens soon, because it’s very important to know.

I have no doubt, though, that with the advances in eavesdropping and information-gathering in the last twenty years or so, these things can be done. And as often happens, if it can be done it will be done by unscrupulous people. Power is enticing and seductive, and it takes people of integrity to resist. Those who go into politics probably cannot resist that temptation unless they have strong principles against it, which is not common (especially on the left, where the ends justify the means), and they probably have no trouble at all enlisting confederates with access to the material who are ready and willing to hand it off.

I believe that this recent article by Andrew C. McCarthy, not a man ordinarily given to large conspiracy theories, may tie into the same phenomenon:

…[T]here remains a gaping hole in the story: Where is the record showing who unmasked Flynn in connection with his fateful conversation with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak?

There isn’t one…

I suspect that’s because General Flynn’s identity was not “masked” in the first place. Instead, his December 29 call with Kislyak was likely intercepted under an intelligence program not subject to the masking rules, probably by the CIA or a friendly foreign spy service acting in a nod-and-wink arrangement with our intelligence community.

“Unmasking” is a term of art for revealing in classified reports the names of Americans who have been “incidentally” monitored by our intelligence agencies.

Curiouser and curiouser.

In this next paragraph, McCarthy explains much the same things that Francey Hakes discussed in the Tucker Carlson video I included in an earlier post today:

If, upon reviewing intel reports, an official with national-security or foreign-relations responsibilities believes that the reporting is critical, and that the identity of the U.S. person must be known in order for our government to reap the full benefit of the intelligence, then that official may request unmasking. Decisions on such requests are made by specialists assigned to the agency that reported the intelligence in question — usually the FBI or the NSA for intelligence collected, respectively, inside or outside the United States. Our intelligence agencies, led by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), keep records of these requests.

That’s more or less what Hakes was saying.

McCarthy continues:

For three years, we’ve been led to believe that Flynn’s December 29 conversation with Kislyak was intercepted because the latter was “routinely” monitored…

I no longer buy this story. If it were true, there would be a record of Flynn’s unmasking. DNI Grenell has represented that the list he provided to Senators Grassley and Johnson includes all requested unmaskings of Flynn from November 8, 2016 (when Donald Trump was elected president) through the end of January 2017 (when the Trump administration had transitioned into power). Yet, it appears that not a single listed unmasking pertains to the December 29 Kislyak call…

…[W]e know that participants in that [January 5] meeting already knew about Flynn’s identity as Kislyak’s interlocutor. The exhibits attached to the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the Flynn case relate that Comey’s deputy, Andrew McCabe, knew about it no later than January 3, the day he briefed Mary McCord, who ran the Justice Department’s National Security Division. Plus, Yates recalled being surprised that Obama already knew about the Flynn–Kislyak call (and, in fact, is the one who told Yates about it). Clearly, the news had been percolating at the highest levels of the Obama administration for at least a couple of days…

McCarthy points out another interesting fact, which is that subsequently on May 8, 2017, when Lindsay Graham was questioning Clapper and Yates in the Senate, Strzok wrote to Lisa Page:

F*CK! Clapper and Yates through Graham questions are all playing into the “there should be an unmasking request/record” for incidental collection incorrect narrative.

Now, why would “incidental collection” be an incorrect narrative? McCarthy’s explanation is long and I’m only going to excerpt a little of it, but I suggest you read the whole thing. What it amounts to, though, is that the surveillance of Trump and people connected with him was massive, and began long before the waning days of the Obama administration, and was not the least bit inadvertent or incidental:

I believe there were several strands of the Trump–Russia probe, and that they trace back to 2015, around the time of Donald Trump’s entry into the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

The CIA played a central role. The agency collaborated — I’m tempted to say colluded! — with a variety of friendly foreign intelligence services, especially NATO countries that Trump made a habit of bashing on the campaign trail…

This is not just about unmasking. It is about how pervasively the Obama administration was monitoring the Trump campaign.

I believe McCarthy may be referring to the same sort of thing to which J. E. Dyer is referring. Just now, looking at some of the comments to the McCarthy article, I see this one, which expresses my own reaction pretty well:

This stuff makes my head swim…there is no flipping way that this was done because they were concerned for “what was best for the country”. At least not the country you and I are talking about. This was all about self interest, power, control, hate and hubris.

That’s also what Victor Davis Hanson is talking about here, I believe:

[ADDENDUM: Much more here.]

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