How wrong was it for anonymous “Intelligence Community” folks to fink on poor Michael Flynn, who just wanted to chat with his good buddy Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak about, you know, stuff, without everyone and his sister in law making a big deal about it? Or leaking transcripts of those conversations to the Washington Post?
According to Damon Linker, “this isn’t the way a liberal democracy is supposed to function”. Eli Lake, in “The Political Assassination of Michael Flynn”, says there are a lot of allegations floating around about Flynn and other Trump folks (and, though Eli doesn’t say so, Trump himself) having dubious relations with Russia, but that these are, at this point, only “unanswered questions. It’s possible that Flynn has more ties to Russia that he had kept from the public and his colleagues. It’s also possible that a group of national security bureaucrats and former Obama officials are selectively leaking highly sensitive law enforcement information to undermine the elected government.”
John Schindler, in a column titled “The Spy Revolt Against Trump Begins” says, “yeah, but Flynn is an idiot” (my paraphrase): “Ambassador Kislyak surely knew his conversations with Flynn were being intercepted, and it’s incomprehensible that a career military intelligence officer who once headed a major intelligence agency didn’t realize the same. Whether Flynn is monumentally stupid or monumentally arrogant is the big question that hangs over this increasingly strange affair.”
And I, Alan Vanneman, can’t help wondering: Why didn’t FBI director James Comey send a letter to a couple dozen congressfolks spelling out all these embarrassing facts—which are facts—when he felt compelled to inform them that the FBI might have information that might be relevant to the recent investigation of Hillary Clinton that concluded that she was not guilty of any crime?
The Trump Administration’s links to Russia reek to high heaven. Republicans in Congress, who investigated Hillary Clinton every time she cleared her throat, have ignored this long enough. House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell allowed the most corrupt major party nominee in history win the presidency. And now they have their reward.
