“We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections.” —John Adams (1797)

The Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss its case against LTG Michael Flynn (USA Ret.). He was set up by a small cabal of corrupt FBI agents on a perjury charge related to the 1799 Logan Act — under which nobody has ever been convicted. Flynn was Barack Obama’s former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (2012-2014). After 33 years of distinguished military service, Flynn joined President Donald Trump’s then-new administration as his national security advisor from 23 January to 13 February 2017 — until Obama’s deep-state operators took him out.

LTG Flynn was the first victim of what we now know was, arguably, a coup d'état to take down Trump. As I noted two years ago, DoJ’s operation “Crossfire Hurricane” to ensnare Trump by entrapping those connected to his campaign, and then his administration, devolved into a “Backfire Tornado.” As former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy noted this week, the conspiracy to entrap Flynn was key to keeping the corrupt Russia-collusion investigation moving forward. McCarthy notes, “If no way could be found to sideline Flynn, then Flynn was going to find out about Crossfire Hurricane.” On the charges being dropped, McCarthy also makes the case, “There was no basis to believe Flynn, a decorated former US combat commander, would ever be Moscow’s mole, much less that he had committed a crime.”

The key deep-state colluders in this coup attempt were under the direction of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, a brazen cabal of operatives at the highest levels of the most powerful government agencies. These operatives include former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former FBI Chief of Counterespionage Peter Strzok, FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, and former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. All of whom colluded with Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the current House Intelligence Committee chairman, in his repeated efforts to impeach President Trump.

Their fingerprints are all over the coup crime scene, starting with the Flynn setup. Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell has now declassified and released the list of Obama operatives who “unmasked” Michael Flynn, including Comey, Brennan, Obama’s then-chief of staff, Denis McDonough, and of course, Joe Biden, who previously declared, “I know nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn.”

For the record, requesting the identity of a U.S. citizen involved in a foreign intelligence investigation is a common practice. The National Security Agency fills thousands unmasking requests annually – and most are justified when coming from domestic agencies with investigative responsibilities. But there is nothing justifiable about requests from the highest ranking officials in the executive branch, who clearly and demonstrably had a political motive.

As former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy notes: “Under federal law…FISA collection are subject to so-called minimization procedures. These aim to safeguard the privacy of Americans who have been incidentally monitored. When raw intelligence is refined into intelligence reports (including transcripts of recorded conversations) that are disseminated to U.S. officials, the identities of these Americans do not appear. Rather, a designation such as ‘U.S. Person’ is substituted — the ‘mask,’ as it were. 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. This underscores that unmasking — because of its privacy implications, because foreign intelligence must never be a pretext for government spying on Americans — is a big deal that should be done only rarely and carefully.”

Adam Schiff, with the help of his Leftmedia propagandists, who spent every waking hour of Trump’s first two years in office advancing the fake collusion delusion, which was determined by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller to be totally fabricated. As it turns out, the collusion lie was funded by then-Trump presidential opponent Hillary Clinton (AKA Hilrya Rodhamovich Clintonov). (Schiff’s second coup attempt, the fake Ukraine-collusion impeachment charade, also failed.)

We now know that on 4 January 2017, two weeks before Trump’s inauguration, FBI investigators were going to close the Flynn case because there was no case. Within minutes of receiving that meme, Peter Strzok emailed the case agent: “Hey, if you haven’t closed [the Flynn case] don’t do so yet.” The agent replied: “What’s up?” Strzok answered, “7th floor involved.” The FBI’s top officials (James Comey and Andrew McCabe) are located on the 7th floor of FBI headquarters. That was the Flynn setup.

The next day, Comey went to the White House and met with Obama, Joe Biden, Susan Rice, and Sally Yates. He was instructed to go to New York and brief President-elect Trump about the Steele dossier – which they knew was fake. Comey did so on 6 January, telling Trump this could be used as blackmail. That was the Trump setup, which resulted in Robert Mueller’s appointment and Adam Schiff’s charade.

According to a timeline of the Flynn case, on 24 January, then-FBI Director Comey sent two FBI agents, including Peter Strzok, to “visit” Flynn at the White House and set him up for the perjury charge. Flynn was not informed that he was a target of an investigation, and Comey later admitted he estimated he could get around White House protocol to get Flynn.

Recommending dismissal of the Flynn charges, U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen, who had oversight in the Flynn case, said: “Through the course of my review of General Flynn’s case, I concluded the proper and just course was to dismiss the case. I briefed Attorney General Barr on my findings, advised him on these conclusions, and he agreed.”

Indeed, and AG Barr had strong words for this extraordinarily corrupt chapter of abuse by the Department of Justice: “I think what happened to [Flynn] was one of the greatest travesties in American history. Without any basis [the FBI] started this investigation of his campaign, and even more concerning, actually, is what happened after the campaign … to sabotage the presidency. … Efforts to use the law-enforcement process to change leaders or to disable administrations are incendiary in this country and destroy our republic. I hope [this move] sends the message that there is one standard of justice in this country. And that’s the way it will be. It doesn’t matter what political party you’re in. … We will follow the same standard for everybody.”

For the record, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who is presiding over Flynn’s case, could deny the DOJ’s motion even though motions like the DOJ’s are routinely accepted by the courts. He could still convict Flynn because he previously entered a guilty plea. Of course, WaPo argues that Sullivan should sentence Flynn. And Sullivan’s delay in releasing Flynn now looks more like a partisan political rally than serious deliberations by a jurist.

Noted George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley asserts that Sullivan current actions conflate his judicial responsibility: “Judge Sullivan would…effectively create a new case of his own making. At some point, the court risks the appearance of assuming both prosecutorial and judicial functions. A perjury charge leaves the appearance of a court imposing its own notion of justice through a dubious judicially-mandated criminal charge.”

Beyond that debate, there is always a lot of mainstream-media hyperbole about, well, everything, as pundits endeavor to keep their audiences engaged.

But AG Barr’s remarks are, if anything, understated. The Flynn case is a microcosm of the entire Russia-collusion setup, and it represents the most disgraceful episode of government abuse of power since J. Edgar Hoover was the FBI director. It reflects a far more dangerous chapter in American political history – a more egregious assault on our Constitution and Rule of Law – than any aspect of the Watergate break-in during Richard Nixon’s administration. Any civil libertarian of any political stripe with an ounce of integrity should be denouncing this government corruption from the mountain tops.

It is notable that the revelations about Flynn’s entrapment came amid increasing evidence from the recently-released House testimony that Democrat claims of Russian election interference in 2016 were also fabrications to entrap Trump. In his testimony before the House, we now know that Obama’s former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged: “I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting [or] conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.”

Predictably, Schiff led the Demos’ Flynn spin, protesting: “This dismissal does not exonerate him. But it does incriminate Bill Barr in the worst politicization of the Justice Department in its history. … By dropping the case against Flynn, the Justice Department lost 50 years worth of ground in maintaining its independence post-Watergate. Once again, Bill Barr is doing Trump’s dirty work. And once again, Barr has undermined the legitimacy of our justice system and the rule of law.”

So Schiff and his leftist Democrats are insisting this is an example of an attorney general who has politicized the Justice Department to do the bidding of the Republican Party. But in fact, this exoneration is the result of an attorney general who is trying to correct the injustice of a Justice Department that brazenly did the bidding of the Democrat Party.

And this is long from over. There will be more to come once U.S. Attorney John Durham concludes his investigation into the criminal deep-state coup.

Indeed, AG Barr offered this conclusion about the Durham investigation: “What happened to the president in the 2016 election and throughout the first two years of his administration was abhorrent. It was a grave injustice and it was unprecedented in American history. The law enforcement and intelligence apparatus of this country were involved in advancing a false and utterly baseless Russian collusion narrative against the president. The proper investigative and prosecutive standards of the Justice Department were abused in order to reach a particular result. We saw two different standards of justice emerge. One that applied to President Trump and his associates, and the other that applied to everybody else. We can’t allow this ever to happen again. The Durham investigation is trying to get the bottom of what happened. And it will determine whether there were any federal laws broken. And if there were, those who broke the laws will be held to account.”

For the record, Obama’s operatives hated Flynn because he told the truth about Obama’s 2012 campaign lie that al-Qa'ida was “on the run” — a lie that was central to Obama’s reelection campaign. In fact, al-Qa'ida was on the rise, as clearly evident in the Benghazi attack and the subsequent cover-up just before that election. Obama’s foreign-policy malfeasance resulted in the rise of the Islamic State. Flynn also exposed the danger of Obama’s “nuke deal” with Iran.

For that reason, he was high on their hit list.

President Trump responded to the dismissal, scorching the deep-state operatives who entrapped Flynn: “The Obama administration Justice Department was a disgrace and they got caught. They got caught. Very dishonest people. It’s treason. … What they’ve done is a disgrace and I hope a big price is going to be paid. A big price should be paid. There’s never been anything like this in the history of our country. … What the Obama administration did is unprecedented. It’s never happened. … They’re scum and I say it a lot, they’re scum; they’re human scum. This should never have happened in this country. … [Flynn] was a great warrior and he still is a great warrior. … What happened to him should never happen again.”

The fact is, Comey and Brennan should be indicted as co-conspirators based on clear evidence of their collusion, starting with the fake FISA warrants used to justify the Trump wiretaps in order to take down a U.S. president. The path to Comey and Brennan starts with Clinesmith, and then indictments of their primary FBI water boys McCabe and Strzok, and a few yet-to-be outed CIA co-conspirators. John Durham’s investigation may point the way if not actually pave that path.

Of course, indicting Comey and Brennan provides the path to Obama and Clinton. None of this happened without Obama’s knowledge and complicity and Clinton’s facilitation. It is past time for this co-conspiracy quartet to be asked questions under oath about what they knew about the Flynn setup and the Russia charade, and when they knew it. And Obama is looking for a rat hole to scurry down, because he knows his role in this scheme to dispose of Trump is becoming clearer by day.

Finally, a note about the shadow of corruption cast over the FBI…

Current FBI Director Christopher Wray issued a statement yesterday declaring that the FBI “remains firmly committed to addressing the failures under prior FBI leadership while maintaining the foundational principles of rigor, objectivity, accountability, and ownership in fulfilling the Bureau’s mission to protect the American people and defend the Constitution.” Clearly, there are serious question about how Wray could not have known about this conspiracy.

However, I should note that the vast majority of rank-and-file FBI line agents and investigators, who honorably abide by their oaths “to support and defend” our Constitution, should not be branded by the corruption of a few. That corruption has cast a long shadow on all of the 12,500 special agents and 2,950 intelligence analysts in the FBI. But the fact is, most men and women in the FBI live up to their agency’s motto: Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity. Indeed, most FBI agents, whose reputations and careers are being sullied by the actions of a few, are deeply offended both personally and professionally by that corruption.

Footnote: Notably, Andrew McCarthy does not believe Flynn was unmasked in relation to the leaked phone call: “I hypothesize, then, that Flynn was not unmasked in connection with the December 29 Kislyak call. Either the CIA monitored the call directly or a friendly foreign intelligence service — whether subtly tasked by U.S. intelligence or knowing that U.S. intelligence would be very interested — intercepted the call and passed it along, probably to the CIA.” McCarthy notes if that is true, the it is further indication of “how pervasively the Obama administration was monitoring the Trump campaign.”

P.S. While the Logan Act was used as an excuse to set Flynn up, a strong case could actually be made against traitor John Kerry for his clear violations of the Act when undermining the Trump administration’s official negotiations with Iran in order to salvage is disastrous Iran nuke deal.

(Updated)