The Patriot Post® · Obama's Flynn Unmaskers Unmasked
In a classic display of Shakespeare’s line about “the lady doth protest too much,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Wednesday decried “these ridiculous conspiracy theories on [Barack] Obama.” He complained that Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson “wants to go after Biden and this Hunter Biden conspiracy theory, which came from the Russians, of all people.” Schumer gasped, “This is amazing to me. What alternative universe do they live in? Spending their time on discredited conspiracy theories, against Obama, against Biden.”
Of course, far from being a “discredited” conspiracy theory, this is conspiracy fact — and Barack Obama’s fingerprints are all over it. Justice Department documents declassified and released by acting National Intelligence Director Richard Grenell show that there was a conspiracy by members of Obama’s DOJ to undermine incoming President Donald Trump. On Wednesday, Republican Senators Chuck Grassley (IA) and Ron Johnson (WI) released a declassified list of former Obama officials who had requested and received unmasked information related to Gen. Michael Flynn during the last few weeks of Obama’s presidency.
As The Wall Street Journal reports, “The National Security Agency received and approved requests on behalf of more than three dozen Obama administration officials, including then-Vice President Joe Biden, to ‘unmask’ a U.S. citizen mentioned in classified foreign intelligence reports during the presidential transition, revealing the identity of Michael Flynn.” Included among these three dozen Obama era officials are former CIA Director John Brennan, Obama Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough, and former UN Ambassador Samantha Power, who apparently lied in congressional testimony by claiming to not recall making a request for the unmasking of Flynn — records show she in fact made seven requests.
This revelation is significant because it may help determine who was involved in leaking Flynn’s conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak (classified information) to the press. It was this leaked information that was then used by members of the FBI in entrapping Flynn in the infamous White House meeting on January 24, 2017.
Meanwhile, yesterday brought more evidence that the intelligence community had concluded that the Russians actually favored a Hillary Clinton victory — information about which Brennan would have been fully aware. As Fox News’s Ed Henry notes, that new information in the released House transcripts suggests that John Brennan “had intel saying, actually, Russia wanted Hillary Clinton to win because she was a known quantity, she had been secretary of state, and Vladimir Putin’s team thought she was more malleable, while candidate Donald Trump was unpredictable.” Brennan concealed that information.
However, in an apparent effort to keep spinning as pure partisan fantasy any notion that members of Obama’s DOJ were involved in a massive political scandal to spy on and then undermine Trump’s presidency, Judge Emmet Sullivan took the highly unusual step of inviting outside briefs to weigh in on Flynn’s case, which the Justice Department dropped last week following revelations of malfeasance on the government’s part. Sullivan has demonstrated a clear disdain for Flynn typified by his declaring Flynn guilty of “outright treason” — a statement he later walked back. Rather than throwing out the case, he’s trying to create justification for proceeding and sentencing Flynn anyway. It’s as if Sullivan wants to force Trump to pardon Flynn in an effort to further the Leftmedia narrative of Trump acting corruptly to let off guilty loyalists. The Democrat-Leftmedia conspiracy against Trump is far from over.
Footnote: As Mark Alexander noted on the matter of unmasking: “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 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.”