It looks like the dropped charges against General Michael Flynn were just the beginning!
Every day, more and more information comes out about just how corrupt the swamp truly is!
On Thursday, the House Intelligence Committee released over 50 pages of never-before-seen documents from its Russia investigation.
CNN confirms the release of newly declassified evidence:
The House Intelligence Committee on Thursday released thousands of pages of transcripts from more than 50 of its closed-door interviews from the panel's two-year Russia investigation in 2017 and 2018.
The transcripts posted online Thursday, along with some of the committee's correspondence, marked another endpoint to an investigation into Russian election interference that was marred by partisan infighting, setting the stage for an even bigger fight over the Ukraine impeachment inquiry, led by House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, a California Democrat.
[…]
Clapper, who was director of national intelligence in the Obama administration, told the committee in July 2017 that while there had been concerns about anecdotal evidence of meetings between Trump's team and Russian officials, he had seen no direct evidence the Trump campaign was plotting with the Russian government.
"I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election," Clapper said. "That's not to say that there weren't concerns about the evidence we were seeing, anecdotal evidence. … But I do not recall any instance where I had direct evidence of the content of these meetings. It's just the frequency and prevalence of them was of concern."
Clapper explained he had a "visceral reaction" to the number of meetings that members of the Trump campaign were having with Russians, including Flynn's contacts during the transition that prompted his initial guilty plea to the special counsel for lying to the FBI in 2017.
Did you catch that?
Clapper told the House Intelligence Committee that he had no direct evidence of these meetings.
Presumably, if he had no evidence, then he would not have had to brief Obama on the meetings.
After all… if there were no meetings or no evidence of meetings, then there would have been nothing to brief Obama on.
The Federalist confirms:
“Did you ever brief President Obama on the phone call, the Flynn-Kislyak phone calls?” Rooney asked.
“No,” Clapper replied.
However, James Comey himself testified that Clapper was the one who briefed Obama about the Flynn phone calls!
This is what led to the "pivotal Oval Office metting about the matter" between Obama, Susan Rice, Comey, and Sally Yates.
So which was it?
Did James Clapper NOT brief Obama like he claims?
Or did Clapper lie, as suggested by Comey? It was Comey who claimed Clapper briefed Obama on Flynn's phone calls!
Ummm.... so if there was no direct, empiracal evidence, then why did we spend 3 years and millions of dollars investigating "Russian collusion?"
The New York Post has a breakdown of the Obama meeting that could have spawned the "corrupt Michael Flynn probe:
Jan. 5: Yates, Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper briefed Obama on Russia-related matters in the Oval Office. Biden and Rice also attended. After the Obama briefing, the intelligence chiefs who would be leaving at the end of the term were dismissed and Yates and Comey, who would continue in the Trump administration, were asked to stay. Not only did Obama give his guidance about how to perpetuate the Russia-collusion-theory investigations, he also talked about Flynn’s conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, according to both Comey and Yates. Interestingly, Clapper, Comey and Yates all said that they did not brief Obama about these phone calls. Rice likely briefed Obama on the calls and would have had access to the intelligence. Comey mentions the Logan Act at this meeting.
If this is true, then that means that Clapper's comments to congress were misleading.
It raises the question: who briefed Obama on the alleged Flynn-Russia phone calls?
Clapper claims that it wasn't him.
But Comey's testimony made it clear that Clapper briefed Obama.
Both cannot be true!
The Federalist reports that Clapper has a history of lying to Congress.
Aside From Comey, Andrew McCabe wrote in his book that it was Clapper who briefed Obama on Flynn-Russia phone calls.
According to The Federalist:
In his book, McCabe told a similar story and pegged Clapper as the official who briefed Obama about the Flynn calls.
“The [Presidential Daily Briefing] staff decided to write an intelligence assessment as to why Putin made the choice he did,” McCabe wrote. “They issued a request to the intelligence community: Anyone who had information on the topic was invited to offer it for consideration.”
“In response to that request, the FBI queried our own holdings,” McCabe continued. “We came across information indicating that General Michael Flynn, the president-elect’s nominee for the post of national security adviser, had held several conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, in which the sanctions were discussed.”
“An analyst shared it with me; I shared it with Comey; Comey shared it with the director of national intelligence, James Clapper; and Clapper verbally briefed it to President Obama,” McCabe wrote.
The Presidential Daily Briefing, or PDB, is an intelligence project compiled by the office of the DNI that seeks to collate and summarize for the president the major threats facing the U.S. each day. The department that manages the PDB reports directly to the DNI.
Clapper has a history of lying to Congress. In 2013 when asked directly by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., whether the National Security Agency (NSA) collected information on Americans, Clapper lied and said no.
“James Clapper needs to stop making excuses for lying to the American people about mass surveillance,” Wyden said in 2019, after Clapper offered myriad excuses for why he was not truthful with Congress. “To be clear: I sent him the question in advance. I asked him to correct the record afterward. He chose to let the lie stand.”
On January 12, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reported that a “senior U.S. government official” told him about the Flynn-Kislyak calls. Ignatius then suggested that Flynn’s conversations might run afoul of an unconstitutional and never successfully prosecuted 1799 law that criminalizes certain private speech critical of U.S. foreign policy. Ignatius was the first journalist to publicly confirm the existence and substance of Flynn’s calls and to raise the idea that Flynn should be criminally investigated for them. Comey himself cited the Ignatius article as a reason why the FBI needed to interview Flynn.
Washington Post reporter Adam Entous revealed during an October 2017 conference at Georgetown University that he had received similar leaks from multiple government officials before Ignatius’ column was published.
Lying to Congress has consequences.
While these reports are not definitive proof that Clapper did indeed mislead Congress, they raise significant legitimate questions about his claims.
The dropped charges against General Michael Flynn were just the beginning.
More and more corruption will be uncovered and exposed.
Be sure to stay tuned for more developments on this story!
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