After Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden was named as one of the Obama administration officials who asked for NSA information on General Michael Flynn, his campaign first targeted the messenger, then lashed out at the GOP.
The bombshell list of more than a dozen officials who asked the US spy agency for information about Flynn between the 2016 election of President Donald Trump and his inauguration included President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, as well as Biden. It was a troubling disclosure for the candidate who has just denied any knowledge of the Flynn investigation, in a TV interview on Tuesday.
The first reaction from Biden’s rapid response director Andrew Bates was to attack CBS reporter Catherine Herridge as “a partisan, rightwing hack who is a regular conduit for conservative media manipulation ploys.” He was called out for that tweet by a host of reporters, and even some Democrats, and deleted it within hours.
Bates then issued an official statement, declaring that Trump’s “attempt at dishonest media manipulation to distract” from the coronavirus pandemic had “backfired.”
The documents “simply indicate the breadth and depth of concern across the American government… over intelligence reports of Michael Flynn’s attempts to undermine ongoing American national security policy,” Bates added.
.@JoeBiden camp responds to “unmasking” list: “These documents simply indicate the breadth and depth of concern across the American govt…over intelligence reports of Michael Flynn’s attempts to undermine ongoing American national security policy” via @AndrewBatesNCpic.twitter.com/bNl9Fp5JH1
The real problem, Bates argued, was that Republican lawmakers “selectively leaked” them and “abused their congressional powers to act as arms of the Trump campaign.”
A number of Obama administration officials, now working as cable TV pundits and podcasters, argued along similar lines as soon as the documents dropped, declaring that they show no wrongdoing, that this was normal practice, and that the real issue is Trump’s collusion with Russia – the claim they have pushed for years, without any evidence.
The unconfirmed, acting DNI using his position to criminalize routine intelligence work to help re-elect the president and obscure Russian intervention in our democracy would normally be the scandal here…
Flynn was the very first casualty of ‘Russiagate’, having to resign from the White House after less than two weeks on the job after the Washington Post published a hit piece accusing him of improper discussions of Obama’s sanctions against Moscow with the Russian ambassador to the US. The source of that leak is still unknown, but the article was published on the same day Biden requested information on Flynn from the NSA, and a week after Obama’s chief of staff did so as well, following a White House meeting with Obama, Biden, and senior law enforcement and intelligence officials.
Trump’s alleged request of FBI Director Jim Comey to drop the Flynn investigation was later used by Comey to demand a special counsel probe into obstruction of justice – which resulted in the Mueller investigation. It was Mueller’s prosecutors who charged Flynn with lying to the FBI during the January 2017 interview Comey ordered.
According to evidence revealed just last week, however, the agents involved – including Peter Strzok of the infamous “insurance policy” text exchange – conspired to keep the investigation of Flynn open without any merit and doctored the interview memorandum to frame the retired Army general, prompting the Department of Justice to drop all charges in the case.
Between the manufactured pretext to go after Flynn and the prior revelation that four FISA warrants used to spy on the Trump campaign via adviser Carter Page had been entirely based on the discredited ‘Steele dossier’, the Trump administration has argued that they were unfairly targeted by its predecessor in what amounted to an illegal coup.
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