I knew there was more to the story than was being reported. Wouldn't surprise me if this was initiated by BamBam himself.


Former Obama Officials, Loyalists Waged Secret Campaign to Oust Flynn

Sources: Former Obama officials, loyalists planted series of stories to discredit Flynn, bolster Iran deal

2/14/17

The abrupt resignation Monday evening of White House national security adviser Michael Flynn is the culmination of a secret, months-long campaign by former Obama administration confidantes to handicap President Donald Trump's national security apparatus and preserve the nuclear deal with Iran, according to multiple sources in and out of the White House who described to the Washington Free Beacon a behind-the-scenes effort by these officials to plant a series of damaging stories about Flynn in the national media.

The effort, said to include former Obama administration adviser Ben Rhodes—the architect of a separate White House effort to create what he described as a pro-Iran echo chamber—included a small task force of Obama loyalists who deluged media outlets with stories aimed at eroding Flynn's credibility, multiple sources revealed.

The operation primarily focused on discrediting Flynn, an opponent of the Iran nuclear deal, in order to handicap the Trump administration's efforts to disclose secret details of the nuclear deal with Iran that had been long hidden by the Obama administration.

Insiders familiar with the anti-Flynn campaign told the Free Beacon that these Obama loyalists plotted in the months before Trump's inauguration to establish a set of roadblocks before Trump's national security team, which includes several prominent opponents of diplomacy with Iran. The Free Beacon first reported on this effort in January.

Sources who spoke to the Free Beacon requested anonymity in order to speak freely about the situation and avoid interfering with the White House's official narrative about Flynn, which centers on his failure to adequately inform the president about a series of phone calls with Russian officials.

Flynn took credit for his missteps regarding these phone calls in a brief statement released late Monday evening. Trump administration officials subsequently stated that Flynn's efforts to mislead the president and vice president about his contacts with Russia could not be tolerated.

However, multiple sources closely involved in the situation pointed to a larger, more secretive campaign aimed at discrediting Flynn and undermining the Trump White House.

"It's undeniable that the campaign to discredit Flynn was well underway before Inauguration Day, with a very troublesome and politicized series of leaks designed to undermine him," said one veteran national security adviser with close ties to the White House team. "This pattern reminds me of the lead up to the Iran deal, and probably features the same cast of characters."

The Free Beacon first reported in January that, until its final days in office, the Obama administration hosted several pro-Iran voices who were critical in helping to mislead the American public about the terms of the nuclear agreement. This included a former Iranian government official and the head of the National Iranian American Council, or NIAC, which has been accused of serving as Iran's mouthpiece in Washington, D.C.

Since then, top members of the Obama administration's national security team have launched a communications infrastructure after they left the White House, and have told reporters they are using that infrastructure to undermine Trump's foreign policy.

"It's actually Ben Rhodes, NIAC, and the Iranian mullahs who are celebrating today," said one veteran foreign policy insider who is close to Flynn and the White House. "They know that the number one target is Iran … [and] they all knew their little sacred agreement with Iran was going to go off the books. So they got rid of Flynn before any of the [secret] agreements even surfaced."

Flynn had been preparing to publicize many of the details about the nuclear deal that had been intentionally hidden by the Obama administration as part of its effort to garner support for the deal, these sources said.

Flynn is now "gone before anybody can see what happened" with these secret agreements, said the second insider close to Flynn and the White House.

Sources in and out of the White House are concerned that the campaign against Flynn will be extended to other prominent figures in the Trump administration.

One senior White House official told the Free Beacon that leaks targeting the former official were "not the result of a series of random events."

"The drumbeat of leaks of sensitive material related to General Flynn has been building since he was named to his position," said the official, who is a member of the White House's National Security Council. "Last night was not the result of a series of random events. The president has lost a valuable adviser and we need to make sure this sort of thing does not happen again."

Other sources expressed concern that public trust in the intelligence community would be eroded by the actions of employees with anti-Trump agendas.

"The larger issue that should trouble the American people is the far-reaching power of unknown, unelected apparatchiks in the Intelligence Community deciding for themselves both who serves in government and what is an acceptable policy they will allow the elected representatives of the people to pursue," said the national security adviser quoted above.

"Put aside the issue of Flynn himself; that nameless, faceless bureaucrats were able to take out a president's national security adviser based on a campaign of innuendo without evidence should worry every American," the source explained.

Eli Lake, a Bloomberg View columnist and veteran national security reporter well sourced in the White House, told the Free Beacon that Flynn earned a reputation in the Obama administration as one of its top detractors.

"Michael Flynn was one of the Obama administration's fiercest critics after he was forced out of the Defense Intelligence Agency," said Lake, who described "the political assassination of Michael Flynn" in his column published early Tuesday.

"[Flynn] was a withering critic of Obama's biggest foreign policy initiative, the Iran deal," Lake said. "He also publicly accused the administration of keeping classified documents found in the Osama bin Laden raid that showed Iran's close relationship with al Qaeda. He was a thorn in their side."

Lake noted in his column that he does not buy fully the White House's official spin on Flynn's resignation.

"For a White House that has such a casual and opportunistic relationship with the truth, it's strange that Flynn's ‘lie' to Pence would get him fired," Lake wrote. "It doesn't add up."

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer stated in his daily briefing that "the evolving and eroding level of trust as a result of this situation and a series of other questionable incidents is what led the president to ask General Flynn for his resignation."

A third source who serves as a congressional adviser and was involved in the 2015 fight over the Iran deal told the Free Beacon that the Obama administration feared that Flynn would expose the secret agreements with Iran.

"The Obama administration knew that Flynn was going to release the secret documents around the Iran deal, which would blow up their myth that it was a good deal that rolled back Iran," the source said. "So in December the Obama NSC started going to work with their favorite reporters, selectively leaking damaging and incomplete information about Flynn."

"After Trump was inaugurated some of those people stayed in and some began working from the outside, and they cooperated to keep undermining Trump," the source said, detailing a series of leaks from within the White House in the past weeks targeting Flynn. "Last night's resignation was their first major win, but unless the Trump people get serious about cleaning house, it won't be the last."

 

And the story referred to in the story above:


Obama Allies Working to Undermine Trump’s National Security Team


Behind-the-scenes move to hamstring Trump national security apparatus

1/21/17

Democrats loyal to former President Barack Obama are waging a behind-the-scenes effort to undermine President Donald Trump's national security team by blocking key appointees, according to multiple sources familiar with the outgoing administration's efforts.

The centerpiece of this obstruction is the recent refusal by Senate Democrats to quickly confirm incoming CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

Democratic leaders—including Sens. Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), Ron Wyden (Ore.), and Patrick Leahy (Vt.)—postponed Pompeo's confirmation, claiming they need more time to debate the pick, which is widely supported by a majority of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

The decision to stall Pompeo's vote, a move that will leave the critical post of CIA director vacant as Trump takes office, is part of a wider effort by the outgoing administration and its allies to hamstring Trump on the national security front, according to multiple sources, including those close to the Trump administration.

Gen. Michael Hayden, a former CIA director who served under former Presidents George W. Bush and Obama, told the Washington Free Beacon that he is "puzzled by the objections recently raised" by Senate Democrats.

"It's hell being the political football," Hayden said Saturday afternoon, ahead of a visit by both Trump and Pompeo to the CIA headquarters in Langley, Va.

Democrats cited Hayden's role under Bush and Obama as a precedent for Pompeo's holdup.

"Just as Director Hayden served as a bridge between the Bush and Obama presidencies eight years ago, Director [John] Brennan could play the same role for the incoming and outgoing administrations, if the President is willing to keep him on," Matt House, a Schumer spokesman, said in a recent press statement.

Democrats opposing Pompeo have expressed concerns about his desire to combat terrorism by boosting the collection of personal data in the United States. They also have raised concerns about Pompeo's stance on enhanced interrogation techniques.

Hayden dismissed these concerns, saying Democratic talking points on the matter are unconvincing.

"With regard to interrogations and surveillance, Congressman Pompeo said that he would follow the law. If his intelligence professionals advised him that current law denied him intelligence opportunities that would be otherwise available, he would so advise the Congress so that they could discuss and debate whether changes in the law might be indicated," Hayden said. "That is the essence of a professional carrying out his duty within the American political context."

There is nothing abnormal about Pompeo's desire to potentially strengthen the interrogation techniques available to the U.S. military, Hayden said.

"No one could reasonably argue that the current army field manual exhausts all legally available interrogation techniques," he explained. "If director Pompeo and his professionals judged that America was measurably less safe because of the current limitations, their duty would be to inform the president and the Congress of that judgment. They of course would live with the decision of their political and policy masters. What could possibly be controversial about that?"

The campaign to delay Pompeo's confirmation appears to be just one piece of a larger effort aimed at undermining Trump's national security team, multiple sources told the Free Beacon.

There is evidence Obama's outgoing administration took steps to complicate and delay the building of Trump's new team, according to one veteran foreign policy insider who has been in close contact with Trumps' national security transition team.

"Something strange is going on," the source, who is not authorized to speak on the record, said. "The Trump folks keep loading up accounts and looking at specific jobs, and they're not finding anything like what should be there. It's like the Obama national security team went out of their way to cripple the transition on the way out."

A senior congressional aide familiar with the efforts to hold up Pompeo's confirmation vote told the Free Beacon that Democrats are playing politics with America's national security.

"This is nothing more than an exercise in partisan showmanship," the source said. "Senate Democrats know Pompeo is wholly qualified for this job and that he'll eventually be confirmed."

"Playing politics with this confirmation only jeopardizes our national security at a time when the United States faces a multitude of security challenges," added the congressional source, who asked not to be named so he could speak freely. "They should drop this charade and confirm him."

 

No citations, no links? Let me guess Daily Mail or New York Post.

 

Alternate truth, alternate reality, alternate dimension? NO. Just Fake News!

 

Ahh the Washington Free Beacon. The same shit rag that published that Hillary attacked a rape victim on the stand which NEVER happened.
BUT BUT BUT THEY MUST BE RIGHT CAUSE THEY SUPPORT TRUMP!!!!!!

 

Gezz, and all over the nation of Liberal Fucktardia, libtards screamed "treason" for Trump accepting a phone call from the President of Taiwan before he was even inaugurated. But they'll just pass this off as just more racism against their messiah.

 

Since I do not see even 1 claim of racism I'll call you to task for that comment. Where is the comment that even equates this action to racism or even Obama besides your posts?

 

Cool story, bro.

 

I for one have never mentioned racism.

 

The Political Assassination of Michael Flynn

2/14/17

It's very rare that reporters are ever told about government-monitored communications of U.S. citizens, let alone senior U.S. officials. The last story like this to hit Washington was in 2009 when Jeff Stein, then of CQ, reported on intercepted phone calls between a senior Aipac lobbyist and Jane Harman, who at the time was a Democratic member of Congress.

Normally intercepts of U.S. officials and citizens are some of the most tightly held government secrets. This is for good reason. Selectively disclosing details of private conversations monitored by the FBI or NSA gives the permanent state the power to destroy reputations from the cloak of anonymity. This is what police states do.

In the past it was considered scandalous for senior U.S. officials to even request the identities of U.S. officials incidentally monitored by the government (normally they are redacted from intelligence reports). John Bolton's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was derailed in 2006 after the NSA confirmed he had made 10 such requests when he was Undersecretary of State for Arms Control in George W. Bush's first term. The fact that the intercepts of Flynn's conversations with Kislyak appear to have been widely distributed inside the government is a red flag.

Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told me Monday that he saw the leaks about Flynn's conversations with Kislyak as part of a pattern. "There does appear to be a well orchestrated effort to attack Flynn and others in the administration," he said. "From the leaking of phone calls between the president and foreign leaders to what appears to be high-level FISA Court information, to the leaking of American citizens being denied security clearances, it looks like a pattern."

Nunes said he was going to bring this up with the FBI, and ask the agency to investigate the leak and find out whether Flynn himself is a target of a law enforcement investigation. The Washington Post reported last month that Flynn was not the target of an FBI probe.

The background here is important. Three people once affiliated with Trump's presidential campaign -- Carter Page, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone -- are being investigated by the FBI and the intelligence community for their contacts with the Russian government. This is part of a wider inquiry into Russia's role in hacking and distributing emails of leading Democrats before the election.

Flynn himself traveled in 2015 to Russia to attend a conference put on by the country's propaganda network, RT. He has acknowledged he was paid through his speaker's bureau for his appearance. That doesn't look good, but it's also not illegal in and of itself. All of this is to say there are many unanswered questions about Trump's and his administration's ties to Russia.

But that's all these allegations are at this point: 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.

Flynn was a fat target for the national security state. He has cultivated a reputation as a reformer and a fierce critic of the intelligence community leaders he once served with when he was the director the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Barack Obama. Flynn was working to reform the intelligence-industrial complex, something that threatened the bureaucratic prerogatives of his rivals.

He was also a fat target for Democrats. Remember Flynn's breakout national moment last summer was when he joined the crowd at the Republican National Convention from the dais calling for Hillary Clinton to be jailed.

In normal times, the idea that U.S. officials entrusted with our most sensitive secrets would selectively disclose them to undermine the White House would alarm those worried about creeping authoritarianism. Imagine if intercepts of a call between Obama's incoming national security adviser and Iran's foreign minister leaked to the press before the nuclear negotiations began? The howls of indignation would be deafening.

In the end, it was Trump's decision to cut Flynn loose. In doing this he caved in to his political and bureaucratic opposition. Nunes told me Monday night that this will not end well. "First it's Flynn, next it will be Kellyanne Conway, then it will be Steve Bannon, then it will be Reince Priebus," he said. Put another way, Flynn is only the appetizer. Trump is the entree.

 

Damn, M4M, will you ever learn - it's easy to fact-check with the interweb.

 

Was Mike Flynn the first victim of a bureaucratic coup by the deep state?

2/14/17

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement reacting to the resignation of former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn:

“It is absurd that in today’s world, Gen. Flynn having an honest conversation with one of his foreign counterparts in preparation of the incoming administration in December was ever a firestorm in the first place. What is particularly disturbing and unacceptable is that the Obama administration engaged in surveillance of Flynn, who did nothing wrong or illegal by having the conversation, and then had it leaked to the press on Jan. 13, a week before President Trump took office, all with the purpose of actively undermining Trump and his proposed policies. And then after Trump was sworn in, the deep state bureaucratic establishment, our permanent government, decided it was necessary to leak the contents of the conversation to inflict more damage.

“These are police state tactics. Flynn, being an honorable man of unimpeachable character, took the political fall. But this must not stand.

“Every single person responsible for illegally surveilling the Trump campaign and then the transition and now the administration if it’s still going on should be prosecuted and/or fired. Every single person responsible for illegally leaking said surveillance to the press should be prosecuted and/or fired. This witch hunt turned bureaucratic coup that cost Flynn his job cannot be allowed to stand, because it is only the latest instance of apparent sabotage by career government employees. They will not stop.

“This should be immediate cause for Congress to address real civil service reform that will give the president discretion to remove government employees in every department and agency that actively undermine an administration. No career employees in the executive branch are entitled to their jobs, and it is time they learned that it is the president who makes policy, not them.”

 

More useless horseshit form loyalists that find that Trump cannot be the reason and that it must be all else.

 

Reps. Nancy Pelosi, Elijah Cummings fall for fake Flynn account on Twitter

2/14/17


House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif., joined at right by Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., ranking
member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, speaks during a news conference on
Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2017, calling for an investigation into
President Donald Trump's relationship with Russia, (Photo: J. Scott Applewhite, AP)

Don't believe everything you see on Twitter.

Reps. Elijah Cummings and Nancy Pelosi fell for a Twitter account parodying Michael Flynn, who resigned Monday as President Trump's national security adviser for misleading the administration about his contacts with Russia.

"I believe we need to hold a public hearing with Flynn to get to the bottom of this," Cummings said during a news conference on Capitol Hill, citing the parody tweet.

Pelosi said, "The inference to be drawn from his statement is that other people had blame that should be shared in all of this."

The tweets came from an unverified account that launched this month. It has since been labeled a parody account by multiple news outlets and Snopes.

While I accept full responsibility for my actions, I feel it is unfair that I have been made the sole scapegoat for what happened. (1/2)

— Michael Flynn (@redacted) February 14, 2017

But if a scapegoat is what's needed for this Administration to continue to take this great nation forward, I am proud to do my duty.

— Michael Flynn (@redacted) February 14, 2017
​

The New York Times also fell for the parody account, writing about it in its story Monday. It later removed the mention and issued a correction.

Here's Flynn's real, verified Twitter account. He appeared to have deleted his Twitter account, Business Insider reported.

Twitter didn't appreciate the misstep. Even the Flynn account pointed it out:

The failing nytimes, NancyPelosi & RepCummings issued statements based on 100% FAKE news. We expect more from our media & politicians!

— Michael Flynn (@redacted) February 14, 2017​

Others were quick to notice:

Nancy Pelosi spent two minutes blasting Mike Flynn for tweets that came from a fake account GenMikeFlynn. Priceless.#FlynnResignationpic.twitter.com/VtQxCRW1BY

— Tennessee (@redacted) February 14, 2017


LOL NancyPelosi quotes a FAKE tweet from a unverified account. Nancy stop saying FAKE, FAKE, FAKE when you have NO idea who really tweeted.

— PappyKorn (@redacted) February 14, 2017


NancyPelosi just referred to a fake twitter account in Flynn's name implying there's a broader conspiracy. Fake news cuts both ways.

— David Timm (@redacted) February 14, 2017​

 

Is the PetCock letting off more gas??

Thinskin

 

Hush....an alias

 

Trump Administration More Trusted Than The Media, Poll Finds

2/10/17

President Donald J. Trump's administration is more trusted among U.S. voters than the media, according to a new poll.

The poll, conducted by Emerson College, found that the administration is considered truthful by a slim majority, 49 percent, versus 48 percent of registered voters who said it was untruthful. By way of comparison, only 39 percent of registered voters view the media as truthful, with 53 percent saying the news media is dishonest.

Trump's teams have been at war with members of the traditional press since before he won on Election Day. At a December press conference, Trump, then president-elect, pointedly called one major outlet "fake news." And in his first address from the White House podium the day after the inauguration, press secretary Sean Spicer berated the press for what he deemed as false coverage of the event's crowd sizes. Steve Bannon, White House counselor and chief strategist, has reportedly referred to the media in Washington, D.C. as the "opposition party."

At the same time, the president is noted for his voracious media habits, and he and other administration officials have pointed out that they don't view the press as uniformly dishonest. Spicer has set up the ability for journalists outside the beltway to ask the White House a question by using Skype during the daily briefing, seen as a part of a larger series of moves to empower nontraditional players in the industry.

 

The rat-wingers must really be butthurt over Flynn, they're out in force, LOL...

 

Let's face it, M4M...Flynn needed to go, if for nothing other than his own incompetence.

You explain to me how a general officer who worked in intelligence DID NOT know that communications between Americans and Russia, especially representatives of the Russian government, are monitored by the National Security Agency? They may not get transcribed right away, but you can be damned sure they are flagged, reviewed, and when the information is in, it is passed on to the relevant agency, in this case the Department of Justice, AG's office, and FBI. If Flynn didn't understand that, he had no business being a National Security Advisor or holding any sort of clearance.