Wouldn’t you know. When the evidence finally came out showing Michael Flynn was set up by the FBI, it would be at a time when the news was “all coronavirus, all the time.” My, how conveeeenient this is for media “news” outlets who want to ignore it until it goes away.

But it won’t go away. And there will be more. What has come out so far is less than half of what we’re going to see later on in the week. I’m guessing we’ll have another Friday document dump, but it might come today.

We’ve been covering the latest news on Flynn for the past several days, so you can refer to those commentaries if you need a refresher on how the records came to be delivered to attorney Sidney Powell, who has been trying to get them for many months. This is exculpatory (“Brady”) material that is automatically supposed to be turned over to the defense. She finally got much of what she’s been asking for — she’s anticipating 11 more pages that are “damning” — in the form of texts, emails and handwritten notes.

The Note That Indicts the FBI

It’s one of the handwritten notes that has shown beyond doubt that Flynn was personally targeted, just to get rid of him.

The barely legible scrawl reads: “What’s our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute or get him fired?”

Let that sink in. “Get him to lie”? “…get him fired”? Since when does the FBI concern itself with getting someone fired?

As reported on Tucker Carlson’s Wednesday show, “two knowledgeable sources” have told Carlson that the chicken-scratch handwriting belongs to Bill Priestap, then the assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division. Multiple sources have told John Solomon the same thing. According to the notes, they were trying to get Flynn “…to admit to breaking the Logan Act.”

For reasons we’ve already discussed (and that also are detailed in Lee Smith’s highly recommended book The Plot Against the President,) Obama and his people wanted Flynn out. To them, it was bad enough that Trump was going to be President, which we know shocked the tar out of them. But, worse, Michael Flynn, the man who had wanted to pare down the intelligence bureaucracy, audit the Pentagon and — perhaps worst of all — discourage Obama’s precious Iran nuclear deal, was going to be in the White House with Trump, as his national security adviser. They were beside themselves. What to do?

They had been targeting him since 2014-2015, trying to make him look compromised with Russians. (All this is also in The Plot Against the President.) But Flynn had done nothing wrong for them to exploit. At this point, they needed, figuratively speaking, a “kill shot.” (As John Brennan put it.) It was going to take a major set-up, and Comey — on his own admission — ordered it.

Watch it yourself:

#DrainTheSwamp– @Comey: I sent them something I probably wouldn't have done and maybe gotten away with in a more organized investigation… if the FBI wanted to send agents into the White House itself to interview a senior official you would work through the White House counsel. pic.twitter.com/mrZcNMpVy4

— Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) December 15, 2018

The Framing of a War Hero

They used transcripts from phone conversations Flynn had had with the Russian ambassador, which were actually quite appropriate, even expected, given his new post of national security adviser. The idea of prosecuting him for violating the centuries-old Logan Act, which prohibits private citizens from negotiating foreign policy and has never even been successfully prosecuted, was ludicrous. It was just a pretense for the perjury trap, I mean interview.

Flynn knew perfectly well that phone calls with any foreign official would have been listened to — as memory serves, he even joked about that during the interview — so it would have been ridiculous for him to lie or even to be less than completely forthcoming. In answering a question about whether or not he and the Russian ambassador discussed sanctions, he said (I’m paraphrasing) he couldn’t remember exactly but that he didn’t think so. An innocent mistake, but that’s all they needed, whether they really thought he had lied or not. (And the agents didn’t think he lied.)

Flynn had no idea they were investigating him, as they had lied to him about the purpose of the visit. Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, at Director James Comey’s bidding, had called him and pseudo-casually said something like, “Hey, congrats on the new job; we’d just like to send a couple of guys over and clear up a few things about recent conversations with foreign leaders. No big deal. Nah, you won’t need a lawyer or anything like that…”

We’ve learned that McCabe’s top legal assistant Lisa Page emailed Peter Strzok on how to conduct the interview so they’d be technically covered on giving Flynn the “1001” warning against misleading investigators — without tipping him off that they were, well, investigating. They probably had a great laugh over fooling Flynn later, in bed, but we’ll leave that aspect of it alone.

The Washington Post got a big scoop out of this, as Flynn’s name was unmasked in the transcript of those phone calls — we need to know who requested the unmasking — and illegally leaked it to them. They media piled on, with MSNBC calling Flynn “literally a foreign agent.” On CNN, they said the assertion that Flynn was entrapped was “a made-up claim.” What are these worthless jackals  still doing on the air? Some of them got Pulitzer Prizes for their stories on what turned out to be a complete hoax.

A Pulitzer Prize going to this sort of garbage is like the Academy Award for Best Song going to “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.” Sort of devalues the whole idea.

“Not Playing Games”

Anyway, that note reportedly from Priestap includes a couple of bullet points: 1) “If we’re seen as playing games, WH [the White House] will be furious,” and 2) “Protect our institution by not playing games.” If Priestap did write this, maybe it means he was having second thoughts about what they were doing.

At the same time, somehow I’m reminded of that odd “note to self” Susan Rice texted to herself the day Obama left office. The one that said Obama had told them in their January 5 meeting to do everything “by the book.” For most of them — with the possible exception of Priestap; we’ll see — this wasn’t about “not playing games,” because they obviously were. It was about the appearance of not playing games.

Devin Nunes, appearing with Laura Ingraham on FOX NEWS Wednesday night, said Flynn would “clearly” have a civil rights case and thought it would end up costing the government millions of dollars. He’s also hoping for some prosecutions (there better be!) and for Judge Emmet Sullivan to sanction the Special Counsel lawyers for Flynn’s prosecution (not enough — they should be disbarred). Nunes also reminded Ingraham’s audience that the House Republicans had brought a lot of this information forward in 2018 and for their trouble had been ruthlessly mocked and their accusations treated like a joke.

The joke is now on Democrats and the media (I repeat myself) who refused to take it seriously. Sen. Chuck Grassley has reportedly asked Judge Sullivan to unseal the entire case at this point. That order might have to come down from Attorney General Barr, or perhaps from the U.S. attorney who has been reviewing the case at his request, Jeffrey Jensen.

Here’s John Solomon’s take.

 

Editor’s Note: Documents released Thursday indicate the FBI actually closed its investigation of Flynn on January 5, 2017 or 20 days before he was interviewed. They’d found zero evidence he had colluded with Russian. However, Strzok ordered the investigation be kept open. 

Mike Huckabee is the former governor of Arkansas and longtime conservative commentator on issues in culture and current events. A New York Times best-selling author, he hosts the weekly talk show Huckabee on TBN.

Originally published at MikeHuckabee.com. Reprinted with permission.