New Donald Trump thread

[Muda69]

30 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

Says the guy who needs his posse to come to his defense on the post before you say this. Troj and Mudhole sittin' in a tree.

It's good to have friends, gonzo.  You should try it sometimes.  But then again I can see why most other rational individuals would want to stay far away from you.............

 

[swordfish]

5 hours ago, Ultimate Warrior said:

Dude. 

Mike Flynn said he lied to the FBI.   Yet it wasn't perjury like the former President represented it.  General Flynn admitted to lying because his (coerced) statements contradicted each other during an FBI investigation, not because he intentionally misled a judge or jury.  Not to mention if he didn't plead guilty and get out of the way, they (the good people in the Mueller investigation) were coming after his family next.

Trump fired him cause Flynn lied to Pence.  Yes - and the trust between employer/employee was broke.

Barr is running a a reckless DOJ. Hell be canned in Jan when biden takes over and wouldn't be shocked if he ends up facing federal crimes.  Good luck with that.  The BHO/Biden team better get a better plan around for this election because the legal storm is bearing down on them.

 

[Howe]

The Directors of the FBI, CIA and NSA testified before congress that they had never conducted any type of forensic analysis of the DNC servers. James Comey testified that the FBI relied on Crowdstrike. I have posted videos of all three directors testimonials.

With the recent declassification and release of transcripts from the House Intel Investigation it is not surprising to anyone with common sense that Crowdstrike testified under oath that they had no evidence of Russia hacking the DNC servers or the e-mail of John Podesta.

 

 

[Howe]

[gonzoron]

1 hour ago, Muda69 said:

It's good to have friends, gonzo.  You should try it sometimes.  But then again I can see why most other rational individuals would want to stay far away from you.............

 

 

29 minutes ago, TrojanDad said:

LOL...I don't need anyone's help....I am confident.  But I do appreciate having friends.

You and BOPP going to Zoom together and see how many downvotes you can give me??  LMAO  What childish dumba$$es!!

 

[Howe]

 

[gonzoron]

[gonzoron]

Michael Flynn: judge pauses justice department effort to dismiss case

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/12/michael-flynn-case-justice-department-dismiss

[Howe]

11 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

Michael Flynn: judge pauses justice department effort to dismiss case

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/12/michael-flynn-case-justice-department-dismiss

Democrat activist judge is wasting money. Trump holds the ultimate ace card.

[swordfish]

42 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

Michael Flynn: judge pauses justice department effort to dismiss case

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/12/michael-flynn-case-justice-department-dismiss

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/federal-judge-orders-arguments-on-whether-michael-flynn-should-be-jailed-for-perjury/

Federal Judge Emmet G. Sullivan late Wednesday issued a stunning ruling in the prosecution of Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump‘s former National Security Advisor.  The two-pronged order (1) appoints a former federal judge to argue against dismissing the case; and (2)considers holding Flynn in criminal contempt for perjury.

“Upon consideration of the entire record in this case, it is hereby ORDERED that the Court exercises its inherent authority to appoint The Honorable John Gleeson (Ret.) as amicus curiae to present arguments in opposition to the government’s Motion to Dismiss,” the judge wrote.  “t is further ORDERED that amicus curiae shall address whether the Court should issue an Order to Show Cause why Mr. Flynn should not be held in criminal contempt for perjury pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 401, Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 42, the Court’s inherent authority, and any other applicable statutes, rules, or controlling law.”

Judging by the order, Sullivan is not pleased that Flynn took up the court’s time by pleading guilty, firing his lawyers, hiring new lawyers, and moving to withdraw his guilty plea. As if that wasn’t enough, the Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss its case against Flynn.

Gleeson, a Bill Clinton nominee to a federal judgeship in the Eastern District of New York, was previously an Assistant United States Attorney for the same district. As a prosecutor, Gleeson secured a conviction against mobster John Gotti. He also prosecuted the so-called “Wolf of Wall Street,” Jordan Belfort. He retired as a judge to pursue a career in private practice.

Seriously? The FBI basically forces the guy to plead guilty to lying to them, now the judge is hinting at perjury because he did it.  🤬

 

[Howe]

13 minutes ago, swordfish said:

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/federal-judge-orders-arguments-on-whether-michael-flynn-should-be-jailed-for-perjury/

Federal Judge Emmet G. Sullivan late Wednesday issued a stunning ruling in the prosecution of Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump‘s former National Security Advisor.  The two-pronged order (1) appoints a former federal judge to argue against dismissing the case; and (2)considers holding Flynn in criminal contempt for perjury.

“Upon consideration of the entire record in this case, it is hereby ORDERED that the Court exercises its inherent authority to appoint The Honorable John Gleeson (Ret.) as amicus curiae to present arguments in opposition to the government’s Motion to Dismiss,” the judge wrote.  “t is further ORDERED that amicus curiae shall address whether the Court should issue an Order to Show Cause why Mr. Flynn should not be held in criminal contempt for perjury pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 401, Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 42, the Court’s inherent authority, and any other applicable statutes, rules, or controlling law.”

Judging by the order, Sullivan is not pleased that Flynn took up the court’s time by pleading guilty, firing his lawyers, hiring new lawyers, and moving to withdraw his guilty plea. As if that wasn’t enough, the Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss its case against Flynn.

Gleeson, a Bill Clinton nominee to a federal judgeship in the Eastern District of New York, was previously an Assistant United States Attorney for the same district. As a prosecutor, Gleeson secured a conviction against mobster John Gotti. He also prosecuted the so-called “Wolf of Wall Street,” Jordan Belfort. He retired as a judge to pursue a career in private practice.

Seriously? The FBI basically forces the guy to plead guilty to lying to them, now the judge is hinting at perjury because he did it.  🤬

 

The Great Hussein and democrats fear Flynn.

[gonzoron]

[swordfish]

Someone questioned (Gonzo) what "Obamagate" was........as if he had no clue.  Here's a pretty good explanation of what is known and what is (IMHO) coming.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/13/obamagate-isnt-a-conspiracy-theory-its-the-biggest-political-scandal-of-our-time/?fbclid=IwAR0fs-NzWxEh4G1DULStk8nqj7BuG2uuqR7N1_CnNx53zVl12fS6-4BFdI8#.XrvnC6QKyC8.facebook

‘Obamagate’ Isn’t A Conspiracy Theory, It’s The Biggest Political Scandal Of Our Time

When former president Barack Obama told supporters last week that the Justice Department’s decision to drop the case against former White House National Security Adviser Mike Flynn is a “threat to the rule of law,” he was relying wholly on the fiction, willingly propagated for years by a pliant media, that the Russia-Trump collusion probe launched by his administration was lawful and legitimate.

But of course it wasn’t. A string of recently released documents have confirmed that the entire Russia-Trump investigation, which eventually entrapped Flynn and forced then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself, was an unprecedented abuse of power that amounted to organized effort by the Obama administration to nullify the results of the 2016 presidential election. It was in effect an attempted coup.

If you haven’t picked that up from the news media, it’s not your fault. Instead of grappling with the implications of newly released details about what Obama officials were doing to undermine the incoming Trump administration during the transition, the mainstream media have fixated on Trump’s use of the term “Obamagate,” dismissing it as a conspiracy theory.

A Brief History of the Flynn Case

This is to be expected. For years now the media have done everything they can to push the Trump-Russia collusion hoax—even after a years-long special counsel investigation by Robert Mueller turned up nothing—using the complexity of the scheme to hide the greatest political scandal of our time in plain sight.

A key aspect of that scheme was—and is—to make the case against Flynn appear legitimate. Flynn faced trumped-up charges that he misled FBI agents about conversations he had with then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the weeks before Trump’s inauguration. (As the incoming national security advisor, Flynn was doubtless having conversations with numerous heads of state and ambassadors during this time, so there was nothing unusual about him talking to the Russian ambassador.)

The Obama administration already knew about the conversations with Kislyak because it had recordings of them thanks to a series of investigations it spun out of the Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence probe of the Trump campaign. Crossfire Hurricane, launched in the summer of 2016, was itself a bogus investigation based on the Steele dossier—an entirely fraudulent document riddled with Russian disinformation and paid for by the Democratic Party.So why did the FBI want to interview Flynn ahead of Trump’s inauguration in January 2017? Top brass at the FBI weren’t exactly sure about their approach, but they knew they needed to get Flynn out of the way. As the bureau’s former head of counterintelligence, Bill Priestap, recorded in his notes, “What is our goal? Truth/Admission, or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?”

Apparently the Obama administration settled on trying to entrap him in a lie. The recent disclosure of an early January 2017 Oval Office meeting attended by Obama, vice president Joe Biden, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and FBI Director James Comey, confirms the administration’s plan to hide the Russia probe from the incoming Trump team—including Flynn.

The idea was to use the Kislyak calls as a pretext to keep the Flynn investigation open, even though there was no reason to do so. After months of spying on him, the FBI had found nothing to indicate Flynn was conspiring with the Russians.

As Rice wrote in an email to herself after the meeting, “President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.”

The point was to keep the Flynn investigation open as a way for Obama holdovers like Comey, Yates, and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to continue the Russia-Trump collusion probe even after Trump took office—and keep Flynn, Trump’s national security advisor, out of the loop. Since there was no reason to keep investigating Flynn, the Obama administration invented one: the preposterous notion that he intentionally misled Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Kislyak and then lied about it to the FBI.

There’s no evidence this happened, but even if there were it wouldn’t matter. As the Justice Department explained in its decision to drop the Flynn case, the investigation of Flynn was “untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation.”

Later, top FBI and Justice Department officials gave the House Intelligence Committee different answers about why they were pursuing Flynn. Comey, McCabe, Yates, and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord all gave conflicting testimony about the “primary purpose” of the FBI’s interview with Flynn, ranging from the outlandish notion that he violated the Logan Act—a constitutionally dubious 1799 law forbidding unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments—to the concocted charge that he lied to the FBI, which even the agents that conducted the interview with him didn’t believe.

Here’s Why Americans Need to Understand the Flynn Case

The Flynn case is just one piece of a much larger story about how the Obama administration—with the full knowledge and support of both Obama and Biden—targeted incoming Trump officials in a failed attempt to cripple the new administration with allegations it had colluded with Moscow.

 

The complexity of their scheme, and the efforts to hide it and mislead the American people, are frustrating. The cast of characters—from high-ranking Obama administration officials to relative nobodies loosely associated with Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign—is long, as is the timeline of events. Details have come out slowly, in fits and starts, over the course of years. Following all the leaks and declassified transcripts and congressional hearings requires constant vigilance, and if you don’t keep up with it you can easily lose the thread.

That all works to the advantage of those who perpetrated this hoax, because it’s easy to get overwhelmed and tune it all out, or simply accept the corporate media’s deceptive reporting. But the ongoing revelations about the FBI’s targeting of Flynn can’t be ignored. They demand a full accounting. If ever there was a threat to the rule of law, it was the Obama administration’s abuse of power and its weaponization of intelligence agencies in an attempt to take down Trump.

However convoluted it might seem, pay attention to it. It’s the biggest political scandal of our time.

 

 

 

[gonzoron]

23 minutes ago, swordfish said:

Someone questioned (Gonzo) what "Obamagate" was........as if he had no clue.  Here's a pretty good explanation of what is known and what is (IMHO) coming.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/13/obamagate-isnt-a-conspiracy-theory-its-the-biggest-political-scandal-of-our-time/?fbclid=IwAR0fs-NzWxEh4G1DULStk8nqj7BuG2uuqR7N1_CnNx53zVl12fS6-4BFdI8#.XrvnC6QKyC8.facebook

‘Obamagate’ Isn’t A Conspiracy Theory, It’s The Biggest Political Scandal Of Our Time

When former president Barack Obama told supporters last week that the Justice Department’s decision to drop the case against former White House National Security Adviser Mike Flynn is a “threat to the rule of law,” he was relying wholly on the fiction, willingly propagated for years by a pliant media, that the Russia-Trump collusion probe launched by his administration was lawful and legitimate.

But of course it wasn’t. A string of recently released documents have confirmed that the entire Russia-Trump investigation, which eventually entrapped Flynn and forced then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself, was an unprecedented abuse of power that amounted to organized effort by the Obama administration to nullify the results of the 2016 presidential election. It was in effect an attempted coup.

If you haven’t picked that up from the news media, it’s not your fault. Instead of grappling with the implications of newly released details about what Obama officials were doing to undermine the incoming Trump administration during the transition, the mainstream media have fixated on Trump’s use of the term “Obamagate,” dismissing it as a conspiracy theory.

A Brief History of the Flynn Case

This is to be expected. For years now the media have done everything they can to push the Trump-Russia collusion hoax—even after a years-long special counsel investigation by Robert Mueller turned up nothing—using the complexity of the scheme to hide the greatest political scandal of our time in plain sight.

A key aspect of that scheme was—and is—to make the case against Flynn appear legitimate. Flynn faced trumped-up charges that he misled FBI agents about conversations he had with then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the weeks before Trump’s inauguration. (As the incoming national security advisor, Flynn was doubtless having conversations with numerous heads of state and ambassadors during this time, so there was nothing unusual about him talking to the Russian ambassador.)

The Obama administration already knew about the conversations with Kislyak because it had recordings of them thanks to a series of investigations it spun out of the Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence probe of the Trump campaign. Crossfire Hurricane, launched in the summer of 2016, was itself a bogus investigation based on the Steele dossier—an entirely fraudulent document riddled with Russian disinformation and paid for by the Democratic Party.So why did the FBI want to interview Flynn ahead of Trump’s inauguration in January 2017? Top brass at the FBI weren’t exactly sure about their approach, but they knew they needed to get Flynn out of the way. As the bureau’s former head of counterintelligence, Bill Priestap, recorded in his notes, “What is our goal? Truth/Admission, or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?”

Apparently the Obama administration settled on trying to entrap him in a lie. The recent disclosure of an early January 2017 Oval Office meeting attended by Obama, vice president Joe Biden, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and FBI Director James Comey, confirms the administration’s plan to hide the Russia probe from the incoming Trump team—including Flynn.

The idea was to use the Kislyak calls as a pretext to keep the Flynn investigation open, even though there was no reason to do so. After months of spying on him, the FBI had found nothing to indicate Flynn was conspiring with the Russians.

As Rice wrote in an email to herself after the meeting, “President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.”

The point was to keep the Flynn investigation open as a way for Obama holdovers like Comey, Yates, and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to continue the Russia-Trump collusion probe even after Trump took office—and keep Flynn, Trump’s national security advisor, out of the loop. Since there was no reason to keep investigating Flynn, the Obama administration invented one: the preposterous notion that he intentionally misled Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Kislyak and then lied about it to the FBI.

There’s no evidence this happened, but even if there were it wouldn’t matter. As the Justice Department explained in its decision to drop the Flynn case, the investigation of Flynn was “untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation.”

Later, top FBI and Justice Department officials gave the House Intelligence Committee different answers about why they were pursuing Flynn. Comey, McCabe, Yates, and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord all gave conflicting testimony about the “primary purpose” of the FBI’s interview with Flynn, ranging from the outlandish notion that he violated the Logan Act—a constitutionally dubious 1799 law forbidding unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments—to the concocted charge that he lied to the FBI, which even the agents that conducted the interview with him didn’t believe.

Here’s Why Americans Need to Understand the Flynn Case

The Flynn case is just one piece of a much larger story about how the Obama administration—with the full knowledge and support of both Obama and Biden—targeted incoming Trump officials in a failed attempt to cripple the new administration with allegations it had colluded with Moscow.

 

The complexity of their scheme, and the efforts to hide it and mislead the American people, are frustrating. The cast of characters—from high-ranking Obama administration officials to relative nobodies loosely associated with Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign—is long, as is the timeline of events. Details have come out slowly, in fits and starts, over the course of years. Following all the leaks and declassified transcripts and congressional hearings requires constant vigilance, and if you don’t keep up with it you can easily lose the thread.

That all works to the advantage of those who perpetrated this hoax, because it’s easy to get overwhelmed and tune it all out, or simply accept the corporate media’s deceptive reporting. But the ongoing revelations about the FBI’s targeting of Flynn can’t be ignored. They demand a full accounting. If ever there was a threat to the rule of law, it was the Obama administration’s abuse of power and its weaponization of intelligence agencies in an attempt to take down Trump.

However convoluted it might seem, pay attention to it. It’s the biggest political scandal of our time.

 

 

 

LOL. 
Thanks Obama.

[swordfish]

1 minute ago, gonzoron said:

LOL. 
Thanks Obama.

Thought that was how you would see it, but didn't want to assume.......

[Howe]

Obama administration Director of National Intelligence and current CNN National Security Analyst James Clapper disappears when asked about Obamagate.

 

[gonzoron]

3 hours ago, swordfish said:

Someone questioned (Gonzo) what "Obamagate" was........as if he had no clue.  Here's a pretty good explanation of what is known and what is (IMHO) coming.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/13/obamagate-isnt-a-conspiracy-theory-its-the-biggest-political-scandal-of-our-time/?fbclid=IwAR0fs-NzWxEh4G1DULStk8nqj7BuG2uuqR7N1_CnNx53zVl12fS6-4BFdI8#.XrvnC6QKyC8.facebook

‘Obamagate’ Isn’t A Conspiracy Theory, It’s The Biggest Political Scandal Of Our Time

When former president Barack Obama told supporters last week that the Justice Department’s decision to drop the case against former White House National Security Adviser Mike Flynn is a “threat to the rule of law,” he was relying wholly on the fiction, willingly propagated for years by a pliant media, that the Russia-Trump collusion probe launched by his administration was lawful and legitimate.

But of course it wasn’t. A string of recently released documents have confirmed that the entire Russia-Trump investigation, which eventually entrapped Flynn and forced then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself, was an unprecedented abuse of power that amounted to organized effort by the Obama administration to nullify the results of the 2016 presidential election. It was in effect an attempted coup.

If you haven’t picked that up from the news media, it’s not your fault. Instead of grappling with the implications of newly released details about what Obama officials were doing to undermine the incoming Trump administration during the transition, the mainstream media have fixated on Trump’s use of the term “Obamagate,” dismissing it as a conspiracy theory.

A Brief History of the Flynn Case

This is to be expected. For years now the media have done everything they can to push the Trump-Russia collusion hoax—even after a years-long special counsel investigation by Robert Mueller turned up nothing—using the complexity of the scheme to hide the greatest political scandal of our time in plain sight.

A key aspect of that scheme was—and is—to make the case against Flynn appear legitimate. Flynn faced trumped-up charges that he misled FBI agents about conversations he had with then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the weeks before Trump’s inauguration. (As the incoming national security advisor, Flynn was doubtless having conversations with numerous heads of state and ambassadors during this time, so there was nothing unusual about him talking to the Russian ambassador.)

The Obama administration already knew about the conversations with Kislyak because it had recordings of them thanks to a series of investigations it spun out of the Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence probe of the Trump campaign. Crossfire Hurricane, launched in the summer of 2016, was itself a bogus investigation based on the Steele dossier—an entirely fraudulent document riddled with Russian disinformation and paid for by the Democratic Party.So why did the FBI want to interview Flynn ahead of Trump’s inauguration in January 2017? Top brass at the FBI weren’t exactly sure about their approach, but they knew they needed to get Flynn out of the way. As the bureau’s former head of counterintelligence, Bill Priestap, recorded in his notes, “What is our goal? Truth/Admission, or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?”

Apparently the Obama administration settled on trying to entrap him in a lie. The recent disclosure of an early January 2017 Oval Office meeting attended by Obama, vice president Joe Biden, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and FBI Director James Comey, confirms the administration’s plan to hide the Russia probe from the incoming Trump team—including Flynn.

The idea was to use the Kislyak calls as a pretext to keep the Flynn investigation open, even though there was no reason to do so. After months of spying on him, the FBI had found nothing to indicate Flynn was conspiring with the Russians.

As Rice wrote in an email to herself after the meeting, “President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.”

The point was to keep the Flynn investigation open as a way for Obama holdovers like Comey, Yates, and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to continue the Russia-Trump collusion probe even after Trump took office—and keep Flynn, Trump’s national security advisor, out of the loop. Since there was no reason to keep investigating Flynn, the Obama administration invented one: the preposterous notion that he intentionally misled Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Kislyak and then lied about it to the FBI.

There’s no evidence this happened, but even if there were it wouldn’t matter. As the Justice Department explained in its decision to drop the Flynn case, the investigation of Flynn was “untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation.”

Later, top FBI and Justice Department officials gave the House Intelligence Committee different answers about why they were pursuing Flynn. Comey, McCabe, Yates, and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord all gave conflicting testimony about the “primary purpose” of the FBI’s interview with Flynn, ranging from the outlandish notion that he violated the Logan Act—a constitutionally dubious 1799 law forbidding unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments—to the concocted charge that he lied to the FBI, which even the agents that conducted the interview with him didn’t believe.

Here’s Why Americans Need to Understand the Flynn Case

The Flynn case is just one piece of a much larger story about how the Obama administration—with the full knowledge and support of both Obama and Biden—targeted incoming Trump officials in a failed attempt to cripple the new administration with allegations it had colluded with Moscow.

 

The complexity of their scheme, and the efforts to hide it and mislead the American people, are frustrating. The cast of characters—from high-ranking Obama administration officials to relative nobodies loosely associated with Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign—is long, as is the timeline of events. Details have come out slowly, in fits and starts, over the course of years. Following all the leaks and declassified transcripts and congressional hearings requires constant vigilance, and if you don’t keep up with it you can easily lose the thread.

That all works to the advantage of those who perpetrated this hoax, because it’s easy to get overwhelmed and tune it all out, or simply accept the corporate media’s deceptive reporting. But the ongoing revelations about the FBI’s targeting of Flynn can’t be ignored. They demand a full accounting. If ever there was a threat to the rule of law, it was the Obama administration’s abuse of power and its weaponization of intelligence agencies in an attempt to take down Trump.

However convoluted it might seem, pay attention to it. It’s the biggest political scandal of our time.

 

 

 

Here is Wanda Sykes' explanation, lol. 

 

[gonzoron]

ha

 

 

Edited May 15, 2020 by gonzoron

[swordfish]

4 hours ago, swordfish said:

Someone questioned (Gonzo) what "Obamagate" was........as if he had no clue.  Here's a pretty good explanation of what is known and what is (IMHO) coming.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/13/obamagate-isnt-a-conspiracy-theory-its-the-biggest-political-scandal-of-our-time/?fbclid=IwAR0fs-NzWxEh4G1DULStk8nqj7BuG2uuqR7N1_CnNx53zVl12fS6-4BFdI8#.XrvnC6QKyC8.facebook

‘Obamagate’ Isn’t A Conspiracy Theory, It’s The Biggest Political Scandal Of Our Time

When former president Barack Obama told supporters last week that the Justice Department’s decision to drop the case against former White House National Security Adviser Mike Flynn is a “threat to the rule of law,” he was relying wholly on the fiction, willingly propagated for years by a pliant media, that the Russia-Trump collusion probe launched by his administration was lawful and legitimate.

But of course it wasn’t. A string of recently released documents have confirmed that the entire Russia-Trump investigation, which eventually entrapped Flynn and forced then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself, was an unprecedented abuse of power that amounted to organized effort by the Obama administration to nullify the results of the 2016 presidential election. It was in effect an attempted coup.

If you haven’t picked that up from the news media, it’s not your fault. Instead of grappling with the implications of newly released details about what Obama officials were doing to undermine the incoming Trump administration during the transition, the mainstream media have fixated on Trump’s use of the term “Obamagate,” dismissing it as a conspiracy theory.

A Brief History of the Flynn Case

This is to be expected. For years now the media have done everything they can to push the Trump-Russia collusion hoax—even after a years-long special counsel investigation by Robert Mueller turned up nothing—using the complexity of the scheme to hide the greatest political scandal of our time in plain sight.

A key aspect of that scheme was—and is—to make the case against Flynn appear legitimate. Flynn faced trumped-up charges that he misled FBI agents about conversations he had with then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the weeks before Trump’s inauguration. (As the incoming national security advisor, Flynn was doubtless having conversations with numerous heads of state and ambassadors during this time, so there was nothing unusual about him talking to the Russian ambassador.)

The Obama administration already knew about the conversations with Kislyak because it had recordings of them thanks to a series of investigations it spun out of the Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence probe of the Trump campaign. Crossfire Hurricane, launched in the summer of 2016, was itself a bogus investigation based on the Steele dossier—an entirely fraudulent document riddled with Russian disinformation and paid for by the Democratic Party.So why did the FBI want to interview Flynn ahead of Trump’s inauguration in January 2017? Top brass at the FBI weren’t exactly sure about their approach, but they knew they needed to get Flynn out of the way. As the bureau’s former head of counterintelligence, Bill Priestap, recorded in his notes, “What is our goal? Truth/Admission, or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?”

Apparently the Obama administration settled on trying to entrap him in a lie. The recent disclosure of an early January 2017 Oval Office meeting attended by Obama, vice president Joe Biden, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and FBI Director James Comey, confirms the administration’s plan to hide the Russia probe from the incoming Trump team—including Flynn.

The idea was to use the Kislyak calls as a pretext to keep the Flynn investigation open, even though there was no reason to do so. After months of spying on him, the FBI had found nothing to indicate Flynn was conspiring with the Russians.

As Rice wrote in an email to herself after the meeting, “President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.”

The point was to keep the Flynn investigation open as a way for Obama holdovers like Comey, Yates, and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to continue the Russia-Trump collusion probe even after Trump took office—and keep Flynn, Trump’s national security advisor, out of the loop. Since there was no reason to keep investigating Flynn, the Obama administration invented one: the preposterous notion that he intentionally misled Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Kislyak and then lied about it to the FBI.

There’s no evidence this happened, but even if there were it wouldn’t matter. As the Justice Department explained in its decision to drop the Flynn case, the investigation of Flynn was “untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation.”

Later, top FBI and Justice Department officials gave the House Intelligence Committee different answers about why they were pursuing Flynn. Comey, McCabe, Yates, and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord all gave conflicting testimony about the “primary purpose” of the FBI’s interview with Flynn, ranging from the outlandish notion that he violated the Logan Act—a constitutionally dubious 1799 law forbidding unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments—to the concocted charge that he lied to the FBI, which even the agents that conducted the interview with him didn’t believe.

Here’s Why Americans Need to Understand the Flynn Case

The Flynn case is just one piece of a much larger story about how the Obama administration—with the full knowledge and support of both Obama and Biden—targeted incoming Trump officials in a failed attempt to cripple the new administration with allegations it had colluded with Moscow.

 

The complexity of their scheme, and the efforts to hide it and mislead the American people, are frustrating. The cast of characters—from high-ranking Obama administration officials to relative nobodies loosely associated with Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign—is long, as is the timeline of events. Details have come out slowly, in fits and starts, over the course of years. Following all the leaks and declassified transcripts and congressional hearings requires constant vigilance, and if you don’t keep up with it you can easily lose the thread.

That all works to the advantage of those who perpetrated this hoax, because it’s easy to get overwhelmed and tune it all out, or simply accept the corporate media’s deceptive reporting. But the ongoing revelations about the FBI’s targeting of Flynn can’t be ignored. They demand a full accounting. If ever there was a threat to the rule of law, it was the Obama administration’s abuse of power and its weaponization of intelligence agencies in an attempt to take down Trump.

However convoluted it might seem, pay attention to it. It’s the biggest political scandal of our time.

 

 

 

I think the "explanation" from Ms. Sykes is pretty racist....And addresses none of the facts in the story above ....She needs to stick to her comedy - She will have a larger, more diverse audience that way......

https://www.voanews.com/usa/us-politics/what-obamagate

U.S. President Donald Trump's long-standing accusation of criminality against his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, has taken on a new name: Obamagate.

In this new iteration being hotly promoted by Trump and his right-wing allies, Obama officials in the waning days of his administration conspired to entrap Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, as part of a larger plot to bring down the incoming president.

The conspiracy theory took on new life after the Justice Department, in a dramatic about-face last week, moved to drop its criminal case against Flynn, saying the FBI was not justified in investigating him over his 2016 conversations with Russia's former ambassador to Washington.

FILE - Former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn leaves the federal courthouse in Washington, following a status hearing, July 10, 2018.

As part of its reassessment of the Flynn case, the Justice Department released a deluge of records that shed light on previously unknown Obama administration deliberations over Flynn. That led Trump to claim that Flynn had been illegally targeted and that the decision to investigate him went all the way up to the previous president.

"The biggest political crime in American history, by far!" Trump said in one of a blizzard of tweets and retweets referencing Obamagate on Sunday.

In short order, the hashtag "Obamagate" went viral, giving an old conspiracy theory a new twist.

Asked on Monday to describe Obama's alleged crime, Trump would only offer that "some terrible things happened, and it should never be allowed to happen in our country." He predicted further disclosures in the coming weeks.

Obama is a favorite and frequent target of Trump's attacks. Trump turned up the heat on his predecessor after Obama, in leaked comments to former officials in his administration, blasted the Justice Department's decision to let Flynn off the hook, saying the "rule of law is at risk."

By advancing new allegations against the former president, Trump is also apparently seeking to implicate his likely opponent this fall, Obama's vice president, Joe Biden.

Here is a primer on the controversy.

Obamagate origins

At its core, Obamagate is an old allegation given a new name.

As early as March 2017, Trump alleged that Obama had illegally wiretapped the billionaire businessman at Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential election campaign, comparing the alleged surveillance to the Nixon-era Watergate scandal. The following year, Trump claimed that the FBI had planted an informant inside his campaign, dubbing the alleged conspiracy "Spygate."

FILE - Russia's ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak, speaks with reporters in Washington, Jan. 13, 2017.

The main allegation in Obamagate is that the former president directed the Flynn investigation, even though the FBI had no legitimate reason to probe the retired three-star general. Flynn, a one-time Democrat, served as the Obama administration's top military intelligence official before being forced out of the job and later aligning with Trump.

Flynn was investigated twice in 2016 and 2017, first as part of the FBI's probe into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, and later over a series of conversations he had with Russia's then-ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak, in which he counseled the Russians to refrain from retaliation against Obama administration sanctions — hinting that Trump would soften them once in office.

 

Oval Office meeting 

Central to the Obamagate conspiracy theory is an Oval Office meeting between Obama and his national security team on Jan. 5, 2017, just 15 days before Trump took office.

The meeting came the day after the FBI moved to formally close its investigation into Flynn's suspected ties to Russia before deciding to keep it open after learning about his intercepted calls to Kislyak.

Top intelligence officials briefed Obama on their findings on Russian election meddling. At the end of the meeting, the president asked FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates to stay behind. Joining them were Vice President Joe Biden and National Security Adviser Susan Rice. 

FILE - Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates speaks during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, June 28, 2016.

As Yates recounted during a 2017 interview with special counsel Robert Mueller's team, Obama began by saying "he had learned of the information about Flynn" and his conversations with Kislyak regarding the sanctions on Russia.

This was news to Yates, who as the Justice Department's No. 2 official oversaw the FBI but had not been told about it.

As Comey later told the House Intelligence Committee, he alerted CIA Director John Brennan as soon as he learned about the Flynn calls. Brennan in turn briefed Obama.

Yates and Rice later recounted what Obama said at the meeting. According to Yates, while Obama said he did not want details of the investigation, he asked "whether the White House should be treating Flynn differently" during the remaining days of the administration.

FILE - FBI Director James Comey testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sept. 27, 2016.

Yates did not recall Comey's response to the question. In an email to herself on Obama's last day in office, Rice memorialized that Obama reiterated at the meeting that "our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book."

Yates and other former officials have defended the Flynn investigation. Yet, the fact that the White House meeting came the day after the FBI was preparing to close the Flynn investigation, and Obama was aware of Flynn's wiretapped calls to Kislyak, has led Trump, right-wing commentators and Flynn's lawyers to claim that the subsequent Flynn investigation over his calls to Kislyak constituted an anti-Trump conspiracy that reached the highest levels of the Obama administration.

"So, the whole thing was orchestrated and set up within the FBI, (former national intelligence director James) Clapper, Brennan and in the Oval Office meeting that day with President Obama," Sydney Powell, Flynn's attorney, told Fox News on Sunday.

Recently declassified FBI records of the Flynn case that were turned over to Flynn's lawyers provided further fodder for conspiracy theory promoters.

In one widely cited handwritten note, a top FBI official mused whether the goal of interviewing Flynn over his calls to the Russian ambassador was to "get him fired" or get him to lie.

Unmasking of Flynn

The Obamagate conspiracy theory feeds off another allegation: the politically motivated unmasking of Flynn's identity during the Trump transition period.

U.S. intelligence analysts routinely "mask" the identity of U.S. persons whose communications are incidentally collected during intelligence-gathering on foreign officials. Flynn's conversations with Kislyak were apparently overheard during a routine interception of Kislyak's calls.

Authorized national security officials seeking to understand the underlying intelligence can ask the National Security Agency to "unmask" an individual's identity.

This is a common practice. But Trump and his allies have long accused former Obama administration officials of illegally unmasking Flynn's identity for political purposes.

This week, Richard Grennell, a close Trump ally who serves as acting director of national intelligence, disclosed the names of more than a dozen Obama officials who requested the unmasking of Flynn's identity during the final weeks of the administration.

The list includes a string of Obama administration officials Trump has long viewed as his enemies — Brennan, James Clapper, director of national intelligence, and Comey.

Prospects for an investigation

Since starting Obamagate, Trump has been pressing congressional Republicans to investigate Obama. That prospect is highly unlikely.

"If I were a Senator or Congressman, the first person I would call to testify about the biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA, by FAR, is former President Obama," Trump tweeted on Thursday. "He knew EVERYTHING. Do it @LindseyGrahamSC, just do it. No more Mr. Nice Guy. No more talk!" Trump tweeted on Thursday.

FILE - Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill, Feb. 25, 2020.

But Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, a Trump confidant, says he is not interested in dragging Obama before Congress.

"I don't think now's the time for me to do that," Graham told Politico. "I don't know if that's even possible."

But Graham vowed to call in Trump administration officials as his committee investigates the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation.

For their part, Biden and other Democrats dismiss Obamagate as a blatant attempt by Trump to divert attention from growing criticism of his handling of the coronavirus crisis. 

A much better explanation than "because he's a black man, and still is" ........

 

[swordfish]

2 minutes ago, swordfish said:

I think the "explanation" from Ms. Sykes is pretty racist....And addresses none of the facts in the story above ....She needs to stick to her comedy - She will have a larger, more diverse audience that way......

https://www.voanews.com/usa/us-politics/what-obamagate

U.S. President Donald Trump's long-standing accusation of criminality against his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, has taken on a new name: Obamagate.

In this new iteration being hotly promoted by Trump and his right-wing allies, Obama officials in the waning days of his administration conspired to entrap Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, as part of a larger plot to bring down the incoming president.

The conspiracy theory took on new life after the Justice Department, in a dramatic about-face last week, moved to drop its criminal case against Flynn, saying the FBI was not justified in investigating him over his 2016 conversations with Russia's former ambassador to Washington.

FILE - Former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn leaves the federal courthouse in Washington, following a status hearing, July 10, 2018.

As part of its reassessment of the Flynn case, the Justice Department released a deluge of records that shed light on previously unknown Obama administration deliberations over Flynn. That led Trump to claim that Flynn had been illegally targeted and that the decision to investigate him went all the way up to the previous president.

"The biggest political crime in American history, by far!" Trump said in one of a blizzard of tweets and retweets referencing Obamagate on Sunday.

In short order, the hashtag "Obamagate" went viral, giving an old conspiracy theory a new twist.

Asked on Monday to describe Obama's alleged crime, Trump would only offer that "some terrible things happened, and it should never be allowed to happen in our country." He predicted further disclosures in the coming weeks.

Obama is a favorite and frequent target of Trump's attacks. Trump turned up the heat on his predecessor after Obama, in leaked comments to former officials in his administration, blasted the Justice Department's decision to let Flynn off the hook, saying the "rule of law is at risk."

By advancing new allegations against the former president, Trump is also apparently seeking to implicate his likely opponent this fall, Obama's vice president, Joe Biden.

Here is a primer on the controversy.

Obamagate origins

At its core, Obamagate is an old allegation given a new name.

As early as March 2017, Trump alleged that Obama had illegally wiretapped the billionaire businessman at Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential election campaign, comparing the alleged surveillance to the Nixon-era Watergate scandal. The following year, Trump claimed that the FBI had planted an informant inside his campaign, dubbing the alleged conspiracy "Spygate."

FILE - Russia's ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak, speaks with reporters in Washington, Jan. 13, 2017.

The main allegation in Obamagate is that the former president directed the Flynn investigation, even though the FBI had no legitimate reason to probe the retired three-star general. Flynn, a one-time Democrat, served as the Obama administration's top military intelligence official before being forced out of the job and later aligning with Trump.

Flynn was investigated twice in 2016 and 2017, first as part of the FBI's probe into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, and later over a series of conversations he had with Russia's then-ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak, in which he counseled the Russians to refrain from retaliation against Obama administration sanctions — hinting that Trump would soften them once in office.

 

Oval Office meeting 

Central to the Obamagate conspiracy theory is an Oval Office meeting between Obama and his national security team on Jan. 5, 2017, just 15 days before Trump took office.

The meeting came the day after the FBI moved to formally close its investigation into Flynn's suspected ties to Russia before deciding to keep it open after learning about his intercepted calls to Kislyak.

Top intelligence officials briefed Obama on their findings on Russian election meddling. At the end of the meeting, the president asked FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates to stay behind. Joining them were Vice President Joe Biden and National Security Adviser Susan Rice. 

FILE - Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates speaks during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, June 28, 2016.

As Yates recounted during a 2017 interview with special counsel Robert Mueller's team, Obama began by saying "he had learned of the information about Flynn" and his conversations with Kislyak regarding the sanctions on Russia.

This was news to Yates, who as the Justice Department's No. 2 official oversaw the FBI but had not been told about it.

As Comey later told the House Intelligence Committee, he alerted CIA Director John Brennan as soon as he learned about the Flynn calls. Brennan in turn briefed Obama.

Yates and Rice later recounted what Obama said at the meeting. According to Yates, while Obama said he did not want details of the investigation, he asked "whether the White House should be treating Flynn differently" during the remaining days of the administration.

FILE - FBI Director James Comey testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sept. 27, 2016.

Yates did not recall Comey's response to the question. In an email to herself on Obama's last day in office, Rice memorialized that Obama reiterated at the meeting that "our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book."

Yates and other former officials have defended the Flynn investigation. Yet, the fact that the White House meeting came the day after the FBI was preparing to close the Flynn investigation, and Obama was aware of Flynn's wiretapped calls to Kislyak, has led Trump, right-wing commentators and Flynn's lawyers to claim that the subsequent Flynn investigation over his calls to Kislyak constituted an anti-Trump conspiracy that reached the highest levels of the Obama administration.

"So, the whole thing was orchestrated and set up within the FBI, (former national intelligence director James) Clapper, Brennan and in the Oval Office meeting that day with President Obama," Sydney Powell, Flynn's attorney, told Fox News on Sunday.

Recently declassified FBI records of the Flynn case that were turned over to Flynn's lawyers provided further fodder for conspiracy theory promoters.

In one widely cited handwritten note, a top FBI official mused whether the goal of interviewing Flynn over his calls to the Russian ambassador was to "get him fired" or get him to lie.

Unmasking of Flynn

The Obamagate conspiracy theory feeds off another allegation: the politically motivated unmasking of Flynn's identity during the Trump transition period.

U.S. intelligence analysts routinely "mask" the identity of U.S. persons whose communications are incidentally collected during intelligence-gathering on foreign officials. Flynn's conversations with Kislyak were apparently overheard during a routine interception of Kislyak's calls.

Authorized national security officials seeking to understand the underlying intelligence can ask the National Security Agency to "unmask" an individual's identity.

This is a common practice. But Trump and his allies have long accused former Obama administration officials of illegally unmasking Flynn's identity for political purposes.

This week, Richard Grennell, a close Trump ally who serves as acting director of national intelligence, disclosed the names of more than a dozen Obama officials who requested the unmasking of Flynn's identity during the final weeks of the administration.

The list includes a string of Obama administration officials Trump has long viewed as his enemies — Brennan, James Clapper, director of national intelligence, and Comey.

Prospects for an investigation

Since starting Obamagate, Trump has been pressing congressional Republicans to investigate Obama. That prospect is highly unlikely.

"If I were a Senator or Congressman, the first person I would call to testify about the biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA, by FAR, is former President Obama," Trump tweeted on Thursday. "He knew EVERYTHING. Do it @LindseyGrahamSC, just do it. No more Mr. Nice Guy. No more talk!" Trump tweeted on Thursday.

FILE - Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill, Feb. 25, 2020.

But Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, a Trump confidant, says he is not interested in dragging Obama before Congress.

"I don't think now's the time for me to do that," Graham told Politico. "I don't know if that's even possible."

But Graham vowed to call in Trump administration officials as his committee investigates the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation.

For their part, Biden and other Democrats dismiss Obamagate as a blatant attempt by Trump to divert attention from growing criticism of his handling of the coronavirus crisis. 

A much better explanation than "because he's a black man, and still is" ........

 

[gonzoron]

7 minutes ago, swordfish said:

I think the "explanation" from Ms. Sykes is pretty racist....And addresses none of the facts in the story above ....She needs to stick to her comedy - She will have a larger, more diverse audience that way......

https://www.voanews.com/usa/us-politics/what-obamagate

U.S. President Donald Trump's long-standing accusation of criminality against his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, has taken on a new name: Obamagate.

In this new iteration being hotly promoted by Trump and his right-wing allies, Obama officials in the waning days of his administration conspired to entrap Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, as part of a larger plot to bring down the incoming president.

The conspiracy theory took on new life after the Justice Department, in a dramatic about-face last week, moved to drop its criminal case against Flynn, saying the FBI was not justified in investigating him over his 2016 conversations with Russia's former ambassador to Washington.

FILE - Former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn leaves the federal courthouse in Washington, following a status hearing, July 10, 2018.

As part of its reassessment of the Flynn case, the Justice Department released a deluge of records that shed light on previously unknown Obama administration deliberations over Flynn. That led Trump to claim that Flynn had been illegally targeted and that the decision to investigate him went all the way up to the previous president.

"The biggest political crime in American history, by far!" Trump said in one of a blizzard of tweets and retweets referencing Obamagate on Sunday.

In short order, the hashtag "Obamagate" went viral, giving an old conspiracy theory a new twist.

Asked on Monday to describe Obama's alleged crime, Trump would only offer that "some terrible things happened, and it should never be allowed to happen in our country." He predicted further disclosures in the coming weeks.

Obama is a favorite and frequent target of Trump's attacks. Trump turned up the heat on his predecessor after Obama, in leaked comments to former officials in his administration, blasted the Justice Department's decision to let Flynn off the hook, saying the "rule of law is at risk."

By advancing new allegations against the former president, Trump is also apparently seeking to implicate his likely opponent this fall, Obama's vice president, Joe Biden.

Here is a primer on the controversy.

Obamagate origins

At its core, Obamagate is an old allegation given a new name.

As early as March 2017, Trump alleged that Obama had illegally wiretapped the billionaire businessman at Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential election campaign, comparing the alleged surveillance to the Nixon-era Watergate scandal. The following year, Trump claimed that the FBI had planted an informant inside his campaign, dubbing the alleged conspiracy "Spygate."

FILE - Russia's ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak, speaks with reporters in Washington, Jan. 13, 2017.

The main allegation in Obamagate is that the former president directed the Flynn investigation, even though the FBI had no legitimate reason to probe the retired three-star general. Flynn, a one-time Democrat, served as the Obama administration's top military intelligence official before being forced out of the job and later aligning with Trump.

Flynn was investigated twice in 2016 and 2017, first as part of the FBI's probe into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, and later over a series of conversations he had with Russia's then-ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak, in which he counseled the Russians to refrain from retaliation against Obama administration sanctions — hinting that Trump would soften them once in office.

 

Oval Office meeting 

Central to the Obamagate conspiracy theory is an Oval Office meeting between Obama and his national security team on Jan. 5, 2017, just 15 days before Trump took office.

The meeting came the day after the FBI moved to formally close its investigation into Flynn's suspected ties to Russia before deciding to keep it open after learning about his intercepted calls to Kislyak.

Top intelligence officials briefed Obama on their findings on Russian election meddling. At the end of the meeting, the president asked FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates to stay behind. Joining them were Vice President Joe Biden and National Security Adviser Susan Rice. 

FILE - Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates speaks during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, June 28, 2016.

As Yates recounted during a 2017 interview with special counsel Robert Mueller's team, Obama began by saying "he had learned of the information about Flynn" and his conversations with Kislyak regarding the sanctions on Russia.

This was news to Yates, who as the Justice Department's No. 2 official oversaw the FBI but had not been told about it.

As Comey later told the House Intelligence Committee, he alerted CIA Director John Brennan as soon as he learned about the Flynn calls. Brennan in turn briefed Obama.

Yates and Rice later recounted what Obama said at the meeting. According to Yates, while Obama said he did not want details of the investigation, he asked "whether the White House should be treating Flynn differently" during the remaining days of the administration.

FILE - FBI Director James Comey testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sept. 27, 2016.

Yates did not recall Comey's response to the question. In an email to herself on Obama's last day in office, Rice memorialized that Obama reiterated at the meeting that "our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book."

Yates and other former officials have defended the Flynn investigation. Yet, the fact that the White House meeting came the day after the FBI was preparing to close the Flynn investigation, and Obama was aware of Flynn's wiretapped calls to Kislyak, has led Trump, right-wing commentators and Flynn's lawyers to claim that the subsequent Flynn investigation over his calls to Kislyak constituted an anti-Trump conspiracy that reached the highest levels of the Obama administration.

"So, the whole thing was orchestrated and set up within the FBI, (former national intelligence director James) Clapper, Brennan and in the Oval Office meeting that day with President Obama," Sydney Powell, Flynn's attorney, told Fox News on Sunday.

Recently declassified FBI records of the Flynn case that were turned over to Flynn's lawyers provided further fodder for conspiracy theory promoters.

In one widely cited handwritten note, a top FBI official mused whether the goal of interviewing Flynn over his calls to the Russian ambassador was to "get him fired" or get him to lie.

Unmasking of Flynn

The Obamagate conspiracy theory feeds off another allegation: the politically motivated unmasking of Flynn's identity during the Trump transition period.

U.S. intelligence analysts routinely "mask" the identity of U.S. persons whose communications are incidentally collected during intelligence-gathering on foreign officials. Flynn's conversations with Kislyak were apparently overheard during a routine interception of Kislyak's calls.

Authorized national security officials seeking to understand the underlying intelligence can ask the National Security Agency to "unmask" an individual's identity.

This is a common practice. But Trump and his allies have long accused former Obama administration officials of illegally unmasking Flynn's identity for political purposes.

This week, Richard Grennell, a close Trump ally who serves as acting director of national intelligence, disclosed the names of more than a dozen Obama officials who requested the unmasking of Flynn's identity during the final weeks of the administration.

The list includes a string of Obama administration officials Trump has long viewed as his enemies — Brennan, James Clapper, director of national intelligence, and Comey.

Prospects for an investigation

Since starting Obamagate, Trump has been pressing congressional Republicans to investigate Obama. That prospect is highly unlikely.

"If I were a Senator or Congressman, the first person I would call to testify about the biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA, by FAR, is former President Obama," Trump tweeted on Thursday. "He knew EVERYTHING. Do it @LindseyGrahamSC, just do it. No more Mr. Nice Guy. No more talk!" Trump tweeted on Thursday.

FILE - Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill, Feb. 25, 2020.

But Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, a Trump confidant, says he is not interested in dragging Obama before Congress.

"I don't think now's the time for me to do that," Graham told Politico. "I don't know if that's even possible."

But Graham vowed to call in Trump administration officials as his committee investigates the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation.

For their part, Biden and other Democrats dismiss Obamagate as a blatant attempt by Trump to divert attention from growing criticism of his handling of the coronavirus crisis. 

A much better explanation than "because he's a black man, and still is" ........

 

I got a laugh out of both explanations. Hilarious stuff.

[Howe]

8 hours ago, swordfish said:

Someone questioned (Gonzo) what "Obamagate" was........as if he had no clue.  Here's a pretty good explanation of what is known and what is (IMHO) coming.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/13/obamagate-isnt-a-conspiracy-theory-its-the-biggest-political-scandal-of-our-time/?fbclid=IwAR0fs-NzWxEh4G1DULStk8nqj7BuG2uuqR7N1_CnNx53zVl12fS6-4BFdI8#.XrvnC6QKyC8.facebook

‘Obamagate’ Isn’t A Conspiracy Theory, It’s The Biggest Political Scandal Of Our Time

Dan Ellington referenced Obamagate and gonzoron claimed he had never heard of Obamagate.

I highly doubt this is true however, it could be possible. He strikes me as the kind of guy who gathers information from CNN, MSNBC, Vox, Guardian and the neo-liberal mainstream media. A lot of far left progressives view Obamagate very similar to conservatives.

[gonzoron]

10 minutes ago, Howe said:

Dan Ellington referenced Obamagate

Never heard of Dan Ellington. And had never heard the term Obamagate before yesterday. 

Whether you or others in the OOB Club believe me or not, I really don't care, the folks in the other Club I belong to on here believe me.  I have no reason to lie about anything.

I haven't watched any News or News channel or News website more than 5 minutes at a time for the past 6 weeks or so.  Don't really plan to change that practice any time soon.

Edited May 15, 2020 by gonzoron

[Howe]

6 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

Never heard of Dan Ellington. And had never heard the term Obamagate before yesterday. 

Whether you or others in the OOB Club believe me or not, I really don't care, the folks in the other Club I belong to on here believe me.  I have no reason to lie about anything.

I haven't watched any News or News channel or News website more than 5 minutes at a time for the past 6 weeks or so.  Don't really plan to change that practice any time soon.

Dann Ellenwood is the member who referenced Obamagate.

We are aware you receive most of your CNN, MSNBC, Vox, Guardian and mainstream media neo-liberal information via Facebook and Reddit.

[gonzoron]

11 minutes ago, Howe said:

We are aware you receive most of your CNN, MSNBC, Vox, Guardian and mainstream media neo-liberal information via Facebook and Reddit.

Who is this "we"? The other voices in your head? Do they all have the mental capacity of a 10 year old like you?

14 minutes ago, Howe said:

Dann Ellenwood is the member who referenced Obamagate.

I know. He's a friend of mine.