Why Obama, the FBI, and the CIA Orchestrated the Takedown of General Michael Flynn – Part 2
Guest post by Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D.
This article is the concluding Part 2 of a two-part series investigating why President Obama, the FBI, and the CIA masterminded a plot to destroy the career of Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn. Part 1 covered the period up to and including Obama’s decision to fire General Flynn as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency on April 30, 2014. Part 2 covers Obama’s continued determination to ruin General Flynn’s career. This Part 2 resumes the analysis, beginning with January 4, 2017, the day the FBI cleared Flynn of “Russian collusion” in the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation. Part 2 concludes on December 1, 2017, when Flynn pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the FBI concerning his telephone conversations with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the Trump transition months following the 2016 presidential election.
During the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence investigation of Trump, the FBI opened Crossfire Razor, a special sub-investigation aimed at General Flynn. On January 4, 2017, a few days before Trump’s inauguration, the FBI closed its criminal counterintelligence investigation of General Flynn after finding no incriminating information. The FBI’s “case closed” memo effectively ended the FBI investigation into the Halper allegations against Flynn regarding Russia Svetlana Lokhova.
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On the same day, Peter Strzok ordered a still undisclosed associate to keep the Hurricane Razor counterintelligence investigation against Flynn open. Strzok apparently realized that while the FBI had closed the criminal investigation of Flynn, the FBI could continue the Crossfire Razor counterintelligence investigation of Flynn if a different predicate for the investigation could be found.
Peter Strzok’s handwritten notes disclosed that the next day, January 5, 2017, Obama held a meeting in the Oval. Vice President Joe Biden, CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James B. Comey, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice attended the meeting. The cast of characters at the January 5 Oval Office meeting included the chief co-conspirators in the Obama coup d’état. Assembled here, we had the prime movers of Obama’s plot in control of the DOJ, the FBI, and the CIA, together with Susan Rice, the person Obama relied upon to make sure clandestine schemes were adequately implemented and leaked to the press. The coup d’état conspirators knew the original plan to defeat Trump in the 2016 election had failed. The new plan Strzok was suggesting suggested if the co-conspirators could find a way to reopen the Flynn investigation, the co-conspirators might prevent Trump from being inaugurated. At worst, the Flynn investigation, if fruitful, would boost the conspirators’ developing plan to remove Trump from the presidency before the 2020 election. The subject of the discussion was Strzok’s proposal to reopen the Flynn investigation of a December 2016 telephone conversation between General Flynn, then the appointed national security advisor for the incoming Trump administration, and Sergey Kislyak, then the Russian ambassador to the United States.
Strzok’s notes indicate that the co-conspirators had a problem restarting Flynn’s investigation after the FBI exonerated him in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. Comey affirmed the FBI had determined that Flynn’s telephone conversations with Kislyak appeared legitimate. Yet, Vice President Biden persisted, suggesting that Flynn might be investigated under the Logan Act, an 18th-century law that forbids political speech from private citizens—a law under which nobody has ever been prosecuted. Biden apparently did understand that as newly appointed national security advisor to the new president, the Logan Act would not apply to Flynn. Strzok’s mention of Biden in the memo exposed Biden’s previous denials as a lie that he knew anything about the investigation into Flynn. The purpose of the meeting seems to have been to find a way to continue investigating Flynn on whatever legal grounds the co-conspirators could contrive.
Strzok’s notes make clear that the January 5 meeting found inspiration, probably on a suggestion Strzok advanced, that if the FBI could get Flynn to lie about his telephone conversations with Kislyak, the FBI could indict Flynn for lying to the FBI. Had Strzok reviewed the transcripts of the various Flynn telephone conversations with Kislyak, he knew that Flynn had discussed the sanctions Obama had levied against 35 Russian intelligence operatives in retaliation for Russian cyber interference in hacking the DNC emails during the 2016 presidential election. Strzok would also have known that Kislyak had assured Flynn that Russia would not retaliate. This part of the Flynn-Kislyak telephone calls would easily have titillated Strzok’s counterintelligence instincts that the Russian collusion investigation might not yet be dead. Strzok’s boss was Bill Priestap, the counterintelligence chief. In January 2017, Priestap’s handwritten note made after meeting with FBI Director Comey and Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe shows the new counterintelligence “goal” was to “get him [Flynn] to lie” so the FBI could “prosecute him or get him fired.”
At the conclusion of the Oval Office meeting with Obama on January 5, 2017, Obama asked Yates and Comey to stay behind. Obama told Yates and Comey that he did not want any further information on Flynn, but he saw no reason to stop the FBI investigation of Flynn. On January 12, 2017, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius broke the story about Flynn’s calls with Kislyak. Ignatius revealed the December 29 phone conversations in which Flynn and Kislyak had discussed the Obama sanctions. The mainstream media picked up the story, charging that Flynn’s multiple phone calls to Kislyak on December 29 confirmed Trump’s collusion with Russia to win the 2016 election. On October 25, 2019, attorney Sidney Powell, then Flynn’s attorney, charged that James Baker, the director of the Pentagon Office of Net Assessment (ONA), reputedly “Halper’s handler” at ONA, leaked the Kislyak story to Ignatius at a lunch meeting with Ignatius on January 10, 2017. The meeting with Obama on January 5, 2017, was the critical decision point that gave Strzok permission to run the “perjury trap” against Flynn that led to Flynn pleading guilty on December 1, 2017, in federal court to one count of lying to the FBI.
Now for the ultimate question in the Flynn case: Why was Obama so determined to destroy General Flynn? Obviously, it was critical to the Obama administration to have Flynn removed as President Trump’s National Security Advisor. On November 17, 2016, Admiral Mike Rogers, then the Director of the National Security Agency (NSA), traveled to Trump Tower in New York City to meet with President-elect Trump on his initiative without the Obama administration’s authorization. Rogers warned Trump that the Obama administration had the NSA secretly wiretapping the Trump transition team. After meeting with Rogers, Trump moved the transition team to Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Admiral Rogers called General Flynn “the best intelligence officer of the last 20 years.”
Lieutenant General Flynn was the top military intelligence officer in the Department of Defense, Obama’s Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for two years, and one of the nation’s foremost experts on cyber security, national security, and international affairs. He also had the courage at the helm of the DIA to criticize Obama publicly for Obama’s mishandling of al-Qaeda and ISIS. Flynn had the ability to gather the information and expose Obama, Brennan, and Comey using the law enforcement and intelligence agencies of the United States to conduct a rogue political operation aimed at taking down anyone who opposed Obama, specifically Donald J. Trump. As Trump’s national security advisor, General Flynn would have made a powerful team working with Admiral Rogers as Trump’s director of the National Security Agency. Flynn and Rogers would likely have exposed the crimes the Obama administration had committed using the NSA to spy on political enemies and abusing the FISA Court process to spy on those working in the Trump 2016 presidential campaign. Flynn would almost certainly have been willing to recommend criminal prosecutions for the Obama co-conspirators who used various federal government agencies to unmask the names of Trump supporters under NSA surveillance. In exposing the unmasking, Flynn would have named journalists who had proved themselves ready and willing to use leaked information to write inflammatory anti-Trump stories.
As Trump’s national security advisor, Flynn would have the experience and knowledge requisite to equipping Trump with the details of the Obama coup d’état. As president, Trump had the speaking ability and the bully pulpit needed to explain to the American public how President Obama, the prime mover in the coup d’état that ultimately became the Mueller investigation, had committed high crimes and misdemeanors.
An argument can be made that a former president can be impeached by the House of Representatives and tried by the Senate. As Trump’s national security advisor, Flynn would have had access to all the electronic communication occurring among the conspirators, going back to the earliest days of Obama’s first term as president. Obama, Brennan, and Flynn targeted General Flynn after Trump’s 2016 election win out of fear they would be exposed as traitors.
When Obama warned Trump not to have Flynn join him as his national security advisor, Obama’s concern was that Flynn would use this new position to reverse Obama’s tilt toward Islam. Flynn almost certainly would have ramped up the war against radical Islamic terrorists and unwound Obama and John Kerry’s deal with Iran on nuclear weapons. But Obama’s more profound fear had to be that Flynn would expose how they had utilized the justice and intelligence agencies of the nation for political purposes in accusing Trump of colluding with Russia to steal the DNC emails. The Obama-led coup d’état conspirators meeting secretly in the Oval Office on January 5 had to feel desperation. They knew they could not remove Trump from the presidency if General Flynn assumed office in the White House. As national security advisor to Trump, Flynn could have developed charges of high crimes and misdemeanors, possibly rising to the level of treason, against Obama and everyone else in the Oval Office meeting with Obama that day.
On May 7, 2020, with the Mueller investigation ended and the presidential election only months away, the FBI dropped the criminal charges against Flynn. Once Flynn’s legal team had exposed Strzok’s plan to entrap Flynn over the Kislyak telephone calls, Flynn had to be exonerated. After four financially and emotionally destructive years of imprisonment, Flynn was finally free.
In 2020, Jerome Corsi published Coup d’État: Exposing Deep State Treason, from which much of this article was drawn. In 2019, he published Silent No More: How I Became a Political Prisoner of Mueller’s “Witch Hunt,” explaining how the Mueller prosecutors confronted Dr. Corsi for over two months for hours at a time in a closed conference room with no windows. Dr. Corsi effectively ended the Mueller “Russian Collusion” investigation when he refused to take the Mueller prosecutors’ plea deal, alleging he had lied to the FBI. The FBI never indicted Dr. Corsi—further proof the Mueller prosecutors were the ones telling the lies.