Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Flynn's departure - a roundup of views

Eli Lake at Bloomberg calls it a "political assassination":

It's not even clear that Flynn lied. He says in his resignation letter that he did not deliberately leave out elements of his conversations with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak when he recounted them to Vice President Mike Pence. The New York Times and Washington Post reported that the transcript of the phone call reviewed over the weekend by the White House could be read different ways. One White House official with knowledge of the conversations told me that the Russian ambassador raised the sanctions to Flynn and that Flynn responded that the Trump team would be taking office in a few weeks and would review Russia policy and sanctions. That's neither illegal nor improper.  
What's more, the Washington Post reported Monday night that last month Sally Yates, then the acting attorney general, had informed the White House that Flynn discussed sanctions with Kislyak and that he could be susceptible to blackmail because he misled Pence about it. If it was the lie to Pence that sunk Flynn, why was he not fired at the end of January?
A better explanation here is that Flynn was just thrown under the bus. His tenure as national security adviser, the briefest in U.S. history, was rocky from the start. When Flynn was attacked in the media for his ties to Russia, he was not allowed by the White House to defend himself. Over the weekend, he was instructed not to speak to the press when he was in the fight for his political life. His staff was not even allowed to review the transcripts of his call to the Russian ambassador.  
Ben Shapiro at the Daily Wire offers five thoughts on the matter:


  • This won't answer questions about the Trump team's ties to Russia
  • The Trump administration's going to have serious leak trouble
  • At best, there's some confusion in the Trump administration
  • Democrats, as always, aren't interested in the truth
  • The media are drooling
David French at NRO advises the administration to say "no" to David Petraeus as a replacement. Regardless of how distinguished his service has been on balance, his violation of the law in passing along his classified notebooks to Paula Broadwell is an immediate disqualifier.





5 comments:

  1. Under the Bus, that will describe this administration for some time.

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  2. Aww, and he seemed like such a nice little hawk. Beta hawks wait in the wings, licking their stings. Under the Bus and what happened to Maj. Gen Flynn are also known as Instant Karma and it got him.

    Flynn launched a blistering attack on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. He led the crowd in chants of "Lock her up!" and called for her to withdraw from the race, saying that "if I did a tenth of what she did, I'd be in jail today."[56][57] He repeated in subsequent interviews that she should be "locked up".[58] While campaigning for Trump, Flynn also referred to Clinton as the "enemy camp".[56] Six days after the speech Flynn stirred up a controversy by retweeting antisemitic remarks, which he later apologized for and claimed was unintentional.[59] During the election campaign, Flynn used Twitter to post links to negative stories about Clinton, including fake news.[13]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_T._Flynn

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  3. Well, she was a criminal and she was the enemy camp.

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  4. Such was the meme. I don't think, I know her administration would have been much smoother, more peaceful, than what we are looking at now. Absurd is the word.

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  5. Live by the leaks, die by the leaks.

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