With the latest revelation, the FBI’s “Russiagate” investigation now stands exposed as worse than amateurish — and more like a search-and-destroy mission.
Destroy the Trump administration, that is — not actual US enemies.
Lawyers for ex-Gen. Michael Flynn released just-unsealed documents that suggest the FBI abused its power to take out President Trump’s first national security adviser.
Two FBI agents interviewed Flynn at the White House on Jan. 24, 2017, just days after the inauguration. The claim that he’d lied to those agents about his contacts with the Russian ambassador triggered a Beltway fury that forced him to quit, ending his career.
Late that year, Flynn pleaded guilty to making false statements in the meeting, though he’s now trying to withdraw his plea.
He clearly has reason to. The latest: Ahead of the meeting, Bill Priestap, then FBI head of counterintelligence, worked on a game plan. “What’s our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?” go his handwritten notes.
“Get him fired?” The mere fact that this seemed a possible goal is damning — especially since the meeting plainly was an ambush: The FBI skipped the usual heads-up to the White House Counsel’s Office about the interview, a courtesy that surely would’ve ensured that Flynn couldn’t be tricked.
Then-FBI chief Jim Comey is even on tape, publicly bragging about that trick.
And one of the two agents was Peter Strzok — later fired for misconduct after text messages surfaced in which he laid bare his contempt for Trump.
The tricks didn’t start with Flynn. For example, Inspector General Michael Horowitz found “significant omissions and inaccurate information” in the applications used to spy on former Trump adviser Carter Page.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s decision to prosecute Flynn for making those false statements now looks outrageous, too. Not to mention the suppression-of-evidence problem — concealing the Priestap notes and other damning evidence of bias.
Indeed, the whole idea that Flynn — the incoming national security adviser — could somehow be breaking the law by talking to the Russian ambassador was always absurd. But Obama holdovers at Justice pretended it could leave him open to blackmail, and so helped engineer his ouster.
Flynn is guilty of some bad judgment on other fronts. But none of that excuses an FBI frame, or the Mueller team’s later use of that outrageous setup to prosecute Flynn.
Let’s hope US Attorney John Durham, who’s been looking into this whole debacle, reports back soon on this appalling mess.