With the Justice Department moving to drop charges against Gen. Mike Flynn, pretty much the entire “RussiaGate” investigation stands exposed as a fraud. But will any of the witch-hunters pay?
Lefties are already claiming that Attorney General William Barr is simply playing politics, but the facts say otherwise. Brandon Van Grack, a top Justice Department prosecutor and former member of special counsel Bob Mueller’s team, was withdrawn from the Flynn case (indeed, many of his cases) earlier Thursday because he’d plainly abused his power by withholding bombshell evidence from the defense and the court.
Flynn’s supposed crime was lying to FBI agents in a January 2017 interview at the White House. Yet the concealed evidence included 1) a top FBI official’s notes suggesting the entire purpose of the interview was to catch Flynn in a lie, or get him to admit to a technical violation of the Logan Act — all in order to force him from office. And 2) an internal Justice Department memo, from the day before that interview, calling on the FBI to close the Flynn investigation because agents had dug up absolutely no wrongdoing.
In fact, they already had the transcript of Flynn’s call with the Russian ambassador that was the supposed reason for the interview — and knew he’d said nothing improper, just things an incoming national-security adviser should discuss.
Now-disgraced agent Peter Strzok intervened to keep the case open anyway and proceed to the interview, which even then-FBI chief Jim Comey later admitted was in violation of multiple standard procedures.
Yet both Strzok and the other agent in the interview left agreeing that Flynn hadn’t attempted any deception at all. It was months later that prosecutors working under Mueller decided that he had lied — and proceeded to nearly bankrupt Flynn with legal fees, then threaten to prosecute his son, before the general finally agreed to plead guilty.
And this is hardly the only recent eye-opener: Soon-to-be-released transcripts of 2017-18 House Intelligence Committee interviews reportedly show that the FBI’s Russia investigation had come up empty all across the board before President Trump even took office.
Ironically, current Intel Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has apparently been pushing to prevent the release — perhaps because he for years has claimed he saw “direct evidence” of Trump-Russia collusion that neither the FBI nor even Mueller’s endless probe ever found.
It seems that none of the 53 witnesses interviewed by the committee — including Obama officials Jim Clapper, Loretta Lynch, Sam Power, Susan Rice, Sally Yates and Andrew McCabe — said they’d seen any evidence of collusion.
Indeed, it looks like the only “evidence” the FBI ever had was the hearsay claims (which various Russians were paid to make) in the opposition-research dossier that Hillary Clinton’s campaign commissioned — a fact that the FBI and Justice Department concealed from the courts even as it was the only basis for their wiretap requests.
No wonder Schiff is trying to delay: Democrats need all this stuff swept under the rug until after Election Day.