“THE MOST HIDEOUS CONDUCT I’VE EVER SEEN”
by Sharon Rondeau
(Feb. 2, 2020) — In a Friday interview with former Trump White House strategist Dr. Sebastian Gorka and current host of the “America First” radio show, Atty. Sidney Powell, who represents Trump’s first national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn (Ret), said that the DOJ continues to prosecute a non-case against her client even as it amended a recent recommendation of 0-6 months’ jail time to no incarceration.
The latter had been the Justice Department’s prior recommendation after Flynn was charged with lying to the FBI and accepted a “guilty” plea in late 2017. Flynn was originally represented by attorneys from Covington & Burling, who Powell wrote in a court filing might have been responsible for an “inaccuracy” for which the government has attempted to blame her client.
A former federal prosecutor herself, Powell is author of “Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice,” published in 2018.
The charge against Flynn arose from an impromptu conversation in Flynn’s then-White House office on January 24, 2017, the the third full day of the Trump administration. At that time, two FBI agents, admittedly “sent” by then-FBI Director James Comey, questioned Flynn about his telephone calls during the presidential transition period with then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
After portions of Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak were leaked to David Ignatius of The Washington Post shortly thereafter, Flynn was forced to resign based on what appeared to be an inconsistency between what he reportedly told Vice President-Elect Michael Pence and, conversely, the two FBI agents, about his conversations with Kislyak.
In the course of the Trump-Russia “collusion” investigation which followed Comey’s firing in May 2017, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team interviewed Flynn 20 times, Powell wrote in the January 22 brief. Mueller’s probe ended in March of last year with no charges of “collusion” or “conspiracy” leveled against any American. However, Flynn, George Papadopoulos and several other Americans were charged and accepted plea deals on “process” crimes emanating from their interviews with the FBI and/or Mueller’s team of prosecutors.
A report released December 9 by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) confirmed that Flynn was placed under U.S. government surveillance prior to the 2016 presidential election. An early supporter of Donald Trump, in 2014 Flynn was terminated from the Obama regime while heading the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) likely over differences in combating Islamic jihadism.
Among the government’s transgressions against Flynn, Powell said in a January 16 interview with WMAL’s Larry O’Connor, are “retaliation” and naming Flynn as a “co-conspirator” in a case involving his former business partner, Bajin Rafiekian. In late September, the federal judge presiding over the case overruled Rafiekian’s convictions on FARA violations and ordered a new trial.
Having represented Flynn since June, Powell has declared him “not guilty” of any federal crime and claimed that the prosecution has withheld exculpatory evidence from her team.
For approximately a year prior to the release of the OIG report, Papadopoulos claimed on Twitter and elsewhere that he, Flynn, onetime Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, and former Trump informal advisor Carter Page were placed under government surveillance in 2016 or earlier. In a recent podcast, Papadopoulos claimed that the surveillance began with foreign intelligence services, which he said then funneled the information they collected to the FBI.
The OIG report confirms that a representative of an “FFG,” or “friendly foreign government,” relayed to the FBI statements Papadopoulos allegedly made at a London bar in early May 2016 concerning Hillary Clinton’s missing emails, touching off the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign known as “Crossfire Hurricane.”
In light of his own “guilty” plea from October 2017 and the release of the Horowitz report, Papadopoulos, who spent 12 days in federal prison as part of his sentence, stated in December that he and his attorneys are “exploring the options.” At the same time, Papadopoulos is running for Congress in California’s 25th district, seeking to replace Katie Hill, who resigned in October.
On January 14, Flynn took the first step in withdrawing his plea. Although sentencing was scheduled for January 28, it is now set for February 27.
Papadopoulos also contended in the podcast that the FBI “embedded” one of its agents in the Trump campaign, a claim the OIG report appears to refute. However, the report cites the FBI for “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in surveillance warrants obtained from the FISA court on Carter Page. In a striking development confirmed on January 21, the FISA court declared the latter two of a total of four warrants on Page “invalid” due to “material misstatements and omissions.”
Page has since filed suit against the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Chicago-based law firm Perkins Coie for alleged “FISA abuse.”
“One of the most outrageous things,” Powell told Gorka of the government’s conduct toward Flynn, was that “the FBI inserted an agent back in August 17, 2016 [sic] into what was supposed to be a sample presidential daily briefing for candidate Trump, and only two other people were there, one of whom was Michael Flynn. They sent the agents secretly into that briefing with 12 other people that routinely do it, for the express purpose of taking notes and documenting and reporting back anything that Gen. Flynn said and to get a baseline read on his mannerisms and all that, because they were already planning to make him a subject of a later interview if President Trump won…”
She went on to say that on August 15, 2016, former FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, one of the two who interviewed Flynn on January 24, 2017, and former FBI attorney Lisa Page exchanged text messages about “the insurance policy they discussed in McCabe’s office.”
“McCabe” is former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was fired in March 2018 and is now a CNN commentator. The meaning of the “insurance policy” Strzok and Lisa Page discussed has been the subject of controversy in the media and on the part of the principals involved.
Of the FBI, Powell told Gorka that on August 16, 2016, “they opened the ‘investigation’ on Michael Flynn, and the day after that, the agent who can’t be named by me because he’s under a protective order…goes in to the presidential daily briefing to spy on Flynn and Trump.”
As reported by Sara A. Carter, in an additional filing last week, Flynn wrote, “I am innocent of this crime, and I request to withdraw my guilty plea. After I signed the plea, the attorneys returned to the room and confirmed that the [special counsel’s office] would no longer be pursuing my son, FLYNN.”
Flynn was reportedly told that having counsel present was unnecessary during a call from McCabe asking for the impromptu interview three years ago. On Thursday, Gorka asked Powell if it were accurate that “the entrapment” the FBI allegedly used against Flynn was “the most vulnerable scenario possible to Gen. Flynn,” to which Powell responded, “Oh, yes; actually, he didn’t even ask about a lawyer. He doesn’t recall the issue of a lawyer coming up at all; it was just that McCabe wanted to know if a couple of agents could stop by and talk to him about some things. It was very vague; it was not as detailed as McCabe’s memo after the fact, just CYA, makes it out to be. Very short, very casual, no big deal, and of course, the FBI had just been there the day before briefing people on different things.”
She continued:
So the main thing was he had no idea he was under investigation, and the record that we’ve pieced together from the government itself shows that they deliberately schemed and planned how to interview him without him knowing that he was actually being interviewed or that he was the subject. They wanted to keep it casual; they wanted to make sure he was relaxed; in case their scheme didn’t work, they didn’t want any hard feelings later if he stayed in the White House as national security adviser. It is absolutely devious and underhanded and deceitful, the most hideous conduct I’ve ever seen FBI and government agents conduct.
Gorka responded by stating that as a result of “an innocent chat,” Flynn is “millions, millions of dollars out of pocket and charged with a felony, a three-star combat veteran, former director of the DIA; that is the America we inherited from President Obama…”
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Remember, when talking about the FBI, public corruption (reportedly the agency’s primary area of investigation), and other designated violations of federal law (such as identity theft, mass shootings, banking and tax fraud, etc), ALWAYS ASK YOURSELF FIRST- WHAT DID THE FBI KNOW AND WHEN DID THEY KNOW IT?
And, too, you might also consider whether the CIA was involved, and, if so, what exactly was the nature of their involvement and their connection to the matter?
OF COURSE, MY FAVORITE EXAMPLE IS THE CASE OF “BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA” (public corruption, identity theft, election fraud, treason, etc)!