“How brazen they are sitting in the Oval Office on January 5th and saying they might not share intelligence with the incoming administration. And you know what that means? That means they didn’t want to give it to General Flynn.” said Washington lawyer, a former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Joe diGenova, during a Monday interview on the radio show, “Mornings on the Mall.”
How brazen indeed. And how foolish for then-National Security Advisor Susan Rice to memorialize it in an email to herself shortly after President Trump’s inauguration two weeks later.
Ever since this email was discovered in February 2018, the takeaway phrase “by the book” began to raise eyebrows. At the time, Sen. Lindsey Graham told Fox News, “I think that’s odd and disturbing because we know the investigation regarding the Trump campaign was anything but by the book.”
And, following the inclusion of the Special Counsel’s interview with former acting Attorney General Sally Yates in the DOJ’s motion to dismiss the Flynn case, the January 5, 2016 Oval Office meeting has moved to center stage. Thus, Rice’s email has come under direct scrutiny.
Those present at this consequential meeting included President Obama, Vice President Biden, then-FBI Director James Comey, then-CIA Director John Brennan, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Yates and Rice.
Following the initial briefing, Obama asked Yates and Comey to “stay behind.” He told them he was aware of Flynn’s phone calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about sanctions. Obama “specified that he did not want any additional information on the matter, but was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently, given the information.”
Translated: They were discussing how to prevent the new administration from finding out they’d been spied on. Specifically, Obama did not want Flynn to find out what his administration had been up to.
The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway points out that Obama also provided “guidance about how to perpetuate the Russia collusion theory investigations” during the January 5 meeting.
The Email h/t Patriot Post
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