Andrew McCarthy of National Review observes that there appears to have been no basis for a criminal or intelligence probe of General Flynn:
Why would Flynn be the subject of an investigation by the FBI and the Justice Department?
We are told that the FBI was monitoring the phone calls of Russian ambassador Kislyak under FISA. Makes sense — he’s an overt foreign agent from a hostile government. Flynn called Kislyak on December 29, 2016. It was not a nefarious communication: Flynn was a top adviser of then-president-elect Trump, a part of the Trump transition team, and just three weeks from formally becoming the new president’s national-security adviser. His communications with Kislyak were just some of the many conversations Flynn was having with foreign officials.
No doubt the calls of other American officials who have perfectly valid reasons to call Russian diplomats have been intercepted. It is the FBI’s scrupulous practice to keep the identities of such interceptees confidential. So why single Flynn out for identification, and for investigation?
FBI agents did not need to “grill” Flynn in order to learn about the call — they had a recording of the call. They also knew there was nothing untoward about the call. We know that from the Times report — a report that suggests an unseemly conjoining of investigative power to partisan politics. The report informs us that as the FBI set its sights on Flynn, its agents were consulting with “Obama advisers.”
Interesting, no? Ever since Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump on November 8, Obama’s Democratic party had been pushing a narrative that “Putin hacked the election.” The narrative continues to have two major flaws.
First, while the Russian dictator may have preferred Trump to Clinton, there is no evidence that his Russian regime did anything to compromise the voting process. The media-Democrat complex has desperately sought to obscure this problem by emphasizing Putin’s likely role in publicizing embarrassing Democratic e-mail communications. Notwithstanding Democratic talking points, that is a far cry from “hacking” the voting process.
The second flaw is that, although Trump has made disturbingly flattering remarks about Putin, there is no evidence his campaign has given or promised Russia any actual accommodation in exchange for Putin’s favor. Democrats hope to erase this problem by finding something, anything, that could be spun as a quid pro quo. Obviously, they hoped the Flynn–Kislyak conversation would answer their prayers. No such luck. As the Times puts it: Obama officials asked the FBI if a quid pro quo had been discussed on the call, and the answer came back no, according to one of the officials, who like others asked not to be named discussing delicate communications. The topic of sanctions came up, they were told, but there was no deal. Asked not to be named discussing delicate communications.
That’s a good one. Let me translate: The officials don’t want you to know who they are because they are corrupt — (a) FISA intercepts are classified, so disclosing them to the press is a crime; (b) by revealing the Flynn–Kislyak conversation to the press, the “officials” inform the Russians that whatever countermeasures they are taking against U.S. surveillance have failed, assuring that the Russians will alter their tactics, making the job of our honorable intelligence agents more difficult; and (c) the FBI’s investigative powers are not supposed to be put in in the service of a political party’s effort to advance a partisan storyline, like “Putin hacked the election.”
So since there was no impropriety in Flynn’s call to the Russian ambassador, why did the Bureau continue investigating Flynn? Why did FBI agents interrogate him?
Curiouser and curiouser. Perhaps the Zerohedge insider is correct and the God-Emperor is simply using Flynn to smoke out the Deep State opposition. We’ll know that was the case if he eventually brings Flynn back into the administration in some capacity. It seems unlikely, but these are improbable times.