Michael Flynn has been labeled a Russian stooge because he sat next to Russian President Vladimir Putin at a Russia Today (RT) dinner. Critics point that dinner as “Exhibit A” that he was clearly a Kremlin puppet.
US Green Party candidate Jill Stein was also in attendance.
However, what’s not being
Solomon claims his sources have told him the contents of a classified briefing to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) in May 2017, which Grassley begged to be released to the public.
Grassley wrote in an August 25, 2017 letter to James Mattis and DIA Director Gen. Vincent Stewart:
“It appears the public release of this information would not pose any ongoing risk to national security. Moreover, the declassification would be in the public interest, and is in the interest of fairness to Lt. Gen. Flynn.”
Via The Hill:
Were the information Grassley requested made public, America would have learned this, according to my sources:
- Before Flynn made his infamous December 2015 trip to Moscow — as a retired general and then-adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign — he alerted his former employer, the DIA.
- He then attended a “defensive” or “protective” briefing before he ever sat alongside Vladimir Putin at the Russia Today (RT) dinner, or before he talked with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
- The briefing educated and sensitized Flynn to possible efforts by his Russian host to compromise the former high-ranking defense official and prepared him for conversations in which he could potentially extract intelligence for U.S. agencies such as the DIA.
- When Flynn returned from Moscow, he spent time briefing intelligence officials on what he learned during the Moscow contacts. Between two and nine intelligence officials attended the various meetings with Flynn about the RT event, and the information was moderately useful, about what one would expect from a public event, according to my sources.
To put it simply – when Barack Obama’s former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates publicly said Michael Flynn had possibly been “compromised” by Moscow, the public was denied the real context surrounding the dinner as the Justice Department conveniently remained silent.
The Hill’s John Solomon also notes that: “Rather than a diplomatic embarrassment bordering on treason, Flynn’s conduct at the RT event provided some modest benefit to the U.S. intelligence community, something that many former military and intelligence officers continue to offer their country after retirement when they keep security clearances.”
Via The Hill:
Would the central character in a Russian election hijack plot actually self-disclose his trip in advance? And then sit through a briefing on how to avoid being compromised by his foreign hosts? And then come back to America and be debriefed by U.S intelligence officers about who and what he saw?
And would a prosecutor recommend little or no prison time for a former general if that former military leader truly had compromised national security?
Highly unlikely
Solomon writes “there’s no sugar-coating the mistakes Flynn did make” and that Flynn, did, by his own admission mislead the FBI and VP Mike Pence – and he didn’t file foreign-lobbying paperwork for money he received from Turkish business (having said that, neither did “Steele Dossier” author/ ex-British spy Christopher Steele, who influenced the 2016 US presidential election with his largely unverified anti-Trump opposition research).
With all that,
As The Hills John Solomon puts it, “the first accounts of the Russia-Flynn story — like many others in the still-unproven collusion narrative — should be amended to reflect that the retired general acted like a patriot, not a traitor, when he visited Moscow for the RT event.”
Report by Jane Mitchell for MilneNews.com
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