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Anonymous ID: 430b6c May 11, 2020, 11:40 a.m. No.9125941   🗄️.is 🔗kun

Documents Shed Light On Media Leak Central To Michael Flynn Case

 

Documents released last week have helped fill in the timeline of events that preceded a leak to The Washington Post that is central to the federal case against Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser. House Intelligence Committee transcripts released Thursday show that several Justice Department officials, Obama White House officials and others in the administration denied being the source of the leak, which WaPo columnist David Ignatius published on Jan. 12, 2017. The Justice Department also released emails and interview transcripts that show when FBI officials began discussing the Logan Act, an obscure law that the FBI and Justice Department initially wanted to apply to Flynn’s case.

 

Ignatius made a passing reference in his column to Flynn’s phone calls in late December 2016 with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States. The veteran columnist cited a “senior U.S. government official” who said that Flynn called Kislyak multiple times on Dec. 29, 2016, the same day that the Obama administration announced it was kicking 35 Russian officials out of the United States as retaliation for the Russian government’s hacking of U.S. political campaigns. “What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the U.S. sanctions?” Ignatius asked in the column. He brought up the Logan Act, which “bars U.S. citizens from correspondence intending to influence a foreign government about ‘disputes’ with the United States.” “Was its spirit violated?” Ignatius asked of the law, which has never been successfully prosecuted. Ignatius’s column set off a chain of events that culminated in a White House interview with Flynn on Jan. 24, 2017.

 

The retired general pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI in that interview. The Justice Department filed a motion Friday to drop those charges, citing a slew of new documents in Flynn’s case. Sidney Powell, Flynn’s personal attorney, said that the sources behind the leak should be investigated for a possible conspiracy to target Flynn. “The leak of the Kislyak transcript is a felony that should be prosecuted to the max including a conspiracy charge for all those who decided to make it happen as part of the setup and framing of General Flynn,” she told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

 

Trey Gowdy, the former congressman, noted in an interview Sunday on Fox News that the penalty for leaking classified information such as the Flynn-Kislyak call is steeper than that for making false statements to the FBI. “That is a 10-year felony to disseminate classified information,” Gowdy said. “Michael Flynn was the victim of that crime.” Republicans have speculated about the leak in the three years since it appeared in Ignatius’s column.

 

The leak seemingly would have sprung between Jan. 4, 2017, when government officials first received a classified transcript of Flynn’s call with Kislyak, and Jan. 12, 2017. Flynn’s phone call with Kislyak was on Dec. 29, 2016, but a transcript of the phone call was not provided to the FBI until several days later.

 

Ignatius’s reference to the Logan Act could be a potential clue as to the source for the Flynn information. The Justice Department released FBI emails Thursday showing that top officials at the bureau researched the Logan Act nearly as soon as investigators learned of the Flynn-Kislyak transcript. The emails show that on Jan. 4, 2017, FBI attorney Lisa Page and deputy counterintelligence chief Peter Strzok exchanged emails regarding the Logan Act. Page forwarded one email on the topic to James Baker, who served as FBI general counsel. She also sent an email to an address that appears to belong to McCabe, the documents show.

https://dailycaller.com/2020/05/11/michael-flynn-leak-david-ignatius-washington-post/

Washington Post had 'divisions in the newsroom' over Flynn's Russia calls, before publishing opinion piece

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/washington-post-michael-flynn-russia-divisions-opinion