2. Why was Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn unmasked by Obama's chief of staff, Joe Biden, Susan Rice, and others?
Did they suspect Flynn of collaborating with an adversary? (NOthat was a red herring, not the real reason)
–Was it a fishing expedition, hoping to find dirt on Trump so they could obstruct his presidency? (POSSIBLY, but that wasn't the fundamental reason either?)
–Were they trying to create a cause of action for the eventual appointment of a special counsel to continually investigate a President (and his NSI, Flynn) who had done nothing wrong? YES!
Their plan required demolishing the Trump presidency.
It was bad enough that the people actually elected Trump.
They had to either (1) impeach Trump during his 1st term (they tried), or (2) prevent Trump from having a 2nd term.
They had to create a fake narrative that would make Trump look bad.
Although [they] actually collaborated with individuals in Russia and elsewhere (e.g. Hillary selling the uranium and selling classified military secrets and Clinton Foundation receiving a $200M payment from Browder's Russian company AFTER Hillary arranged for the uranium sale, and Bill Clinton receiving a ridiculously large honorarium for giving a brief speech in Russia),
their tactic was to attribute Russian collaboration to Trump. To deflect it from themselves. So that if Trump tried to defend himself with the truth (did not collaborate with Russia to win 2016 election), [they] could say, "Look, Trump is trying to shift the blame". So the accusations against Trump were 180 degrees opposite of what really happened and this was totally on purpose, contrived, anticipating how the defense against baseless accusations would go in a fake hoaxed-up indictment proceeding.
No doubt they had the indictment in mind when unmasking Flynn. They HAD to create a pretext to surveil Flynn and 2nd-hand and 3rd-hand associations also scooped up in the illicit spying, hopefully scooping up all of Donald Trump's and his family's comms as well.
The criminal case against Flynn was also part of the plan. They had to paint Flynn as a bad guy, a traitor, in order to smear Trump.
The court proceeding also perhaps enabled some of the documentation to remain secret for a longer time than otherwise.
Rosenstein and Mueller's special counsel also managed to drag the thing on longer so that if Trump publicly unearthed proof that the allegations against him were false, and the allegations against [them] were true, [they] could deflect by saying Trump said this solely for political reasons because he was under examination by Mueller's special counsel.
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