Those in the Obama administration who leaked information about Flynn should be punished

Julie Kelly:

Two years ago this month, the set-up of Lt. General Michael Flynn began. And now that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has recommended the lightest sentence possible for Flynn’s crime of lying to the FBI in 2017, Americans are reminded that the real criminals—top officials at our nation’s most trusted agencies—have yet to be charged for illegally leaking classified information about Flynn to the news media in an effort to sabotage Donald Trump’s presidency.

Flynn was toward the top of Barack Obama’s enemies list. Forced out of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 by Obama loyalist James Clapper, Flynn joined the Trump campaign and became an outspoken critic of Obama and Hillary Clinton. Famously, he led the “lock her up” chants at the Republican National Convention. Ten days later, James Comey’s FBI opened up a counterintelligence probe into possible election collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Flynn was one of four campaign associates targeted by the agency for his “suspected Russian ties.” (It’s unclear whether Comey also obtained a FISA order on Flynn, as he had on Carter Page.)

Obama warned Trump not to hire Flynn during their post-election meeting in the Oval Office on November 10. When Trump defied that advice, Team Obama made him pay.

In December 2016, Flynn held several conversations with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States. Trump’s incoming national security advisor legally and appropriately spoke with Kislyak about a number of topics, including a scheduled call between the nation’s two leaders after the inauguration.

What Flynn may not have known at the time is that his conversations—and perhaps all of his communications—with the Russian diplomat were being monitored by James Comey’s FBI. Someone in the Obama Administration illegally leaked details about Flynn’s call to Washington Post reporter David Ignatius.

On January 12, Ignatius reported that “according to a senior U.S. government official, Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, the day the Obama Administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian officials as well as other measures in retaliation for the hacking. What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the U.S. sanctions?”

Ignatius was the first reporter in this election saga to introduce Americans to the Logan Act, an unused and potentially unconstitutional 1799 statute that bars U.S. citizens from interfering in foreign policy. Flynn was said to be in violation of it because allegedly he discussed U.S. sanctions with Kislyak. The article—cited in Mueller’s sentencing report on Flynn—set off a chain reaction, including an interview by the FBI and subsequent trip to the White House by acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who warned Trump’s lawyer that Flynn hadn’t told the truth about his discussions with Kislyak and therefore could be vulnerable to Russian blackmail. (LOL)

When Trump’s team defended Flynn from the allegations, holdovers in the Justice Department turned up the heat.

Another Washington Post article in February, which cited “nine current and former officials, who were in senior positions at multiple agencies at the time of the calls, [and] spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters,” claimed Flynn did indeed discuss sanctions contrary to his public statements. The details of the conversations were culled from secret intelligence reports and illegally leaked to the Post reporters. (One of the reporters, Adam Entous, is a reliable mouthpiece for Trump foes and the recipient of several illegal leaks of classified or nonpublic information.)

Flynn walked back his initial denial, saying he “couldn’t be certain the topic [of sanctions] never came up.” The day after Flynn resigned amid the growing controversy, the Post published another Entous story disclosing Yates’s private warnings to the White House counsel about Flynn’s vulnerability to Russian blackmail. (Trump had fired Yates for refusing to defend his so-called travel ban.) The February 13 Post story again relied on former and current officials “who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.”

Entous reported how three Trump foes—Yates, Clapper, and former CIA director John Brennan—feared Flynn had put himself in a “compromising position” by misleading Trump Administration officials about his discussions with Kislyak. The transcripts of the phone calls were never released. Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to one count of the lying to the FBI.
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Yates, Clapper, and Brennan should all be investigated for illegal leaks that were part of an operation to sabotage the Trump transition team.  The Washington Post gleefully participated in the attempt to sabotage the Trump administration and continues to do so to this day.   It mixes illegal leaks with moral preening.  To suggest that a transition team is violating the Logan Act is absurd.