The handwritten notes of disgraced former FBI agent Peter Strzok indicate that President Barack Obama was directly involved at the outset in the investigation targeting Michael Flynn.
Strzok's notes, first disclosed in a federal court filing made by the DOJ on Tuesday, show Obama instructed then-FBI Director James Comey and then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates to investigate Flynn's phone calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Flynn at the time was incoming President Donald Trump's choice for national security adviser.
The notes appear to describe a Jan. 5, 2017 Oval Office meeting between Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Comey, Yates, and then-national security adviser Susan Rice.
Biden brings up the Logan Act when discussing Flynn at the meeting. In a previous media interview, the Democrat presidential candidate denied knowing anything about the "moves" to investigate Flynn.
The Jan. 5, 2017 meeting and its substance were confirmed in a Cover Your Ass (CYA) Inauguration Day email Rice wrote to herself.
"It was at this meeting, which was confirmed by testimony from Comey and Yates, that Obama gave guidance to key officials who would be tasked with protecting his administration’s utilization of secretly funded Clinton campaign research, which alleged Trump was involved in a treasonous plot to collude with Russia, from being discovered or stopped by the incoming administration," Sean Davis and Mollie Hemingway wrote for The Federalist on Wednesday.
Yates told the special counsel that Obama broke the news of Flynn’s phone calls with Kislyak to her during the Jan. 5 meeting. Rice detailed further involvement from Obama. “President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia,” she wrote in her email.
The new notes, which record Comey’s accounting to Strzok of the meeting’s substance, "constitute definitive evidence that Obama himself was personally directing significant aspects of a criminal investigation into his political enemy’s top foreign policy adviser," Davis and Hemingway noted.
A rough transcript of the unredacted portion of the notes:
NSA-D-DAG = [Flynn cuts?]. Other countries“Make sure you look at things and have the right people on it,” Obama is quoted as saying.
D-DAG: lean forward on [unclass?]
VP: “Logan Act”
P: These are unusual times
VP: I’ve been on the intel cmte for ten years and I never
P: Make sure you look at things + have the right people on it
P: Is there anything I shouldn’t be telling transition team?
D: Flynn –> Kislyak calls but appear legit
[illegible] Happy New Year. Yeah right
Comey’s description that the Flynn-Kislyak phone calls appear “legit” is also in the notes.
Davis and Hemingway note that "until this week, this exculpatory information was withheld from Flynn and his defense team, multiple congressional committees, and the American public. A lengthy campaign to illegally leak selectively edited defamatory information through media accessories damaged the Trump administration and spurred the appointment of a special counsel to investigate anyone associated with the Trump campaign."
According to Strzok’s notes, Biden explicitly referenced the Logan Act, an 18th-century law that forbids certain political speech from private citizens. The law, even if it were constitutional, would not apply to a national security adviser for the newly elected president of the United States.
“I know nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn,” Biden said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” when George Stephanopoulos asked what he knew of the FBI’s operations in early 2017. He later admitted that statement was false.
Attorney General William Barr has directed an investigation into the spying and leaking operation, led by U.S. Attorney John Durham. Barr has repeatedly stated that if Durham finds evidence of criminal wrongdoing that can be proved in a court beyond a reasonable doubt, then those responsible for the criminal acts will be held to account.
Free Press International
