Flynn was set to 'audit' intelligence agencies

FPI / June 28, 2020

Michael Flynn, the Trump administration's first national security adviser, was planning an “audit” of U.S. intelligence agencies before being set up by the FBI in a 2017 interview which the bureau used to prosecute Flynn, attorney Sidney Powell said.

Flynn "was going to audit the intel agencies. That would have included some of the FBI’s work," Powell said during a Thursday appearance on Fox Business Channel’s Mornings with Maria.

"They were all absolutely terrified of an honest person getting in the job of national security adviser and finding out what they all had done, in addition to all the other atrocities," Powell said.

During the Obama administration, Flynn was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) from July 2012 until his forced retirement from in August 2014.

Michael Anton, a former National Security Council spokesman hired by Flynn, told Fox News last month that he believed the initial investigation into Flynn stemmed in part from a desire for "revenge" on the former head of the DIA.

"Flynn was in many ways an unpopular guy in the career services because he challenged received opinion and he made it plain he disagreed on a lot of things and he made it even plainer that as national security adviser, he was going to implement some real sweeping reforms and I think some people were afraid of that," Anton said.

Powell on Thursday was asked by host Maria Bartiromo if there were other things "that the public needs to see to better understand" Flynn's case.

Powell responded: "There are things that we still don’t have like the original Flynn 302, the original FBI report. The FBI has not produced that. If (FBI Director Christopher) Wray wants to improve anything, I think that would be the first place to start, and then the next draft of it too, because we know there were multiple alternations of it. But there’s no excuse for not having produced the first draft of the FBI 302."

A three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday ordered Judge Emmet Sullivan to dismiss the case against Flynn.

President Donald Trump suggested that disgraced former FBI Director James Comey and other former officials should "apologize" to Flynn "for what they have done to ruin his life."

Flynn's rights were violated and he should consider a lawsuit against the Department of Justice and former Obama administration officials, former U.S. attorney Brett Tolman said Friday on "Fox & Friends."

"That's why there is an action called a Bivens action. That is to go after a federal investigator that violates someone's constitutional rights. It's specific for that occasion and I hope is he looking at it strongly," said Tolman, an attorney who served as a federal prosecutor in Utah from 2006 to 2009.

Flynn’s lawyers said this week that newly uncovered notes from disgraced former FBI official Peter Strzok indicate that Comey appeared to downplay Flynn’s calls during the presidential transition with Russia's ambassador as “legit” during a meeting where then-President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden also weighed in.

On Wednesday, Powell filed the notes and claimed they produced “further stunning and exculpatory evidence” that was previously withheld from Flynn. Tolman concurred, saying that it points to the highest levels of the FBI, including Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe.

"That should concern everyone that they still, somehow, found a way to manipulate a case and bring it when they deemed his underlying action as being legitimate," said Tolman, explaining that McCabe "saved the case from being dismissed."

"Why does he do it? Because there is an absolute effort — call it collusion, conspiracy, whatever you want to say — that now we know goes as high as the vice president and the president. To not only withhold information about the investigation to the incoming president, but to go after the incoming president through their incoming national security adviser on an investigation that did not have a foundation to it," Tolman said.

"That's why they continued to prosecute him. Because they were doing what they could to try to prevent Donald Trump from getting into the Oval Office."

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