The Real Reason

For John, BLUF:  Maybe not the sole reason, but an important reason the "system" went after Lieutenant General Michael Flynn.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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The Real Reason for Flynn's First Firing

From PJ Media, by Mr Jim Fanell, 11 May 2020.

Here is the lede plus two:

The Department of Justice has requested, with prejudice, to withdraw the case former Obama administration officials built against retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn.  Americans now need to investigate why outgoing President Obama told incoming President Trump that after Kim Jong-un, the only other issue he had to worry about was General Flynn.  The answers will lead us to intelligence reform.

We don’t have a fully coherent explanation in the public discussion for why Director Comey’s FBI targeted General Flynn in a perjury trap.  The dominant media narrative asserts attacking General Flynn was a stepping-stone to weakening President Trump’s administration by targeting his appointed officials.  However, the Washington establishment’s fear and animus toward Mr. Trump only partially explains the FBI’s extraordinarily corrupt conspiracy targeting and trapping the retired war veteran general.

There’s more. The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC), of which the FBI is a member, deeply feared General Flynn because of his attempted reforms as director of the underperforming Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which for $22 billion dollars per year was not able to recognize Islamic terrorism, assess the People’s Republic of China (PRC) being engaged in expansionism, or warn of other threats to the United States, even as those issues were discussed in newspapers around the world.

It seems the US Intelligence Community is not the benign group one would expect it to be in a democracy.  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, back in early January 2017a, before the Trump Inauguration, told MSNBC Host Rachel Maddow, "Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you".

One would think that both Senator Schumer and Ms Maddow would have been alarmed by that thought.  Apparently not.  At the time I thought it was just senator Schumer talking like he was from New York City.  Now I am not so sure, and I am alarmed.  The fact is, if they can do it to President Trump they can do it to anybody, of any party.  The is not Democracy.  It is more like Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), or, before the rise of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish General Staff.  Recall that when there was some question of who would be the new Turkish Prime Minister, in 1993, the head of the Turkish General Staff paid a visit to Ms Tansu Çiller, signaling her acceptability to the Turkish General Staff, the protector of the Constitution.

Frankly, the idea that the Intelligence Community in the United States might put its thumb on the scale of Presidential Election should be anathema to all believers in Democracy.  The fact that Senator Schumer or Journalist Rachel Maddow accepts this idea with equanimity should be additionally disturbing to us all.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff