BREAKING NEWS: The Department of Justice (DOJ) has moved to drop the case of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. The DOJ has recommended to Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan to do the same who is overseeing the case. Judge Sullivan will still have to make the final determination to dismiss the case. That is a technical matter, but the big news with this is that the DOJ never drops a case.
This is a stunning development that comes after internal memos were released raising serious questions about the nature of the investigation that led to Flynn’s late 2017 guilty plea of lying to the FBI.
The announcement came in a court filing today, with the DOJ saying it is dropping the case after a considerable review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including newly recently discovered and disclosed information. The DOJ said it had concluded that Flynn’s interview by the FBI was “untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into General Flynn, and that the interview was conducted without any legitimate investigative basis.”
The DOJ decision would appear to put an end to that process. In the meantime, earlier today, the top prosecutor on the case, Brandon Van Grack, abruptly withdrew from the case, without explanation, in a brief filing with the court. That was telltale to saying this is a lie.
In my last Op-ed, “From Obama on Down, the Fix Was In,” I discussed how they maneuvered to remove General Mike Flynn, after only 24-days following his taking on the role as President Trump’s National Security Advisor.
Retired General Mike Flynn joined the Trump campaign in early 2016. Most people were not aware that Flynn served in multiple senior military intelligence positions within the Obama administration from 2009 to 2014 when he was forced out⏤fired by Obama in his role as Commander-in-Chief and General Flynn was his Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Obama and his staff felt Flynn was problematic and prone to what they thought were unorthodox ideas. Flynn had a reputation for having sharp elbows and holding of opinions at variance with those previously held by national security officials in the Obama administration⏤there was no dissent from his view.
Mike Flynn, the Army Intelligence Officer, began his military career in 1980 as an ROTC cadet and entered the active duty Army as a second lieutenant and an intelligence officer in 1981. Just a few years later, he went ashore with the U.S. forces liberating Grenada. That began a long career of operational combat assignments serving with the 82nd Airborne Division, XVIII Airborne Corps, and other elite military special operations units.
But it was in Iraq and Afghanistan where Flynn really shined. Flynn headed the intelligence operations of the Joint Special Operations Command in Baghdad, serving under General Stanley A. McChrystal. He was one of the main reasons al-Qaeda was hollowed out to a shell of what it once was. From there, as the Director for Intelligence at U.S. Central Command he continued his efforts across the region. When McChrystal took command of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan in 2009, he took Flynn with him as his intelligence chief.
Flynn was widely acknowledged by military and civilian leaders as the driving force behind one of the most effective anti-terrorist operations in modern history.
In 2012, President Obama appointed lifelong Democrat Flynn as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which is essentially the Pentagon’s internal CIA, its intelligence arm. During the Cold War, the DIA’s top mission was to assess Soviet military developments and armaments, which helped inspire Reagan’s defense buildup that won the Cold War. Then, as now, it was indispensable to our national security.
For Flynn, heading the agency, was supposed to be the capstone of a storied career. Through his tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mike Flynn had build a reputation as a brash and outspoken officer with an unusual talent for unraveling terrorist networks, and both his fiercest critics and his outspoken supporters praised his work from those wars and his career. Flynn built his effectiveness by surrounding himself with loyalists. In implementing his vision, he moved at light speed and did not tolerate it when subordinates didn’t move fast enough. As a senior officer he expected compliance and did not want any pushback.
Friction soon developed between Obama and Flynn, who refused to bend his experienced military judgment to suit Obama’s political needs. That started with Benghazi, which occurred soon after Flynn took command of DIA. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the world that the Benghazi attack was a spillover by an unruly mob angered by a video produced by an obscure, little-known California film producer. President Obama even stood before the United Nations and told the whole world the cover-up fairy-tale lie.
But of course, the military intelligence guys knew it was a heavily armed attack by trained combatants, and we all know now, Obama did nothing. And Flynn knew too. After he was re-elected in 2012 on his political narrative that bin Laden was dead and al-Qaeda was decimated, Obama conceded that the original movie story was untrue. Hillary Clinton, though, repeated the false political narrative about the movie to the faces of the grieving parents of the victims. If a Republican president had to admit that he had pressured professional military intelligence to alter their reports of known facts, the consequences would be incalculable. Flynn proceeded to address the truth.
In turn, not to fail our forces, Flynn set out to embolden and expand the incipient Defense Clandestine Service (DCS) – the military-civilian arm of the DIA that conducts espionage to fill the void of critical intelligence requirements for the U.S. military. Brennan, along with his Obama White House NSC cohorts countered Flynn’s efforts and colluded with congressional committees, threatened to reduce DIA’s funding, arguing that the Central Intelligence Agency already does the nation’s spying in support of the military. Of course, they really were not, thanks to Brennan.
Brennan’s CIA is quietly pushed the Armed Services committee along, hoping that Flynn’s DCS would be remembered by history as a failed power grab. Publicly, the Brennan’s CIA insists that the post-Afghanistan and Iraq war reorganization of its responsibilities – a de-emphasis on paramilitary operations and a refocusing on stealing secrets and strategic warning – it was not threatened by a new more powerful Pentagon intelligence agency, Flynn was merely doing his job by trying to ensure our military forces has the critical intelligence it required.
General Flynn focused on the need to destroy the ideology of radical Islamic terrorism against the position of Obama. Obama sought to ban the words “radical Islamic terrorism” from his administration. Flynn knew, and would not stop repeating the term, that those words were the true description of the enemy the military was fighting.
Flynn would not bend military intelligence to support Obama’s political narrative that al-Qaeda was in retreat and on the run with its leadership decimated because Flynn knew that the facts military intelligence had uncovered did not support Obama’s story. After Obama was re-elected, with the Democrat Party-controlled media repeating his political narrative, Obama fired the decorated combat veteran and career intelligence officer General Flynn.
Flynn has maintained that he was forced out as DIA’s Director for refusing to toe the Obama administration’s line. Congressman Devin Nunes (R-CA) who was Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said of Flynn, “They didn’t have an excuse to fire him, so they made it up …”
Certainly, the Obama approach and experience proved that Flynn was not afraid to butt-heads with the military and civilian establishment for the good of the country, and that was exactly what we needed in a national security advisor. Flynn’s years of experience enabled him to realize that Russia faced threats from radical Islamic terrorism that were similar to those America faced. He also knew that in certain respects that sharing information between the United States and Russia could be fruitful, much like President-elect Trump has stated in recent pronouncements. However, Flynn was also not been afraid of calling Russian President Vladimir Putin what he is; “a corrupt oligarch, a totalitarian dictator, and a thug.” It is this combination of realpolitik and staying true to our American values that set Flynn apart from others and that in and of itself made him uniquely qualified to advise Trump on all security matters⏤and Donald Trump knew that.
Both Trump and other like-minded international security experts and career U.S. national security experts, including myself expressed confidence in Flynn’s appointment as national security adviser, and Trump needed him and his views, his vision, and by all means his expertise.
It was well understood, even by those that did not support Trump that former President Obama had left a power vacuum throughout the world. Other hostile states, like Iran, have taken advantage of that vacuum. Our enemies were emboldened and have gotten away with murder all over the globe, while under Obama’s watch. But I can assure you that had President Trump been able to hold on to Mike Flynn as national security adviser, we would likely have moved even more quickly and smartly than we have to alter the course of events, and we would continue to have thrown the world’s hostile actors into retreat with American military strength.
Flynn clearly harked back to an ethos reminiscent of Reagan. The former president differed from Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and those after until President Trump in the way he unabashedly stood for American values by projecting strength boldly before the Soviet Union’s expansion. Yet Reagan also knew when U.S. and Soviet goals intersected, and his willingness to negotiate with them (albeit not on our core values) led to the signing of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987, which helped pave the way for the end of the Cold War.
President Trump, with his national security appointments, was perfectly poised to pursue President Reagan’s same ‘peace through strength’ policy. Most prominent in that regard was his choice for national security advisor, Lieutenant General Michael Flynn. Besides being a battle-hardened veteran with a long, storied career of defending the safety of the American people, Mike Flynn had the skills and background required to recreate Reagan’s national security legacy, which President Trump envisioned. The political-left, the Democrats, and the Deep State and the former Obama criminals knew that and sought to go scorched-earth on the retired General, abusing America’s intelligence capabilities, lying about and lying to the American people, and jeopardizing American security through their gutless and unscrupulous, disgusting and pathetic actions.
General Flynn would have been serving his country three decades after Reagan, as national security advisor, but his national security policy can best be described as Reaganesque. Peace through strength is the only way to protect America’s interests while firmly facing the myriad of security threats our country faces, from terrorism in the Middle East to Chinese expansion in the South China Sea. He would have served President Trump well as the man best suited to assume the crucial role of national security advisor.
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