Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Team Obama’s Unmasking Dodge

Washington News Daily


"The media are mostly ignoring the news that 39 Obama officials sought to read the transcripts of Michael Flynn’s conversations with foreigners, but here and there they’ve asked a question. The unpersuasive answers suggest there’s more to learn.
"Take Joe Biden, who “unmasked” Flynn only a few days before leaving office as Vice President. Last week Biden told ABC that he knew “nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn.” George Stephanopoulos reminded Biden that he attended a Jan. 5, 2017 Oval Office meeting when the FBI’s Flynn investigation was discussed. Biden replied that he’d misheard the question and admitted he was “aware that there was, that they’d asked for, an investigation. But that’s all I know about it.”
"This was more straightforward than what Biden told MSNBC when he was asked about his “involvement in the investigation of Michael Flynn.” Biden replied: “I was never a part or had any knowledge of any criminal investigation into Flynn while I was in office.”
"Except at the time there was no criminal investigation into Flynn—as Biden knows. In 2016 The FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into Flynn, and it was under that pretense that it conducted the interview in which it later claimed that Flynn lied. The lack of a criminal investigation is the primary reason the Justice Department moved this month to drop its prosecution. Biden still hasn’t explained why he personally unmasked Flynn.
"James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, defended his unmasking of Flynn as “perfectly legitimate.” Clapper told CNN that he had a professional duty to investigate the “numerous engagements by representatives of the Trump camp with Russians.” As he told Sirius XM’s “The Joe Madison Show”: “People would be derelict if they didn’t have enough curiosity to inquire what was going on.' ” . . .

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