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Nothing else matters now, other than to see Trump damaged!
E. Ablorh-Odjidja

February 17, 2017

The desperation to get rid of Trump will be immortalized in the General Flynn and the Russian Ambassador's story.

In the story, a highly secretive recording of a conversation with Amb. Sergey Kislyak and the Gen. caught by the intelligence services, was leaked to New York Times and the Washington Post.

The objective of the leak was an old one, recycled since the close of the 2016 presidential election when Hillary Clinton lost to Trump.

And it has been “Trump didn't win the 2016 election. The Russians stole it for him.”

At best, this narrative is a brain-dead proposition.

But there is always the magical name of Russia, a Cold War major opponent of old.


With the name Russia, the instigators hope that the charge may wake up sentiments of fear that was common during the Cold War period; the end objective being to rally this sentiment for resistant and consequently the impeachment and removal of Trump from office.

This attempt is beginning to have some hilarious effect like the one depicted in a 60s comedy movie, “The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming,” when a Soviet submarine was spotted off the coast of New England and a whole town got deranged!

The liberals and the Democrats in America have already arrived at this deranged state.

However, had Hillary won the 2016 election we would have been spared this Russian story.

Even if true that the Russians stole the elections for anyone else other than Trump, the old secret way of intelligence gathering and "close mouth" reaction would have prevailed.

Now in the age of Trump, American intelligence has gotten this lax.  And they just don't care!

But wiretapping the Russian is as old as Russians wiretapping the Americans, anyway.  It was a geo-political necessity.

Except the purpose this time is being driven by domestic politics - to drive a political opponent out of office by using the bureaucratic institutions of the American federal government itself.

Hence, Gen. Flynn is the target of the Logan Act of 1799, a charge which has never been used since it was enacted!

The charge shows the desperation to nail Trump by any means necessary, while a larger crime of abuse of Gen. Flynn's rights is being ignored.

General Flynn has been forced to resign and that is not enough for some.

New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman described the shock of Gen. Flynn resignation as one on par with those of  9/11 and Pearl Harbor

Congress woman Maxine Waters, Michael Moore, and others among many in Congress are calling for investigations of the kind bordering on impeachment proceedings, even though no charge for crime has been established yet.

It wouldn't be farfetched to include Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham in the above group. "John McCain just systematically dismantled Donald Trump’s entire worldview," gleefully wrote the Washington Post.

They all have reason to get rid of Trump and they have to do it through the General.

General Flynn's story is telling because it shows the length to which some are willing to go to get Trump. despite the real crime behind the attempt; the egregious breach of the FISA Act, which is a prohibited activity under Federal law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978.

Gen. Flynn was illegally spied on.  To note, the charge against Flynn, at best, is a conjecture, still inconclusive and unproven.

 

The leak of the wiretap, which led to his charge, however, is a proven act of crime because the evidence of the leak exists in the media.

Yet the unproven aspect of Gen. Flynn's story is rather the focus for the search for justice.

The search was started by President Obama before he left office.  He was the first to voice openly the Russian interference story immediately after the 2016 election.

He based his assertion, he said, on findings by many branches of the intelligence services of America, but ignored the abuse of the FISA ACT by his own administration officials.

Consequently, President Obama slapped a number of sanctions against the Russians on December 29, 2016 before leaving office.

Why did Obama not leave the sanctions on the Russians to incoming President Trump, was it to put prompt attention on the "stolen election" aspect?

Thus, Obama made it easy for the suspicion to grow that the Russians have meddled in 2016 elections to help Trump. And the media were quick to buttress the assumption through leaks.

The media did a good job in this direction:  Flynn talked to Ambassador Kyslyak for help to win the election.  In return, the Trump administration would reverse the sanctions on Russia once it was in office.

Apparently, there was the wiretap evidence that General Flynn talked to the Ambassador. What has so far not been proven is what was talked about on the tape and why.

But one can be certain that if there were a conclusive evidence of Flynn's guilt it would have been out with the first leak.  And the path to Trump's impeachment would have been paved. 

Even so, there would still be questions.

The job of General Flynn as a National Security Adviser to Trump was to talk to world leaders even before his president-elect was inaugurated, as he should to many leaders around the world, including the Russians.

More important, when did General Flynn talk to the Amb Kyslyak, was it before December 29, 2016 when the sanctions were put in place or after?

Was the alleged quid pro quo with Amb. Kyslyak made before the elections and was this information on the wiretapped conversation?   

And why the delay to find out the above, unless, perhaps, part of the scheme is also to drag on the effort to harm Trump?

Just read a recent feature on politics from the New York Times.

The heading started scary. “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence.”

 

Three paragraphs downstream on the page, the feature concluded that officials contacted said “they have no evidence of such cooperation.” Vast difference between headline and content.

Many published information about this Russian connection have been proven false; The Russian dossier on Trump given to the FBI by Senator McCain, subsequently leaked to the press and published by CNN and Buzzfeed was one of such fake stories that was quickly shot down.

Another was The New York Times claim that the FBI was investigating Roger Stone, Trump adviser and longtime confidant.

Stone told Matt Lauer on the NBC, The Today's Show, that he had “zero contact” with the Russians during the 2016 elections and that the claim by New York Times was “unequivocally false” and that the FBI never questioned him.

Many more false stories have been floated but shot down as fake.

This latest leak is assumed to be the smoking gun.  We are still waiting for the sign of the smoke. But without this leak and the drama surrounding it, the General Flynn's story would have been dead.

General Flynn's dismissal by the Trump administration was based on a matter of abuse of trust, and nothing criminal.

The justification was the fact that General Flynn failed to provide full disclosure on the subject of Ambassador Kyslyak, which led Vice President Pence to mislead the pres

Though Trump fired Gen. Flynn, the LOGAN ACT, which according to the New York Times is a felony against the General, punishable up to three years of imprisonment, was not dismissed.

The Logan Act, enacted January 30, 1799) is a United States federal law that details the fine and/or imprisonment of unauthorized citizens who negotiate with foreign governments having a dispute with the United States,” according to Wikipedia.

There is a more serious side to the FISA ACT and it impacts.

The FISA ACT also ought to sanction the improper behavior of the intelligence officials.


If General Flynn is considered as an ordinary citizen, then FISA should have protected him from the wiretap.  But if as an officer of the incoming Trump administration, which he was, then, he should have been exempted and not wiretapped.

Clearly, there was an abuse of the FISA ACT, even from a logical perspective.  But this is not the hot button issue for the state.  Why?

On one hand, there is for Flynn a charge of the breach of the Logan Act. 

On the other, there is a breach of the FISA ACT by the intelligence services, that has already occurred and completed.

Strange to think that the conclusive evidence of the breach of the FISA ACT it is not being acted on.

 

 The above neglect alone speaks of the strong urge to nail Trump.

And final acts of the Obama administration, including his assertion of Russian interference before the Trump inauguration, suggest that traps were laid to ensnarl Flynn or Trump or both in the surveillance.

Thankfully however, somebody in Congress has his finger tip on the real crime committed.

The House Intelligence Committee Chairman David Nunes (R-Calif.) is offended by the actuality of the FISA infraction. He is drafting a letter to the FBI, asking for investigation of the leak concerning Gen. Flynn.

He said, “I expect the FBI to tell me what’s going on and hopefully they have a good answer.....The big problem I see here is you have an American citizen who has had his phone call recorded and leaked. ….somebody had to decide to keep recording those calls and then to unmask that and leak it to the press.”

Ironically, we have patriots in Congress, who rail against Un-American acts daily. But the same prefer to ignore the abuse of the FISA ACT and its chilling effect on the America way - the liberty, democracy and governance of the country.

 

But they don't care.


E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, February 17, 2017.
Permission to publish: Please feel free to publish or reproduce, with credits, unedited. If posted at a website, email a copy of the web page to publisher@ghanadot.com . Or don't publish at all


 
 
 

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