Let's Talk About Dumb Foreign Agent Dipsh*t Michael Flynn, Because It Is A Day

The more we learn about Michael Flynn's brief time in the White House, the more he and Donald Trump sound like criminals.

Andrew McCabe's book keeps giving us delicious scoops about WTF it was really like to be in the US government during the Trump transition and the early days of President Foreign Agent's failed presidency. The New York Times also gave us delicious scoops in its big article this week about Donald Trump's now years-long campaign of probably criminal obstruction of justice against the American law enforcement agencies investigating him and his associates over their corruption crimes, their campaign finance crimes, and their conspiracies against the United States with Russia and a handful of Middle Eastern nations.

We want to look real quick at a couple of things from those two sources about Michael Flynn, and that strange period between December of 2016 -- during the transition, when Flynn was caught on tape gossiping with former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak about lifting sanctions on the rogue nation once Trump was inaugurated -- and February 2017, when Flynn, a literal actual foreign agent, left his job as national security advisor, supposedly because Trump got REAL MAD about Flynn lying to Mike Pence about his conversations with the Russian ambassador and fired him. (We don't buy it. And after this post, you'll buy it even less than you did before!)

Talking Points Memo reports on a passage from McCabe's book that tells the story of Flynn's FBI interview from McCabe's perspective. We already knew some of this, because we've seen the memos the FBI interviewers jotted down from that very day. Robert Mueller shared those memos with us after Flynn started screaming that HE WUZ FRAMED, because a lieutenant general with years of military and intelligence service to America apparently needs to be told that lying to the FBI is bad. Uh huh. All of this turned Flynn's original sentencing hearing into an utter shitshow . 

Those memos also told us that Flynn had told the FBI before his lie interview that he knew they "probably knew what was said" in his conversation with the Russian ambassador, because apparently at that point in time Flynn understood that US intelligence would probably be eavesdropping on the Russian ambassador. McCabe adds in his book that if Flynn knew that, then WHY THE FUCK DID HE LIE ANYWAY?

TPM shares McCabe's account of how the FBI stumbled across that information in the first place, which was that the folks who put together the President's Daily Briefing (PDB) for Barack Obama were very curious to know why Vladimir Putin had done little more than SHRUGGIE EMOTICON at his administration's December 2016 decision to kick a bunch of Russian spies out of America and seize their diplomatic trash palaces, in retaliation for Russian ratfuckery in the 2016 election. That was weird, right?

So McCabe sent out an APB to the intel community for any helpful details about that, and before they knew it, they were swimming in the deep end of Michael Flynn's treason pool:

"We came across information," McCabe wrote, referring to the intelligence that Flynn had discussed the sanctions with Kislyak on Dec. 29, the day the sanctions were announced.

"This information was something we had from December 29," McCabe wrote. "I had not been aware of it. My impression was that higher-level officials within the FBI's counterintelligence division had not been aware of it. The [President's Daily Briefing] request brought it to our attention."

Once Obama was briefed, everybody tried to figure out if Flynn had broken the law, since he was technically a PRIVATE CITIZEN FOREIGN AGENT when he pulled that shit with the Russian ambassador. The FBI, it seems, was also pretty freaked out about whether or not they should tell the Trump transition what they had learned. Would they listen, or were they all just that far up Putin's ass? (Remember that around this time, the Obama administration was doing everything it could to memorialize and document what they knew about Trump's bizarre ties with the Russians who had just basically stolen him the election, so that Trump couldn't put the evidence on a HAMBERDER with some ketchup and swallow it.)

McCabe also talks about how Mike Pence reacted when he found out on February 10, 2017, that Flynn was a fucking Liar To Pence-r who lies to Mike Pence:

"[Pence] reached the part [about Flynn yapping with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about lifting the Russian sanctions], and immediately his face changed," McCabe wrote. "His expression turned very cold. It hardened. His reading became very focused. His head showed but barely — tiny shakes of no. He said a few things along the lines of I can't believe this, and This is totally opposite, and It's not what he said to me."

And Mike Pence became very GRRR ARGH, because lying is bad unless you are doing it for Jesus, and did Flynn lie to Mike Pence for Jesus, or did he do it FOR DEVIL? (Or something, we don't know what goes through Vice President Lickspittle's dumb fucking brain.)

For what happened soon after that, let's flip over to the  New York Times  , which, on top of breaking news that Trump in fact DID push former acting attorney general Meatball Von PeenerPotty to shut down the Southern District of New York's (SDNY) investigations into Trump, and that Meatball may have perhaps accidentally fibbed to Congress about that , also broke some news about what happened after Mike Pence grabbed his cross and his Bible and ran into the Oval Office and branded "SATANIC LIAR OF WHOM MY WIFE MOTHER DOES NOT APPROVE" onto Michael Flynn's chest (literally did not happen that way, that we know of) and Trump was advised to fire Flynn. As we all know, Trump did not fly into action to do that!

Former acting attorney general and current badass Sally Yates had warned the White House repeatedly at the end of January 2017 that Flynn was lying about his contacts with the Russian ambassador, and therefore the FBI was very worried that Flynn, the NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR, was compromised by the Russians and vulnerable to being blackmailed, a la "HOLY SHIT! THERE IS A RUSSIAN SPY IN THE WHITE HOUSE!" We don't know if that's an exact quote from Yates, but we imagine it's not far off. After her warnings, the White House did ... nothing.

And after Mike Pence found out he had been lied to and people advised Trump to can Flynn, Trump did ... nothing.

The Times   reports that actually, when Trump allegedly "fired" Flynn for lying to Pence, he had in fact and in reality done ... nothing .

It was Feb. 14, 2017, and Mr. Trump and his advisers were in the Oval Office debating how to explain the resignation of Mr. Flynn , the national security adviser, the previous night. [...]

As the group in the Oval Office talked, one of Mr. Trump's advisers mentioned in passing what Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, then the speaker of the House, had told reporters — that Mr. Trump had asked Mr. Flynn to resign.

It was unclear where Mr. Ryan had gotten that information, but Mr. Trump seized on Mr. Ryan's words. "That sounds better," the president said, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. Mr. Trump turned to the White House press secretary at the time, Sean Spicer, who was preparing to brief the news media.

"Say that," Mr. Trump ordered.

But was that true? Mr. Spicer pressed.

IS THAT A "HONEST," MISTER PRESIDENT? Or is this like your "crowd size" shit? Sean Spicer just wanted to know.

"Say that I asked for his resignation," Mr. Trump repeated.

We're starting to think Trump knew Michael Flynn was probably a literal actual Russian agent and he was OK with it. Hey, it's better than him being an AMERICAN DEEP STATE agent like stinky Andrew McCabe, right, Trump, right, right, RIGHT?

After that Trump was real excited about his new cover story (lie) about firing Flynn, because he and Jared both believed that meant the whole entire Russia investigation was over, and Chris Christie looked at them at lunch that very day (according to his own   tell-all book ) and called them fucking dipshits for thinking the whole entire Russia investigation was over.

Trump remained excited about his cover story (lie):

I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It… https: //t.co/8bMCLGuAhf

— Donald J. Trump (@Donald J. Trump) 1512234853.0 

Also that same day, the Times reports that the White House counsel's office was so horrified by all the lies Spicer told from the podium about Flynn that they wrote down a whole memo to keep track of all Spicer's great big lies.

Y'all really should go back and read the whole New York Times article, if only to make mental notes of just how many characters/possible sources come across as PERFECT ANGELS, just like stories involving Trump pushing former White House counsel Don McGahn to do crime things always made McGahn look like the HERO Mariah Carey sings about. Sean Spicer is like "Oh no, Mister President, you don't want me to LIE, do you?" And the White House counsel's office is like "Don't look at us, we're just over here making memos of Trump's lies, like what are we, Susan Rice or something? YEAH WE ARE."

Something something rats scurrying from a sinking ship!

[ Talking Points Memo / New York Times ]

 Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter RIGHT HERE, DO IT RIGHT HERE!  

 Wonkette is ad-free and funded ONLY by YOU, our dear readers. Click below to keep the lights on, please. We appreciate you, most of the time.