Flynn Was Not Masked because the FBI Framed Him as a Clandestine Agent of Russia

Flynn Was Not Masked because the FBI Framed Him as a Clandestine Agent of Russia

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/michael-flynn-was-not-masked-because-fbi-framed-him-as-a-clandestine-agent-of-russia/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=top-stories&utm_term=second

Excerpt: Meanwhile, the Post is leading the media–Democrat effort to contort the fact that many Republicans were wrong in assuming Flynn had been unmasked prior to his name’s being leaked to the Post in early 2017 into a storyline that those Republicans must have been wrong to claim the leak was illegal. To the contrary, the leak is a felony, regardless of whether an American’s identity should have been concealed. Information collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is classified. The point of classifying information is to keep all of it concealed, not just the names. Though I was right that Flynn was never masked in connection with the Kislyak call on December 29, 2016, I was off the mark in hypothesizing that the conversation may be been intercepted by an intelligence agency other than the FBI — perhaps the CIA or a foreign intelligence service. Sadly, this owes to my giving the FBI the benefit of the doubt: Had Flynn been picked up on a FISA surveillance of which he was not the target (i.e., a surveillance of Kislyak), I reasoned that the FBI would have masked his identity under statutorily required “minimization instructions.” Indeed, we now know that Flynn’s identity was masked (and then unmasked) dozens of times before and after December 29, precisely because the government knew those minimization rules applied to him. Alas, in this as in so much else throughout the Trump–Russia farce, the Bureau played fast and loose with the rules. When investigators are so inclined, it turns out the privacy vouchsafed by the minimization rules is illusory. FBI officials — if they thought about it at all — figured Flynn need not be masked because they did not see him as an innocent American incidentally caught up in foreign surveillance. They purported to suspect that he was a clandestine agent of Russia. Of course, they had no proof of that. And they knew they had no proof. That’s why they never sought a FISA-court warrant targeting Flynn. Doing so would have required showing probable cause that he was an operative of Russia; and as to Flynn, they didn’t even have a fabulist “dossier” to rely on for such a smear. [McCarthy hits this hard. The rest of this article ought to frighten each of us, and more than just a little. You ought to read it. I added emphasis. Ron P.]