Barack Obama and Donald Trump sat together in a cozy section of the Oval Office to discuss the transition of power between them. In a familiar ritual meant to reassure the nation, the two men shook hands, smiled for the cameras, and chatted amiably. Meanwhile, Michelle sipped tea with Melania before a tour of the White House. 

Left unmentioned were the details of Crossfire Hurricane, an ongoing FBI investigation into the top members of the Trump team for Russian collusion, a souped-up charge backed up with gruel-thin evidence. Obama had greenlit the investigation months earlier during the campaign. Also unmentioned was the expulsion of Russian diplomats by Obama, allegedly for interference in the recent election in favor of Trump, a charge that Obama knew to be false. The expulsion created an international incident and cast doubt on the legitimacy of Trump’s electoral victory. The Russia Hoax would undermine the Trump administration for four years and ultimately lead to his first impeachment. (RELATED: A Cliff Note Guide to Russiagate: The Hillary Coverup)

But this meeting was all sunshine and rainbows. In a spirit of cordiality, Obama alerted Trump to the most dangerous people who kept him up at night: North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung and Michael Flynn, top intelligence advisor to Trump.

Michael Flynn? The decorated three-star general, who served three years in Afghanistan, appointed by Obama to lead intelligence at the Defense Department, confirmed twice by the Senate, who had received a top security clearance only ten months earlier under the Obama administration? That Michael Flynn? If he were the most serious threat to the nation, the entire American project was in jeopardy. (RELATED: John Brennan’s ‘Intelligence Bombshell’ That Likely Never Was)

What had Flynn done to earn the enmity of his Commander in Chief, who had once elevated him to the highest levels of U.S. intelligence?

Quite a bit, it turns out.

Flynn had witnessed a generation of American intelligence failures: fake body counts in Vietnam, the unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union, 9/11, imaginary weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. 

Flynn spotted a major weakness in the flow of data through the War Department: local information wound its way through the bureaucracy where it was parsed, edited, and returned to the field, far too late to be of any use. By then, the terrorists had moved on. Flynn shortened the lines of communication and shared the results quickly with in-country commanders. Qualitative knowledge about the culture, the tribes, the personalities outweighed quantitative data about troops, movements, body counts, and Pentagon spin. The results were extraordinary and pleased the troops on the ground. The spreadsheet jockeys in three-letter agencies? Not so much. The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam, Michael Flynn.

But that was not Flynn’s biggest offense.

Based on his tour in Afghanistan, Flynn felt that the United States was losing the war and could do much, much better. He said so publicly in Congressional testimony. Obama thought the war was going well enough to banish the words “Islamic terror” from the language. Obama took exception to Flynn’s testimony and fired him. 

In civilian life, Flynn ramped up his criticism of Obama’s Middle East policies, particularly the overtures to Iran. By the time he joined the Trump campaign, Flynn presented a credible (if alien) alternative to Obama’s happy narrative that all was well in the region. Of more immediate concern, Flynn would, as a senior intelligence officer of the Trump administration, be in a perfect position to expose the embarrassing details of the Russia Hoax orchestrated by Hillary Clinton and Obama himself. The two had plotted with impunity back in the days when few gave Trump a chance to win and even fewer worried about getting caught. Flynn absolutely had to go; the sooner the better. 

Here’s how they got him.

July 2016. James Comey, FBI Director, opens the Crossfire Razor operation to investigate Flynn, largely based on his 2015 speaking engagement in Moscow, where Putin shook his hand for 10 seconds and then left the room. (Note that Flynn, who owned his own consulting company at the time, followed protocols and immediately debriefed the intel community about his trip.) (RELATED: The Police State of James Comey)

November 2016. Ignoring Obama’s advice, Trump appointed Flynn as his National Security Advisor, the top intelligence official in his administration.

December 2016. Obama created an international incident by throwing Russian diplomats out of the country, supposedly for their interference in the 2016 election. This charge was later proven false, leaving some (including me) to speculate that Obama expelled the Russians to cast doubt on the validity of the Trump victory at the polls and undermine his administration before it even started.

December 2016. As designated NSA Director, Flynn arranged many calls with Trump and world leaders, who were anxious to open up a line of communication with Trump, a common practice in every presidential transition. In one call, Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the U.S., conveyed the anger in Moscow over the expulsion of the diplomats:

Kislyak:  understand what you’re saying, but you know, you appreciate the sentiments that are raging now in Moscow .

Flynn: I know , I — believe me, do appreciate it, I very much appreciate it. But I really don’t want us to get into a situation where we’re going, you know, where we do this and then you do something bigger, and then you know, everybody’s to go back and forth and everybody’s got to be the tough guy here, you know? We don’t need to, we don’t need that right now, we need to cool heads to prevail, and uh, and we need to be very steady about what we’re going to do because we have absolutely a common uh, threat in the Middle East right now

Kislyak: We agree.

Transcripts of call between Flynn and Kislyak released by CIA Director John Ratcliffe to Senator Charles Grassley, May 29, 2020.

December 2016–January 2017. As part of Crossfire Razor, the FBI monitored the conversations of Flynn and Kislyak. 

January 2017. Comey asked Peter Strzok (a well-documented Trump hater, who personally initiated Crossfire Hurricane) to interview Flynn about his conversations with Kislyak. Since Strzok already knew the content of these calls from the wiretap, the interview was clearly a perjury trap, an attempt to catch Flynn in a lie. This was confirmed by notes taken by the FBI before the interview: “What is our goal? Truth/admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?” 

Strzok explored the use of the Logan Act, a law enacted in 1799 to prevent private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments. Only two people have ever been indicted (none convicted) due to the questionable constitutionality of the law. As the designated NSA director (not a private citizen), the Logan Act clearly did not apply to Flynn. Nevertheless, in an internal meeting, the FBI raised the possible use of the Logan Act against Flynn.  

“If we get him to admit to breaking the Logan Act, give facts to DOJ + have them decide.”

January 2017. Strzok’s assistant documented the interview with Flynn in an FBI Form 302, where he reported that Flynn did not lie to him. Comey admitted this later in Congressional testimony. The FBI decided to close out Crossfire Razor because there was no evidence of Russian collusion.

January–February 2017. Strzok overrode the field decision to shut down Crossfire Razor. 

Strzok edited the original Form 302 with the “assistance” of senior FBI management. This revised document became the critical evidence used to charge Flynn with lying to the FBI. The original Form 302 has never been found.

February 2017. Flynn briefed Vice President Pence on various intelligence matters and was heavily criticized for not being entirely forthcoming, as if the nation’s top spy should always be honest and open about national security affairs.

February 2017. Transitional Attorney General (and Obama appointee) Sally Yates advised Trump that Flynn is a national security threat because the Russians might blackmail him, a highly improbable charge that assumed anyone would believe anything that the Russians might have to say on the matter. Comey himself later said in Congressional testimony that blackmail was “a bit of a reach.” 

February 2017. Nevertheless, Flynn, caught in the resulting media storm, resigned his position as National Security Advisor.

May 2017. Crossfire Razor rolled into the Mueller investigation. Special investigators pressured Flynn with the archaic Logan Act and their old standby — lying to the FBI. Mueller applied further pressure by threatening Flynn and his son with failure to register as foreign agents during the time that Flynn ran his consulting business. Note that Flynn’s son only handled low-level administrative tasks at the firm.

December 2017. Flynn pled guilty to lying to the FBI, largely to protect his son. All other potential charges were dropped.

January 2018–May 2019. Department of Justice reneges on the plea agreement and pushes for serious jail time. The two sides battled over the terms of Flynn’s plea deal for 17 months.

June 2019. Flynn fired his counsel, Covington and Burling, and hired Sydney Powell, who demanded to see the underlying evidence used by the FBI to charge Flynn. The FBI files reveal exculpatory evidence that was illegally withheld from Flynn’s counsel, including the FBI plan to entrap Flynn as noted above. (Fun fact: Eric Holder and three of his associates from Covington and Burling ran the Obama Justice Department.)

January 2020. In light of the new evidence, Flynn withdrew his guilty plea. Presiding judge and Obama appointee Emmet Sullivan refused to accept the plea change.

May 2020. Attorney General William Barr ordered an independent investigation of the Flynn case, including the predication of Crossfire Razor. After reviewing the results, Barr orders the Department of Justice to dismiss the case against Flynn because there never was any reason to investigate Flynn in the first place, the same conclusion reached by the FBI before Strzok altered the Form 302 way back in January 2017.

May 2020. Sullivan refused to accept the dismissal ordered by the attorney general of the United States. With no prosecutor in sight, Sullivan appointed his own and became, in effect, both judge and prosecutor. In a highly unusual legal maneuver, Sullivan sued to defend his dual role. After a three-judge panel ruled against Sullivan, he successfully petitioned the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear his case. Sullivan’s recalcitrance is difficult to justify on legal grounds. It is, perhaps, easier to understand from a political viewpoint: he wanted the case to drag on through the election.

November 2020. Trump lost the election and pardoned Flynn.

November 2020. Sullivan refused to recognize the presidential pardon and waited another 13 days to dismiss the case. 

December 2020. After four torturous years of FBI investigation, false charges, questionable counsel, unrelenting political, judicial, and media pressure, a financially bankrupt Flynn is finally freed.

What to make of this? Flynn was a successful general who served his country loyally and competently for 33 years. But he exposed the fallacy that all was well in the Middle East, that the mullahs of Iran were really the good guys, that Obama, the world-striding statesman, had achieved a lasting peace in the region. As we now know, none of this was true. Iran reignited the Middle East on October 7 with a three-pronged assault on Israel from the north, west, and south. The mullahs stepped up their efforts to develop a nuclear bomb. Iran threw in with China and Russia to revive the axis of evil. Obama got taken.

Flynn was the first to see it and call it out. He paid a steep price for his courage.

But the persecution of Michael Flynn cannot just be attributed to another thin-skinned ex-president, overly agitated about his legacy. Flynn threatened the core of the military-industrial-surveillance complex. He argued against forever wars. He proved that smaller dedicated teams of intelligence professionals could run circles around larger, slow-witted, and politically compromised bureaucracies. That was his true crime.

This was never about lying to the FBI, or the Logan Act, or failure to register as a foreign agent. It was always about crushing a truthful man who stood up to the Deep State.

READ MORE from Kevin Brady:

The Police State of James Comey

A Cliff Note Guide to Russiagate: The Hillary Coverup

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