Former National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn is involved in two heavily connected legal cases that came from the special counsel appointment of Robert Mueller. One direct case is in DC District Court, Judge Emmet Sullivan; and one indirect case in the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA), Judge Anthony Trenga.
The DC case is the direct case against Michael Flynn where Flynn took a plea deal and has been in a rather tentacled sentencing phase since November 2017. The EDVA case is the FARA case against Flynn’s former business associate Bijan Rafiekian where Flynn was going to be a witness (now cancelled).
While the larger issues connecting both cases are somewhat complex, some details released last week reveal a concerning bigger picture that originated long before Robert Mueller became special counsel in May 2017. [Back story HERE and HERE and HERE]
I’m going to make the assumption the reader is familiar with the backstory noted above; and additionally, in full disclosure for the reader, this is openly written for the research benefit of the Flynn defense team – with whom I’ve had no contact.
Of particular interest to me was the revelation that DOJ National Security Division head David Laufman engaged with Flynn in January 2017, and was the lead point of contact within the DOJ-NSD when Flynn was filing FARA compliance documents, as part of the transition into the Trump administration.
Laufman is particularly interesting -within this specific timeline- because he is at the heart of the DOJ/FBI small group activity in 2015/2016 when the group goal was Clinton’s exoneration and Trump’s surveillance/investigation. While Laufman’s name is not as well known as Peter Strzok or Lisa Page, his Main Justice activity is just as consequential.
We know and accept from prior records [pg 12 Mueller report] that Michael Flynn was under some form of official and unofficial surveillance and investigation by the Obama administration from sometime in 2015 all the way to his first weeks in the Trump administration in January/February 2017.
That collective monitoring could have included authorized Title-3 electronic surveillance or Title-1 (FISA) surveillance. My best guess is Title-III until the publication of the Turkish Op-Ed, and that opened the door to Title-I. The change requires the target to do something that would allow the DOJ to jump and claim “acting as an agent of a foreign power”. The November 8th, 2016 op-ed advocacy, without notation of the contract, would provide the DOJ-NSD with the ability to make that claim.
David Laufman was head of the DOJ-NSD office that would have been watching. In hindsight, the leaked reporting to the Wall Street Journal in 2017 confirms this:
WASHINGTON—The investigation into former national security adviser Mike Flynn began soon after a Justice Department staffer noticed a Nov. 8, 2016, op-ed article by the retired Army general in the congressional publication The Hill, according to a person familiar with the matter.
[…] In the article, Mr. Flynn championed closer U.S. ties with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and maligned the Turkish government’s No. 1 foe, U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen.
The piece didn’t disclose Mr. Flynn’s business relationship with Turkish interests.The Justice Department staffer, who works in the office that enforces the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, checked the database of people registered to represent foreign interests. He found no entry for Mr. Flynn and sent him a letter inquiring about the article, according to this person, who said the staffer’s query triggered the FARA investigation. (read more)
So when Flynn was engaged with David Laufman in December ’16/January ’17 in the completion of the FARA compliance forms, it is certain that Laufman knew much more about the background of who hired the Flynn Intel Group, than Flynn himself. Hence, Laufman pressured a FARA filing that was later used by Mueller to claim Flynn filed a misleading FARA notification. It was all a set up.
Heck, knowing how foreign intelligence units were used by the FBI and CIA to engage the Trump campaign (pure politics); and keeping the entire sketchy intel operation around the killing of Jamal Kashoggi in mind (more politics); I’m now of the opinion someone in/around the Obama White House worked with someone in/around Recep Erdogan (Turkish Govt.) to set up that entire 2016 Flynn lobbying scenario using a Dutch front group. The DOJ-NSD was waiting to exploit it.
So yesterday, there were some court arguments as the EDVA case against Flynn’s partner is about to start…. The transcript is not yet public, but Techno-Fog gained access. Pay attention to this snippet Techno released:
Please pay attention to this part: “because of Flynn’s relationship with an ongoing presidential campaign without any reference to the defendant or FIG”…The word “campaign” is a written Freudian slip, a *tell* per se’, that informs those paying attention of the history of the government’s activity and foreknowledge.
So here’s where I’m at…. The granules are small, but the granules are all assembled in the same part of the same picture. The Dutch/Turkish lobbying contract was a set-up; just like the Trump Tower meeting was a set-up; just like the London meeting with Alexander Downer was a set-up; just like the $10,000 from Charles Tawil to George Papadopoulos was a set-up; just like Mifsud was a set-up… etc. etc.
In the foreground you’ve got Brennan and the White House (Brennan’s working group), and Fusion GPS, and Nellie Ohr, and Christopher Steele etc… In the background you’ve got Yates, and Carlin, and Laufman, and McCord, and Weissmann (DOJ-NSD team); together with Comey, and McCabe, and Baker, and Strzok, and Page (FBI team)… and essentially the bridge, Bruce Ohr, acting as a carrier smidgen taking information from the working group to the FBI to the DOJ….
These are the basic elements of the seditious small group within the DOJ-NSD and FBI.
Additionally, this gets more interesting when you think about the scale of what they were doing, and how intensely they were committed to it.
When the network was failing in their impeachment effort; when the insurance policy was not working; and when they were falling back in logical sequence to various defensive positions throughout 2018; where did David Laufman resurface?
See the scale of this?New York Field office FBI agent Monica McLean was the handler who initiated her best friend Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford against Supreme Court nominee Judge Kavanaugh. Who was Monica McLean’s lawyer?…. David Laufman.
Who was Blasey-Ford’s lawyer?…. Michael Bromwich; he’s also the lawyer for Andrew McCabe.
Why?
What possible reason would the same ‘small group’ participants have for going from the 2016 election effort, and 2017 impeachment effort, to the 2018 SCOTUS manipulation effort? [Also intended to influence the 2018 mid-term]
The “small group” activity was/is so illegal (literally seditious), it was a reasonable part of the concentric defense to try and block a SCOTUS nomination and influence the outcome of the 2018 mid-term election.
That’s the scale of this.
And given the scale of this….
