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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
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