Former FBI Director James Comey admitted in sworn testimony Dec. 8 in the House Intelligence Committee that the FBI breached protocol when interviewing Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn about his contacts with Russia during the campaign and transition before President Donald Trump was sworn in Jan. 20, 2018. Drawing a rebuke from Special Counsel Robert Mueller today, the Special Counsel insisted that nothing out-of-protocol took place in Flynn’s interview. Comey admitted to sending now disgraced FBI Agents Peter Strzok and Andrew McCabe to interview Flynn at the White House without notifying the White House counsel, as Comey said, was routinely done in the Bush-43 and Obama administrations. When Strzok and McCabe interviewed Flynn, they acted like it was casual chitchat among friends, not notifying Flynn that his answers would be used against him.
FBI interrogators receive the John Reid Method interrogation training, making friends with suspects, setting them at ease before asking legally binding questions. “The defendant chose to make false statements about his communication with the Russian ambassador weeks before the FBI interview when he lied about that top to the media, the incoming Vice President and other members of the Presidential transition team,” read the Special Counsel’s statement. While it’s true that Flynn let his brains fall out of his head, it’s also true Strzok and McCabe could have informed him about the risks of disclosure without legal counsel. No good FBI agent wants legal counsel present when trying to coax either a confession or false testimony out of witnesses. It’s entirely plausible that had Flynn been told he had a right to an attorney present, the conversation would have been far less chummy.
Mueller’s office wants to divert attention away from the fact the Comey breached protocol going to White House counsel before interviewing any personnel. Flynn, as incoming National Security Advisor, a decorated Lt. General, thought the FBI were his friends, not looking to set him up in a perjury trap. No one from the FBI told him that his conversations with former Russian Amb. Sergey Kislyak were wiretapped and “unmasked” at the authority of former Obama Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch, former National Security Director Susan Rice and former FBI Director James Comey, all of whom were ordered by Obama to spy on the Trump campaign, allegedly because of Russian ties. Comey told the House Intelligence Committee that the FBI was following four members of Trump’s campaign, denying that he used former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s opposition research AKA “the dossier.”
When questioned by Republican members of the Intel committee, Comey said he couldn’t remember, recall or recollect key details on the Russian meddling investigation, including things like “the dossier” or the reasons why Clinton was exonerated for any wrongdoing in her email investigation. Comey couldn’t answer why Hillary’s willful destruction of electronic data was not seen as obstruction of justice. When it came to Flynn, former National Security advisor Susan Rice admitted in testimony before the Senate Judiciary May 3, 2017 that she authorized “unmasking” of wiretapped conversation with Kislyak. Former Atty .Gen. Jeff Sessions was also “unmasked” in wiretapped conversations with Kisyak, something he denied Jan. 10, 2017 in his Senate confirmation hearing. Talking to Kislyak was the equivalent of sitting on Santa Claus’s knee at Christmas fair.
Kislyak was a fixture in Washington political circles since starting his post as U.S. Russian ambassador July 26, 2008. A fixture in Washington’s social scene, Kislyak talked with thousands of U.S. and foreign officials while in Washington until his Aug. 21, 2017 retirement. No one in the State Department considered him a high-value Russian spy, only Washington socialite, spending much of his time circulating among Washington’s privileged class. Yet if you ask Mueller’s office, they’d tell you Kislyak was a high-value Russian spy, something so preposterous, so outrageous so off-the-wall, it drew nothing but laughs. Whether or not Kislyak would keep his ear to the keyhole for his Kremlin minders is anyone’s guess. What more known about Kislyak was that he was entirely innocuous, a fixture in Washington’s exclusive social scene, not a dangerous spy like Russia’s Ana Chapman or Maria Butina.
Mueller’s office reacted harshly to Flynn’s suggestion that he was entrapped by FBI officials. Breaching White House protocol sending Strrzok and McCabe to question Flynn without White House counsel, Flynn was a sitting duck, spewing his guts to the FBI. While it’s true that he lied about talking with Kislyak, it’s also true he didn’t consider speaking with the roly-poly Russian ambassador someone from the Russian Federation. Calling Flynn’s Jan. 17, 2017 interview “relaxed and jocular,” Strzok and McCabe acknowledged that Flynn had his guard down. When U.S. District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan sentences Flynn next Tuesday, he should take into account how and from whom the FBI interviewed Flynn. Knowing that McCabe and Strzok were fired by the FBI for misconduct, it only makes sense to toss out Flynn’s plea bargain, something that breached FBI protocol.
