Mike Flynn Believed the US Could Work with GRU’s Director
The government has released an almost totally unredacted version of Mike Flynn’s January 24, 2017 302.
There are two newly unsealed details that hint at what might have been. First, Flynn told the FBI he believed the US could work with his former counterpart at GRU, Igor Sergun.
FLYNN described SERGUN as someone the U.S. could work with.
Sergun died in mysterious circumstances in Lebanon in early 2016, so that warm relationship with the former head of DIA and GRU didn’t come to pass. Sergun died just months before his agency would start stealing emails from Hillary Clinton and the Democrats to help Trump get elected.
The newly unsealed bits also reveal a claim that Sergey Kislyak asked Flynn to set up a videoconference with Trump for January 21, which would have been the first full day of Trump’s Administration.
I guess Putin didn’t want to wait to capitalize on his investment in tampering in the election.
Two other newly unsealed bits are of interest. Flynn did admit he met with Sergey Kislyak at his residence before going to his Moscow RT Trip. But he said it was just “a courtesy call.” That’s somewhat inconsistent with what the HPSCI Report described.
The meeting was later described by General Flynn’s son in an email to the Russian embassy as “very productive.” The email indicates that the meeting was arranged at the request of General Flynn or his son.
Flynn also claimed not to know who paid for the trip, which is pretty remarkable, not least because he would have had to disclose it.
In addition, Flynn explained away the meeting he attended with Jared Kushner and Kislyak by saying it was “relatively sensitive” because “many countries did not want the then-current administration to know about them.” Flynn, who was in the Obama Administration for six years, complained that, “There were no personal relationships between the leaders of many countries and the prior administration.”
As I disclosed last July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post.
Flynn doesn’t lie nearly as convincingly as he thinks.
Word.
Any meager respect I had for him went out the door after I typed a transcript of his 2016 speech before the Young Americans for Freedom. He’s utterly batshit.
No words… 😳
death of the GRU director shortly before the election year operation began in earnest has been one of the more intriguing aspects of this whole story.
I assume he fled to Lebanon because he didn’t want to involved and got offed there?
Would not assume too much about Sergun. The official Russian gov’t reports are that Sergun died in Russia of a heart attack. Other reports have him in Lebanon at time of death. Generally he seems to have been a respected leader of the GRU within Russia.
did anyone ever see the body?
Flynn thought he was some one they could “work with”. Did Flynn ever say on what, because Flynn sure “worked’ with others but not, in my opinion, anything which benefited the U.S.A.
As to why a Democrat would “cross the floor” and work with the Republicans. He was fired by Obama. As the old saying goes, there is nothing as vengeful as a spurned lover. Flynn most likely loved his job or enjoyed the perks, was fired and went out to get even. He has in a way, but in the end, it didn’t benefit him. He ought to have quietly gone away, but men like him, it isn’t about country and service, it becomes about power and money–that is how you count what you’re worth, for some.
So many questions regarding Flynn…. he used to be a registered Democrat as well!
I find it eerily coincidental that Sergun dies under mysterious circumstances in Lebanon, and shortly thereafter, Flynn joins the Trump campaign which he has been quoted as saying he just knew would win, even from the beginning.
Could Sergun have been working with the US or the UK? And Flynn fingered him for a spy? I know… total speculation, but I’ve always thought that was weird.
Also, in related news, he just fired his counsel… why?
I’m not sure he was telling the truth about his relationship with the Trump campaign at the time.
He fired his counsel bc he wants to start beating up Mueller, and his lawyer is too smart to be a part of that.
Do you mean he plans to move to withdraw his guilty plea, running Mueller down in the context of his sentencing or making an 11th hour run at a pardon?
Wow! It looks like an unnatural disaster has struck DC. Manafort, Stone, Flynn: I wonder if Nancy has been counting the days for when this earthquake would arrive. Well, well, well. Let the geysers flow!
I think Flynn may believe that w/a new tame TAG like William Barr in place (who’s sicced the IG on the FBI), there’s going to be a shake up of the Mueller investigation and Flynn’s gotten some bad legal advice as to what may happen to benefit him in that process. He’s undoubtedly aware of George Papadopoulos’ latest statements.
Flynn has undoubtedly heard about George Papadopoulos’ statements that speak of entrapment and FBI misdeeds and Flynn may be thinking of conducting the same sort of campaign. This is likely related to new TAG William Barr who’s already demonstrated his belief in the potential for the FBI’s Russia investigation to be somehow found to be tainted. The likelihood of Barr successfully proving everything is fruit of the poisoned tree is nil as far as I can tell so Flynn is SOL. Flynn and Papadopoulos seem to be suffering buyer’s remorse.
I confess I’m not up-to-speed on such matters of military etiquette, but since when does a retired U.S. Army general call the Russian ambassador to offer his condolences on the mysterious death of the head of Russian military intelligence?
Yeah, that’s just hinky as all get-out. And a fine example of his lies not being as convincing as he thinks.
A greedy, unethical, self-centered retired U. S. Army Lieutenant General convicted of a felon. “You sold your country out” Flynn needs to go to jail. Lock Him Up!
Poor people sit in jail for petty crimes waiting for a hearing; however people with money and power do not. Unequal justice system. A system for the haves and the have nots.
As they say in the services, different spanks for different ranks.
I would sure love to hear what President Obama has to say about Flynn in private….
He fired Flynn for cause, so probably it would be a very polite version of “he can go have sexual intercourse with himself”.
Was Flynn a known quantity that they could surveil and therefore there were no charges brought against him after the Obama Administration fired him ? [wow, tortured syntax]
Huh, I didn’t know Flynn used to be a Democrat! I agree, he’s batshit crazy. Since I’m a clinical psychologist who has worked for 10 years with combat vets, and I know Flynn did a lot of combat, I wonder if that might explain (not excuse!) anything? They can get really hyped up after combat- not all, but some.
While I don’t dispute the possibility that combat exposure might have made Flynn crazy/stupid, the simpler explanation is that his greed got the best of his gratitude to the country that awarded him his rank. Lots of mere mortals have occupied lofty positions only to eventually be brought down to earth by money, sex, and power. Looks like Flynn succumbed to each of these.
Read up on Flynn. He definitely lost his marbles sometime in the past decade, seriously irrational conspiracy stuff unrelated to his position. His son may have tipped him toward “way out there” as his cognitive ability declined.
He was apparently not willing to follow orders from higher up when he was running whichever agency he was fired from. Also spending a lot of money on a fancy command center that they probably didn’t need, and treating underlings like sh*t.
PJ, do you have an opinion regarding my response to you at 6:56 ^ ?
Damned if I know.
Molly,
To the best of my recollection, after being drummed out of his DIA role in the Obama administration, he accepted an offer to speak at a RT(?) event and afterwas seated next to Putin at a social event.
This was prior to the kickoff of the Trump campaign and before he had a formal relationship with the campaign and incoming administration.
Those activities by anyone, and certainly for a former senior intelligence operative should have raised his profile and warranted scrutiny from the the US intelligence community.
I may be way off base here, but the recent Symantec analysis of IRA Twitter accounts showed that accounts which would be used for “disinformation” were being set up as early as May 2014. The GRU may not have started hacking Democrats until much later, but a strategy to destabilize the election was being put into play two years before the hacking. The mix-up about the data from the monetized Venzuelan accounts doesn’t seem to have changed Symantec’s analysis that the IRA’s digital destabilization plan was in play even before Trump announced his candidacy. Seems unlikely that Igor Sergun wouldn’t have known of this, but I guess it’s possible.
Interesting.
Particularly in view of …. IIIRC… Roger Stone [Roger of Wikileaks synching] being a primary person urging Trump to run in 2016. And Manafort being strangely available just at the time Trump needed him for the RNC national convention. The GRU [and their homies on this project] needed a dupe, and Trump filled that criteria to garish, narcissistic perfection. They could not have found a more perfect stooge.
BTW, and I’ll have to check the more recent Flynn threads later, I was listening to a newish podcast, Harry Litman’s “Talking Feds”, an episode titled Game of Trump: A Song of Vice and Ire (20 May), and around 8:30, ?Glenn Kirshner? talks about ‘who in Congress might have tried persuading Flynn not to turn on Trump’…
WTF?!!
I instantly thought about Paul Ryan and the other Wisconsites (Priebus, Spicer) suddenly going missing. And Nunes being desperate to avoid Congressional hearings, and muddy the waters whenever they occur. 🧐
EW, wish there was an audio version of these posts. I simply cannot keep up!
The idea that the GRU was laying out runway back in 2014 makes a great deal of sense. One has to ask, then, why the FBI only started officially investigating in July 2016.
Yeah, Manafort was not only strangely available, he also was strangely deeply in debt to Oleg Deripaska and was desperate to make him whole (takes a lot of guts to rip off an Oligarch of Oleg’s stature.) So he “volunteers” to run the campaign for tr*mp and did/said Shiva knows what in his meetings with KK. All has ended well for Olig D though, because sanctions against Deripaska/Rusal were lifted in a most timely fashion by the tr*mp administration and Manafort has kept his mouth shut pending his pardon. As Rayne says isn’t it a coinky dink that Senator Mitch “the Bitch” McConnell’s very own state of Kentucky is getting a shiny new $200m aluminum plant courtesy of Rusal, Oleg’s aluminum company – one of a huge assortment. Seems he’s been made whole.
The coinkydinks keep piling up…
It feels like Deutsche will turn out to be an entire Mt Everest of coinkydinks. 🤮
Lol! Yep, curious how all these various shady elements intertwine. Makes me visualize one of those walls with photographs and colored yarn going every which way.
re “started hacking:”
It’s interesting because while the Mueller Report starts the IRA activities “as early as 2014,” it starts the hack at “March 2016.” I imagine the latter is for purposes of prosecuting discrete crimes.
But the Gang of Eight got briefings ca. summer 2015 that “Russian hackers were attacking the Democratic Party.” From Reuters:
August 11, 2016
Exclusive: Congressional leaders were briefed a year ago on hacking of Democrats – sources
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-democrats-hack/exclusive-congressional-leaders-were-briefed-a-year-ago-on-hacking-of-democrats-sources-idUSKCN10N00D
One would think that once “national security” is invoked, you have become a target 🎯 of those in control of the secret police apparatus, here there and everywhere as Eric showed…
Nothing is beyond possible in terms of what those addicted to power will do to maintain control and power.
Putin had in jail killed, a lawyer. Cleaning up lose ends is understandable, from Vlad’s perspective, in a Russian jail or Syria…
Amazing how power hungry politicians will use jurisdictional walls to advance self interest at the expense of a republic.
At least the Watergate
Plumbers engaged in crime within the jurisdiction of the United States?
Subpoena Putin?
Trump would claim executive privilege with a foreign power’s former head of intelligence and king…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal
Everything was about “National Security” in a one time republic that went rather rancid quickly.
That was all a lie too.
Misrepresentations, lies and discrimination not call out, enabled fascism embraced
by fascists, gave us D-Day as we now have Trump…