Let’s hear the tape.
The Flynn affair is a tale of intrigue, with head-spinning twists and turns, manipulative spies, narrative-weaving pols, and strategists who mostly outsmart themselves. It is easy to get lost in the weeds. There is one easy way to get to the bottom of it, though — one way to get a real sense of whether General Michael Flynn, the now-former national-security adviser, is a lying rogue who deceived every Trump administration official in sight, or the victim of an elaborate “deep state” scam whose real objective is to destroy not merely Flynn but the Trump presidency.
Let’s go to the audio tape: the government’s recording of a December 29, 2016, conversation, intercepted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), that Flynn had with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States.
For now, the so-called deep state — the intelligence operatives and highly placed officials who run the United States government because they have the power to ruin their opposition — would apparently prefer that we not hear the tape. Many of them are Obama functionaries who are content to shape opinion by leaking their edited version of events to media allies. Some of them are Trump functionaries whose mishandling of what may be a tempest in a teapot has made them vulnerable less than four weeks into the new administration. Perhaps, they calculate, handing up Flynn’s scalp makes their problem go away. In reality, it is just whetting the opposition’s appetite.
Let’s end the intrigue and go to the tape.
As late as Tuesday, General Flynn was still denying what is being widely reported as settled fact, namely, that he spoke with the Russian ambassador specifically about “sanctions” imposed by President Obama. Since Flynn knows there is a recording of the conversation, it is a strange thing for him to deny. So is he telling the truth? Let’s find out.
Intelligence operatives leaked parts of Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak — a felony violation of federal law. Now, they’ll blithely tell us that that they can’t release the whole conversation because it is classified. Should we buy that?
I wouldn’t.
To understand the smoke and mirrors of scandal here, it is critical to recreate what was happening in this country on December 29, when Flynn, already designated as Trump’s national-security adviser but three weeks away from taking office, called the Russian ambassador.
Donald Trump had shocked the world on November 8 by winning the 2016 election. Unwilling to come to grips with their defeat — to acknowledge that they had nominated a hopelessly flawed candidate and, in their leftwing extremism, alienated the working-class voters who were once their party’s backbone — Democrats settled on an alternative rationalization: “Russia hacked the election.”
This narrative is utter nonsense. While the vile Putin regime probably did have a role in hacking the e-mail accounts of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign manager John Podesta, they had not done a thing to compromise the actual voting process. And the embarrassing revelations published through WikiLeaks were not slanderous; they were true and accurate communications in which Democrats spoke candidly — meaning, they said things they wouldn’t want you to hear about.
