Trump's use of certain key words or phrases to inflame his voting base is nothing new. He typically uses the phrases "Russia, Russia, Russia" or "the Russia hoax" when referring to the investigation by Robert Mueller into Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. The findings of the Mueller Report were actually pretty damning. But Trump doesn't want his base to realize that, or have his legitimacy as President questioned. So he dismisses the Mueller Report out of hand, and his low information supporters dutifully follow suit.
This new phrase, "Obamagate," flows from his faulty logic regarding the Mueller investigation. It is intimately tied to the continuing saga of Michael Flynn and Trump's efforts to use the Justice Department to bury the Mueller Report's findings. In actuality, all Americans should be concerned with Russia's attempts to influence our political system, and to influence the Trump Administration's foreign policy.
Michael Flynn stands as a concrete example of how Russia may have been able to unduly affect Trump's foreign policy. So let's start with examining him.
Michael Fynn is a retired lieutenant general from the U.S. Army. In 2012, President Barrack Obama nominated Flynn, who was still serving in the Army, to become the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. So far, so good.
But, Flynn's tenure as DIA Director was marked by controversy. First, numerous people grew concerned with Flynn's behavior. In 2013, he was invited to tour the Russian military intelligence headquarters in Moscow, becoming the first American military officer to visit the facility. Flynn believed that Russia could be a key ally in the fight against Islamic terrorism. However, relations between the United States and Russia began to cool off during his tenure.
In 2014, Russia invaded Ukraine and seized the Crimea, territory on the Black Sea that legally belonged to Ukraine. This was the continuation of a feature of Russian foreign policy that often brought the country into conflict with the United States and Western Europe. Ever since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has seen itself as the U.S.S.R.'s successor. This has been most evident in the way in approaches relations with the other fourteen former Soviet republics. Russia considers that it has the right to bear strong influence over these sovereign countries, and calls them "the near abroad."
That has been particularly troublesome with respect to Ukraine. In its short history, Ukraine has wavered between wanting to remain close to its Russian neighbor, and wanting to ally itself with the West. And Russia has not been passive in Ukraine's road to self-discovery. Russia has routinely tried to interfere in Ukrainian domestic politics in order to maintain its influence over the nation.
Take 2004 for example. In that year, Ukraine was holding its presidential elections. One of the top candidates, Viktor Yushchenko, favored creating greater ties to the West. Russia had Yushchenko poisoned with dioxin. His body immediately swelled. To this day, Yushchenko still bears the pock-marks on his face that are remnants of his poisoning at the hands of Russia. Nonetheless, due to the strength of the so-called Orange Revolution, Yushchenko won the presidency.
However, that didn't settle the issue, as Ukraine's government teetered between leaning toward greater cooperation with Russia and greater ties with the West. And in February of 2014, the Ukrainian people once again rose up against a corrupt government with ties to Russia. The Ukrainian president at the time,Viktor Yanukovich, who was charged with corruption, fled Ukraine to live in exile in Russia. In fact, many corrupt Ukrainian officials fled the country during this time, and most wound up in Russia.
Russia's response was to invade Ukraine, and annex the Crimea.
President Obama set the official U.S. Government policy, and imposed sanctions against Russia, as did the European Union.
But Flynn, still Director of the DIA, continued to favor cooperation with Russia against Islamic terrorism. It didn't help that rumors were flying concerning his relationship with a Russian-born graduate student living in the United Kingdom, Sventlana Lokhova. Some people grew concerned with this relationship, and criticized Flynn for failing to report some emails he and Lokhova exchanged in 2014.
It didn't help that Flynn's leadership style at the DIA was questioned. He had been accused of being abusive with staff, stubborn and a poor manager. Moreover, his support of cooperation with Russia flew in the face of official Administration policy. President Obama chose not to extend his term, and Flynn was forced to retire early.
Flynn responded by becoming bitterly resentful. Despite being a lifelong Democrat, Flynn became a Republican foreign policy advisor. Privately, former Secretary of State and four-star general Colin Powell, a Republican, has called Flynn a "jerk," and a "right wing nutty."
Professionally, Flynn cashed in on his foreign policy experience by starting a consulting firm with his son called the Flynn Intel Group. But his client list raised concerns about his continued ties to Russia. They included a Russian research firm suspected of having ties to Russian intelligence services, a Russian airline that had been examined by the United Nations for fraud, and a Russian news network, Russia Today, which has been accused of being a propaganda outlet by U.S. intelligence agencies.
In December of 2015, Flynn appeared in Moscow for a paid speaking engagement on behalf of Russia Today. He was photographed sitting next to Russian President Vladimir Putin. This was at a time when U.S.-Russian relations had cooled off due to the invasion of Ukraine. The appearance of such a high-profile former U.S. military officer and former Director of the DIA at an event in Russia, sitting next to Putin raised eyebrows among U.S. officials.
Meanwhile, Flynn continued to publicly criticize President Obama and his failure to aggressively oppose the rise of ISIS in the Middle East. While ISIS was certainly a dangerous force in the Middle East, Flynn's criticism often played into the irrational fears uneducated white voters have regarding Islam in general. Flynn has called Islam a “cancer” and a “political ideology” that “definitely hides
behind being a religion."
In July of 2016, Flynn published a book, called "Field of Fight," advocating decisive action against Islamic militarists. Coincidentally, that same month Flynn, still a registered Democrat, spoke at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. In that speech, Flynn railed against both Obama and former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Indeed, Flynn joined with the crowd in chanting "Lock her up," in reference to Clinton's illegal use of a private email server for classified State Department business. Rumor had it that before the convention Flynn had been vetted as a potential Vice Presidential candidate for Trump. After the convention, Flynn became an advisor to the Trump presidential campaign.
On August 16, 2016, the FBI began an investigation into whether Flynn's work for Russian clients constituted a crime or a threat to U.S. national security.
Meanwhile, Turkish businesman Ekim Alpetkin hired Flynn's company to engage in a publicity campaign in support of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and against Turkish dissident Muhammed Fatullah Gulen. Gulen is the leader of a relatively new branch within Islam, called Hizmet. Hizmet is a Turkish word meaning service. The movement is marked by an emphasis on service to others and education. And while Gulen and Erdoğan were once political allies, the two have had a falling out. Gulen has lived in a self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999. Hizmet followers in Turkey have faced persecution. They have been labeled "terrorists" by the repressive Erdoğan government, and have come to the United States seeking asylum.
Erdoğan blamed Gulen for a failed coup attempt in June of 2016. Flynn helped engage in a publicity campaign against Gulen, and even called for his extradition to Turkey. It should be noted that even the Trump Administration opposes Gulen's extradition to Turkey. At any rate, Flynn's paid work included an op-ed piece, which appeared in the November 8, 2016 edition of the politically themed newspaper, The Hill. This just so happened to coincide with Election Day. In his op-ed, Flynn argued that Gulen should not be permitted to have a safe haven in the United States.
The op-ed piece prompted the FBI to open an investigation of Flynn, and whether he was serving as a paid lobbyist for the Government of Turkey. Indeed, according to former FBI Director James Woolsey, in September of
2016, while working as an advisor to the Trump campaign, Flynn met with
Turkish officials, including the foreign minister and the energy
minister, to discuss the possibility of kidnapping Gulen and bringing
him to Turkey without the need to resort to the U.S. legal process. Eventually, after being fired from the Trump Administration, Flynn filed disclosures pursuant to the Foreign Agents Registration Act, admitting that the
firm's work for Alpetkin "could be construed to have principally
benefited the Republic of Turkey."
Nonetheless, after the election, Trump met with President Obama in the White House to discuss the transition. Obama warned Trump against hiring Flynn as part of his administration. Trump, however, chose to ignore this warning because, well, Obama. Instead, Trump offered Flynn the job of National Security Advisor.
Around this time, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia interfered in the U.S. presidential election by spreading misinformation online, and hacking into the Democratic National Committee's server. Obama responded by imposing sanctions against Russia. He expected that Russia would retaliate with its own sanctions against the United States. Obama, and other administration officials, were surprised when Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would not escalate the situation by imposing their own sanctions. It was a move praised by President-elect Trump.
What wasn't generally known at the time was that Flynn, the incoming National Security Advisor, had been communicating with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. Flynn discussed the sanctions with Kislyak. This was potentially a violation of the Logan Act, which prohibits a private citizen from negotiating with a foreign power concerning any dispute that power may have with the United States.
By this time, counterintelligence officials were already aware of communications between members of the Trump campaign and Russia. The FBI launched the counterintelligence investigation in July of 2016. It was based, in part, on a Trump campaign aid, George Papadopoulos bragging to an Australian diplomat in London that he had had contact with a Russian official who claimed to have damaging emails from Hillary Clinton. That Australian diplomat reported the conversation to the FBI, and the counterintelligence investigation began. Papadopoulos, of course, served fourteen days im prison for lying to federal investigators.
At any rate, Flynn assumed his role as the new National Security Advisor. He was asked by then Chief of Staff Reince Preibus and Vice President Mike Pence about whether he discussed sanctions with Ambassador Kislyak. Flynn denied that he had. When it became clear that Flynn lied to both Priebus and Pence, Trump asked for his resignation. Flynn had the shortest tenure of any National Security Advisor, 24 days.
But this brings us to the Mueller investigation. On February 14, 2017, after firing Flynn, Trump met with FBI Director James Comey. Trump asked Comey to ease off of the investigation of Flynn, calling Flynn, "a good guy." Now, while Trump likes to claim that the Mueller Report fully exonerated him, that's not entirely true. Specifically, Mueller did not exonerate Trump on allegations that he committed obstruction of justice. And this conversation with Comey is cited as one example of how Trump's behavior could be the basis of a charge of obstruction of justice. Mueller, however, wanted to leave that to Congress to determine, because under Department of Justice protocol, only Congress had the power to charge the President with official malfeasance and that is through the impeachment process.
Still, Trump's pressure on Comey is what prompted the appointment of Mueller as Special Counsel to investigate Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. It was during that investigation that Flynn was interviewed, and lied about his conversations with the Russian Ambassador.
While Trump likes to mislead his supporters by calling the Mueller investigation the "Russia hoax," the Mueller Report concluded that Russia had indeed illegally interfered in the 2016 presidential election. It did conclude that there was not sufficient evidence to find that there was a conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign. But, the Mueller Report did detail numerous disturbing contacts between Russian officials and members of the Trump campaign.
In fact, the Mueller investigation resulted in thirty-four indictments for violations of U.S. criminal law. That included a number of Russian nationals and Russian agencies for hacking the DNC server.
With respect to Flynn, the Mueller team offered him a plea bargain. If he would admit to lying to the FBI, the Justice Department would not pursue more serious charges, and would forgo charging Flynn's son with any crimes. Flynn accepted that plea bargain, and admitted to lying to the FBI in open court.
But Trump wants to erase all memory of the Mueller investigation, and the stain it has caused for his presidency. He wants to portray it as illegitimate from the start, and has used his Attorney General to further his cause.
Bill Barr replaced Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. Sessions found himself much aligned by Trump, because Sessions had to audacity to recognize that he had a conflict of interest and should recuse himself from any investigation regarding Russian interference in the presidential election. That meant that Session could not comply with Trump's demands that the Mueller investigation be shut down.
Trump found Barr to be a more willing lap dog. You may recall that Barr started the campaign to downplay the significance of the Mueller Report, by writing a letter claiming that Trump had been exonerated. But, as I explained above, that was a flat-out lie.
Barr has also agreed to placate Trump by investigating whether it was actually Ukraine, and not Russia, who hacked into the DNC server. Trump's obsession with this conspiracy theory is what led to his impeachment for soliciting Ukrainian interference in the 2020 presidential election.
But Barr hasn't stopped there. Barr has pressured Justice Department lawyers to drop charges against the Russian defendants connected with the hacking the scandal. It was a move that prompted long-time Justice Department lawyers to withdraw from the case in protest.
After Trump expressed his desire to exonerate Flynn, Barr has pressured Justice officials to file a motion to dismiss the charges against Flynn. This is despite the fact that Flynn has openly admitted under oath to the crime of lying to the FBI. Justice Department lead prosecutor Brandon L. Van Grack withdrew from the case out of protest.
Only this time, the U.S. District Court judge assigned to the Flynn case has chosen not to rubber stamp Barr's action. Instead, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan received a filing from sixteen former Watergate prosecutors, arguing that Judge Sullivan was not bound to comply with the Justice Department's motion. Judge Sullivan then appointed former judge John Gleeson to argue against Government's motion. This is a move for which Judge Sullivan has received sharp criticism from Trump supporters.
In a fit of rage, Trump responded with his now infamous tweet, "Obamagate." The charge, which is not new, is that the counterintelligence investigation was really an effort to spy on the Trump campaign by the Obama Administration. And specifically, that the unmasking of Michael Flynn in connection with the FBI report on his conversations with Ambassador Kislyak was illegal.
Let me step back for a minute, and try to briefly explain the concept of "unmasking." Normally, when an intelligence agency present a report to the President concerning counterintelligence issues, the name of any U.S. citizen involved is redacted. However, the President and other administration officials may ask for the name to be revealed, or "unmasked." This can occur, for example, when the information may raise the suspicion that the U.S. citizen has violated U.S. law.
There are just two major problems with Trump's allegation.
The first is that there ample reason for the FBI to open a counterintelligence investigation involving the Trump campaign. They include the conversation Papadopoulus had with the Australian diplomat back in 2016, bragging about the possibility of obtaining damaging emails concerning Hillary Clinton from Russian sources.
Second, Flynn's name was never masked in connection with his conversations with Ambassador Kislyak to begin with. When the FBI circulated the report of the telephone conversations with Flynn, they hadn't redacted his name. Simply put, there was no need to ask for any unmasking.
So, Trump's blustering of "Obamagate" has no basis in either fact or law.
Nonetheless, after the election, Trump met with President Obama in the White House to discuss the transition. Obama warned Trump against hiring Flynn as part of his administration. Trump, however, chose to ignore this warning because, well, Obama. Instead, Trump offered Flynn the job of National Security Advisor.
Around this time, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia interfered in the U.S. presidential election by spreading misinformation online, and hacking into the Democratic National Committee's server. Obama responded by imposing sanctions against Russia. He expected that Russia would retaliate with its own sanctions against the United States. Obama, and other administration officials, were surprised when Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would not escalate the situation by imposing their own sanctions. It was a move praised by President-elect Trump.
What wasn't generally known at the time was that Flynn, the incoming National Security Advisor, had been communicating with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. Flynn discussed the sanctions with Kislyak. This was potentially a violation of the Logan Act, which prohibits a private citizen from negotiating with a foreign power concerning any dispute that power may have with the United States.
By this time, counterintelligence officials were already aware of communications between members of the Trump campaign and Russia. The FBI launched the counterintelligence investigation in July of 2016. It was based, in part, on a Trump campaign aid, George Papadopoulos bragging to an Australian diplomat in London that he had had contact with a Russian official who claimed to have damaging emails from Hillary Clinton. That Australian diplomat reported the conversation to the FBI, and the counterintelligence investigation began. Papadopoulos, of course, served fourteen days im prison for lying to federal investigators.
At any rate, Flynn assumed his role as the new National Security Advisor. He was asked by then Chief of Staff Reince Preibus and Vice President Mike Pence about whether he discussed sanctions with Ambassador Kislyak. Flynn denied that he had. When it became clear that Flynn lied to both Priebus and Pence, Trump asked for his resignation. Flynn had the shortest tenure of any National Security Advisor, 24 days.
But this brings us to the Mueller investigation. On February 14, 2017, after firing Flynn, Trump met with FBI Director James Comey. Trump asked Comey to ease off of the investigation of Flynn, calling Flynn, "a good guy." Now, while Trump likes to claim that the Mueller Report fully exonerated him, that's not entirely true. Specifically, Mueller did not exonerate Trump on allegations that he committed obstruction of justice. And this conversation with Comey is cited as one example of how Trump's behavior could be the basis of a charge of obstruction of justice. Mueller, however, wanted to leave that to Congress to determine, because under Department of Justice protocol, only Congress had the power to charge the President with official malfeasance and that is through the impeachment process.
Still, Trump's pressure on Comey is what prompted the appointment of Mueller as Special Counsel to investigate Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. It was during that investigation that Flynn was interviewed, and lied about his conversations with the Russian Ambassador.
While Trump likes to mislead his supporters by calling the Mueller investigation the "Russia hoax," the Mueller Report concluded that Russia had indeed illegally interfered in the 2016 presidential election. It did conclude that there was not sufficient evidence to find that there was a conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign. But, the Mueller Report did detail numerous disturbing contacts between Russian officials and members of the Trump campaign.
In fact, the Mueller investigation resulted in thirty-four indictments for violations of U.S. criminal law. That included a number of Russian nationals and Russian agencies for hacking the DNC server.
With respect to Flynn, the Mueller team offered him a plea bargain. If he would admit to lying to the FBI, the Justice Department would not pursue more serious charges, and would forgo charging Flynn's son with any crimes. Flynn accepted that plea bargain, and admitted to lying to the FBI in open court.
But Trump wants to erase all memory of the Mueller investigation, and the stain it has caused for his presidency. He wants to portray it as illegitimate from the start, and has used his Attorney General to further his cause.
Bill Barr replaced Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. Sessions found himself much aligned by Trump, because Sessions had to audacity to recognize that he had a conflict of interest and should recuse himself from any investigation regarding Russian interference in the presidential election. That meant that Session could not comply with Trump's demands that the Mueller investigation be shut down.
Trump found Barr to be a more willing lap dog. You may recall that Barr started the campaign to downplay the significance of the Mueller Report, by writing a letter claiming that Trump had been exonerated. But, as I explained above, that was a flat-out lie.
Barr has also agreed to placate Trump by investigating whether it was actually Ukraine, and not Russia, who hacked into the DNC server. Trump's obsession with this conspiracy theory is what led to his impeachment for soliciting Ukrainian interference in the 2020 presidential election.
But Barr hasn't stopped there. Barr has pressured Justice Department lawyers to drop charges against the Russian defendants connected with the hacking the scandal. It was a move that prompted long-time Justice Department lawyers to withdraw from the case in protest.
After Trump expressed his desire to exonerate Flynn, Barr has pressured Justice officials to file a motion to dismiss the charges against Flynn. This is despite the fact that Flynn has openly admitted under oath to the crime of lying to the FBI. Justice Department lead prosecutor Brandon L. Van Grack withdrew from the case out of protest.
Only this time, the U.S. District Court judge assigned to the Flynn case has chosen not to rubber stamp Barr's action. Instead, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan received a filing from sixteen former Watergate prosecutors, arguing that Judge Sullivan was not bound to comply with the Justice Department's motion. Judge Sullivan then appointed former judge John Gleeson to argue against Government's motion. This is a move for which Judge Sullivan has received sharp criticism from Trump supporters.
In a fit of rage, Trump responded with his now infamous tweet, "Obamagate." The charge, which is not new, is that the counterintelligence investigation was really an effort to spy on the Trump campaign by the Obama Administration. And specifically, that the unmasking of Michael Flynn in connection with the FBI report on his conversations with Ambassador Kislyak was illegal.
Let me step back for a minute, and try to briefly explain the concept of "unmasking." Normally, when an intelligence agency present a report to the President concerning counterintelligence issues, the name of any U.S. citizen involved is redacted. However, the President and other administration officials may ask for the name to be revealed, or "unmasked." This can occur, for example, when the information may raise the suspicion that the U.S. citizen has violated U.S. law.
There are just two major problems with Trump's allegation.
The first is that there ample reason for the FBI to open a counterintelligence investigation involving the Trump campaign. They include the conversation Papadopoulus had with the Australian diplomat back in 2016, bragging about the possibility of obtaining damaging emails concerning Hillary Clinton from Russian sources.
Second, Flynn's name was never masked in connection with his conversations with Ambassador Kislyak to begin with. When the FBI circulated the report of the telephone conversations with Flynn, they hadn't redacted his name. Simply put, there was no need to ask for any unmasking.
So, Trump's blustering of "Obamagate" has no basis in either fact or law.
Instead, there is a clear story here of a former Army General, who overstepped his authority, was forced to retire, worked against official U.S. foreign policy, played on some members of the public's ignorant fears of Islam in general, may have violated U.S. law by participating in a plan to kidnap a Muslim cleric residing in the United States, may have violated U.S. law with regard to his work on behalf of Russian clients, may have violated U.S. law concerning contacts with Russian officials before he became National Security Advisor, and certainly violated U.S. law by lying to the FBI in the course of an official investigation. But acknowledging that means questioning the legitimacy of the Trump presidency. Therefore, Trump is attempting to manipulate his low information voter supporters with baseless accusations concerning the commencement of the counterintelligence investigation involving his campaign.
By: William J. Kovatch, Jr.
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References
Corera, Gordon, "A Russian honeytrap for Gen Flynn? Not me . . . ," BBC News (May 12, 2017).
Cummings, William; Vanden Brook, Tom; Johnson, Kevin and Jansen,Bart, “Mueller's investigation is done. Here are the 34 people he indictedalong the way,” USA Today (March 25, 2019).
Day,Chad; Tucker, Eric and Braun, Stephen, “Michael Flynn’s rise was rapid, his fall even faster,” Associated Press (December 1, 2017).
Dovere, Edward-Isaac and Nussbaum, Matthew, "Obama warned Trump about Flynn, officials say," Politico (May 8, 2017).
Feindt, Jan and Helderman, Rosalind, "The Mueller Report Illustrated, Chapter 1: ’This Russia thing is far from over,'" The Washington Post.
Flynn, Michael, "Our ally Turkey is in crisis and needs our support," The Hill (November 8, 2016).
Gerstein, Josh, "Judge skeptical on libel suit by Russian woman who met with Flynn," Politico (October 25, 2019).
