Mod: As you know, in the dark netherworld of Tea Nuttery everything (and I do mean everything) that has gone wrong during the Trump administration is blamed on the previous president. You'd wonder why anyone would take any of it seriously. But apparently it isn't just Donald's wing nut supporters that engage in these absurd exercises in babyish blame diversion. It goes all the way to the top. Which, of course, is all Obama's fault.
Trump blames Obama for not warning him about Michael Flynn. Which Obama did. (
Voxlink):
President Donald Trump wants you to believe that he had no way of knowing about former national security adviser
Michael Flynn’s shady dealings with
Russia before he made him his first national security adviser. In reality, the president is trying to rewrite history. On Friday,
Trump tweeted his lament that nobody warned him about
Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general who was dismissed from his job as director of national intelligence by then-
President Barack Obama in 2014. After his dismissal,
Flynn wasted little time cozying up to the
Kremlin, and then spent 2016 as one of
Trump’s key campaign surrogates.
“It now seems the
General Flynn was under investigation long before was common knowledge,”
Trump tweeted. “It would have been impossible for me to know this but, if that was the case, and with me being one of two people who would become president, why was I not told so that I could make a change?” But news reports indicate otherwise.
CNN, citing former
Obama administration officials, reported on May 17, 2017, that during a
White House meeting days after
Trump’s election, Obama told him that “given the importance of the [national security adviser] job, the president through there were better people for it, and that Flynn wasn’t up for the job.” But
Trump proceeded with hiring
Flynn anyway.
Former
New Jersey governor and longtime
Trump confidant
Chris Christie has also said he directly advised
Trump against hiring
Flynn. “If I were president-elect of the
United States, I wouldn’t let
General Flynn into the
White House, let alone give him a job,”
Christie said in 2017.
Flynn soon illustrated why
Obama and
Christie had concerns about him. During the presidential transition period, he had phone calls with then-
RussianAmbassador Sergey Kislyak in which he advised
Kislyak not to respond to new sanctions the
Obama administration placed on
Russia for interfering (on
Trump’s behalf) in the just-completed presidential election. Not only did
Flynn undercut
Obama’s foreign policy, but he then lied about it, telling
FBI investigators during an interview conducted days after
Trump’s inauguration that he and
Kislyak did not in fact discuss sanctions.
Flynn’s lies to the
FBI prompted officials to warn
Trump once again about
Flynn. On January 26, 2017, then-acting
Attorney General Sally Yates personally informed the
White House that
Flynn lied to the
FBI about his calls with
Kislyak, and therefore was at risk of being blackmailed by
Russia. But instead of immediately taking action against
Flynn, the
Trump administration fired
Yates three days later, after she refused to implement
Trump’s executive order barring people from a number of
Muslim-majority countries from traveling to the
United States.
Flynn was finally fired on February 13, after it emerged that he had also misled
Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of his phone calls with the
Russian ambassador during the presidential transition period. He pleaded guilty to lying to the
FBI in December 2017, agreed to cooperate with special counsel
Robert Mueller, and is still awaiting sentencing.
Trump, however, has repeatedly tried to blame the whole
Flynn debacle on
Obama.
Mod: There is much more available at the link.
sierramadretattler.blogspot.com
