Breaking on Drudge:
ABC's Brian Ross: Flynn Prepared To Testify Against Trump, Trump Family, White House Staff
Ian Schwartz
December 1, 2017
ABC's Brian Ross reports: Michael Flynn promised "full cooperation to the Mueller team" and is prepared to testify that as a candidate, Donald Trump "directed him to make contact with the Russians."
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/vi...ite_house.html
Kushner Is Said to Have Ordered Flynn to Contact Russia
Now that the retired general has pleaded guilty, the president's son-in-law could be one of the next dominoes to fall.
December 1, 2017
Two former officials with the Trump transition team who worked closely with Flynn say that during the last days of the Obama administration, the retired general was instructed to contact foreign ambassadors and foreign ministers of countries on the U.N. Security Council, ahead of a vote condemning Israeli settlements. Flynn was told to try to get them to delay that vote until after Barack Obama had left office, or oppose the resolution altogether.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/artic...contact-russia
Related
UN resolution against Israeli settlements at center of Flynn guilty plea
- Mueller probing Kushner’s 2016 attempts to block UNSC settlement resolution
- Ex-Trump adviser Flynn charged with lying to FBI in Russia probe
December 1, 2017
In the lead up to the anti-settlement resolution which angered Jerusalem, Trump’s team had urged the US to veto the resolution.
Jerusalem Post
Jared Kushner’s parents donated tens of thousands to settlement groups
Trump's son-in-law sits on board of parents' foundation; grantees also include Israeli hospitals, US Jewish schools
JTA
Jared Kushner Failed to Disclose He Led a Foundation Funding Illegal Israeli Settlements Before U.N. Vote
12/3/17
http://www.newsweek.com/jared-kushne...e-house-729290
Obama firmly opposed Israeli settlements before Andrew Adler threat scandal
2009 Obama Redline
JERUSALEM Tue Jun 2, 2009
"The president doesn't want to see even one cement mixer in the West Bank," an Israeli political source, briefed by Netanyahu aides, quoted U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell telling an Israeli delegation that met him in London last week.
Is Kushner in trouble?
And what that deal would involve would deeply interest Mueller, partly if it involves benefits that would not merely accrue to Trump’s presidency, but to Kushner’s personal fortune. Writing for Bloomberg News, Timothy O’Brien, a Trump biographer, said Kushner’s interests with Russia and Israel may extend well beyond his father-in-law’s foreign policy considerations. Kushner’s family is in debt because of its ownership of a Manhattan office tower and Mueller is intrigued about a meeting Kushner took with a banker during the transition. (Kushner has said he met with the banker because of his close ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin, and for no other reason.) He has also in his real estate dealings partnered with one of Israel’s wealthiest families.
There’s more: Kushner reportedly pressed his father to sack then-FBI director James Comey in May. Comey was investigating the very events that have entangled Flynn — and, we now know, Kushner.
So we’re back to the Logan Act. Have the Democrats noticed?
You bet. “This shows a Trump associate negotiating with the Russians against U.S. policy and interests before Donald Trump took office and after it was announced that Russia had interfered in our election,” Bloomberg quoted Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., as saying. “That’s a stunning revelation and could be a violation of the Logan Act, which forbids unauthorized U.S. citizens from negotiating with a foreign power.”
https://www.jta.org/2017/12/03/news-...ner-and-israel
All Drudge Headlines:
REPORT: Flynn says Trump directed him to make contact with Russians...
Feels president has abandoned him...
Prepared To Testify Against Trump, Family, White House Staff...
MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. MUELLER!
FLYNN PLEADS GUILTY; LYING TO FBI
FLIPPED
STOCKS HIT
NYT
Michael Flynn’s Guilty Plea: 10 Key Takeaways
It seems Mr. Trump himself directed Mr. Flynn to make contact with the Russians.
If Mr. Flynn testifies to this — ABC’s Brian Ross is reporting that he will — it presents another impeachable offense along with the possible obstruction of justice. Even more, it brings the whole matter well outside the purview of the criminal courts into the province of a political scandal, indicating abuses of power arguably well beyond those in the Watergate and Iran-contra affairs.
Mr. Flynn asked Russia to intervene at the United Nations on behalf of Israel.
He is admitting that last Dec. 22, he asked Mr. Kislyak to delay or defeat a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel for its settlement policy, which the Obama administration had decided to let pass. The possible involvement or knowledge of Israel in the case will be one of many questions that congressional investigators will pursue.
The lying is bad. Conducting rogue American foreign policy is worse.
In the end, Mr. Flynn’s lies are secondary to the demonstration that the Trump administration was actively undermining American foreign policy before it took office. This will most likely prove the most abiding scandalous fact of the Mueller investigation. And it’s one that nobody on either side of the aisle could possibly defend.
Mr. Flynn’s cooperation portends extreme peril for a variety of people in the president’s orbit.
Most immediately vulnerable? Jared Kushner. Mr. Flynn was present at a Dec. 1, 2016, Trump Tower meeting where Mr. Kushner is said to have proposed to Mr. Kislyak setting up a back channel for the transition team to communicate with Moscow.
Those and related details are now front and center in the investigation. Criminal liability aside, Friday’s news — including a report that Mr. Kushner was the one who directed Mr. Flynn to contact Russia — helps cement Mr. Kushner’s reputation as a callow and arrogant freelancer, authorized by the president to act way over his head, and possibly impairing some of the most delicate and important issues of foreign policy. (A possible winner, on the other hand, is the younger Mike Flynn, about whose criminal liability his father was extremely concerned. Look to see how Mr. Mueller now chooses to treat the younger Mr. Flynn, who is being investigated over his work for his father’s lobbying business.)
Mr. Flynn’s plea raises the likelihood that he will give testimony in support of a potential obstruction of justice charge against Mr. Trump.
The basis for the possible obstruction charge against the president has been his efforts to get the F.B.I. director, James Comey, to shut down the Flynn investigation during a Feb. 14 meeting in the Oval Office, coupled with his multiple lies on the subject. Obstruction is plainly an impeachable offense: It’s the offense for which Richard Nixon was threatened with impeachment.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/opinion/michael-flynn-guilty-plea-takeaways.html
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