TPM - Marshall "Who Lied to Who When and Why It Barely Matters" (re the Flynn mess)

[NRaleighLiberal]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/who-lied-to-who-when-and-why-it-barely-matters#more-1098672

By JOSH MARSHALL Published DECEMBER 4, 2017 1:27 PM

On this weekend’s back and forth on who Mike Flynn lied to, who knew he’d lied and why it might matter, let’s step back for a moment. With regards to Flynn lying to the FBI we’re now looking at the narrow factual question of whether Acting Attorney General Sally Yates told White House Counsel Don McGahn that Flynn had lied to the FBI; whether McGahn told Trump; and whether Trump knew this in the intervening days before he fired Flynn when he asked James Comey to drop the investigation. We are collectively running through this chain of connections because of our semi-reasonable but likely outmoded tendency to take the various claims we’ve heard from the White House at face value: especially the claim that Flynn was fired for lying to Vice President Pence, etc.

However, if we step back and collect together the information we now know, particularly the presumably hard evidence of statements included in Flynn’s plea agreement, it’s pretty clear none of these things even matter.

Let’s walk through the key issues.

On January 12th David Ignatius reported in The Washington Post that Flynn had talked to Ambassador Kislyak about sanctions on December 29th. This led to a flurry of denials: first that the call had taken place at all and then that the calls had been about anything more than pleasantries. Vice President Pence vouched publicly for these denials on multiple occasions, supposedly based on Flynn lying to him about what he discussed with Kislyak.

We now know that during the multiple calls Flynn had with Kislyak in the last days of December he not only notified his colleagues but actively solicited and received their input in real time. As the Flynn plea agreement lays out, Flynn called KT McFarland at Mar-a-Lago to discuss the sanctions calls with her. She in turn solicited the opinions of other senior transition officials with her to share with Flynn. Contemporaneous records suggest these officials, who go unnamed in the plea document, included Stephen Miller, Kellyanne Conway, Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus. Concluding the series of calls with Kislyak on December 31st, Flynn again called into Mar-a-Lago and spoke not only to McFarland but directly to “senior members of the Presidential Transition Team” about the sanctions calls.


snip - much more to read, and has links. Truth...so refreshing.

[longship]

1. Josh Marshall and TPM doing good work, as usual.

Josh's Editor's BLOG is essential for me.

Highly recommended.