Did Donald Trump know Michael Flynn was paying an FBI official to smear Hillary Clinton?
Amid Michael Flynn’s admission this week that he was a paid foreign agent of Turkey while he was also a Donald Trump campaign adviser, his belated filings have also exposed that he was paying the FBI official who had tried and failed to get the State Department to do something improper on Hillary Clinton’s behalf. It’s also clear Trump has known for months that Flynn was on the take. So now comes the essential question that must be determined: did Trump know at the time that Flynn was paying the FBI official to smear his opponent?
The timeline as we now know it looks like this: Back in May of 2015, Brian McCauley, who was an FBI deputy assistant director at the time, called up the State Department and offered to declassify the information allegedly contained in Hillary Clinton’s emails in exchange for favors in return; it didn’t go anywhere (source: Washington Post). McCauley then retired and became a political consultant.
Then more than a year later, just three weeks before election day, someone leaked McCauley’s earlier “quid pro quo” offer to the media in an attempt to create the false appearance that Hillary Clinton had done something wrong with her emails and that her former State Department was attempting to cover it up. But according to Michael Flynn’s own government filings this week, he began paying unspecified “consultancy” fees to McCauley shortly before the leak occurred. The four payments, which continued until shortly after Donald Trump was declared the winner of the election, totaled $28,000 – and they were subcontracted from the money which Flynn had received from Turkey.
Whether Brian McCauley had been attempting to entrap the State Department back in 2015 as part of a long range plan to harm Clinton, or whether he had merely been asking for an improper quid pro quo, here’s what is clear: Two weeks after Michael Flynn began paying off McCauley, the eighteen month old incident suddenly leaked. Did McCauley leak it to help out his new boss? Did McCauley mention it offhand to Flynn, who then leaked it? Either way, it’s fairly clear that Flynn paid McCauley so he could harm Clinton in the process.
That means Michael Flynn illegally took money from Turkey, and then paid a portion of that illicit money to a retired FBI official in order to get a misleading story into the media that damaged Clinton’s election chances at a crucial time. That alone suggests Flynn is going to prison for quite some time unless he can cut a deal. So now comes the question of what Donald Trump and Mike Pence knew and when the knew it.
Based on the letter which Congressman Elijah Cummings sent to Mike Pence’s office on November 18th, it’s certain that Trump and Pence both knew Michael Flynn was on the take by the time they appointed him National Security Adviser. But did they know about it during the election? And if so, did they also know at the time that Flynn was paying off a retired FBI official to smear Hillary Clinton? If they did, and Flynn is willing and able to prove it to save himself, then Trump and Pence are both finished. Contribute to Palmer Report
