A Key Obama Meeting Was Held to Ensure FBI Russia Collusion Probe Wasn't Discovered by the Trump Administration

Article by Matt Vespa in "Townhall":

I mean, we shouldn’t be too shocked about this I guess, given the scale of the anti-Trump operation executed by the Obama administration. Then-President Obama had to have known. If not, then he wasn’t in control of the executive. Katie touched upon this earlier this week, noting that new documents from the Department of Justice in their motion to dismiss their case against ex-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who was the victim of an FBI plot to entrap him on perjury charges. Flynn has been vindicated, and more light is being shed on the scope of this whole operation.

The deep state does exist. They’re malicious. They’re ruthless. Just look at the mindset of Andrew McCabe and James Comey, who were determined to ensnare Flynn, department policy, and constitutional rights be damned. It’s chilling. And now we’re seeing how Obama was the starting quarterback for how to ensure the incoming Trump administration would be saddled with the Trump-Russia collusion allegations. It was coordinated chaos. Here’s what Katie wrote about what the new DOJ revealed regarding this angle:

Newly released documents from the Department of Justice show President Obama informed former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates of a phone call between former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December 2016. He did so in the Oval Office.
"Yates first learned of the December 2016 calls between [LTG Michael] Flynn and [Russian Ambassador to the United States, Sergey] Kislyak on January 5, 2017, while in the Oval Office. Yates, along with then FBI-Director James Comey, then-CIA Director John Brennan, and then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, were at the White House to brief members of the Obama Administration on the classified Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian Activities in Recent U.S Elections. President Obama was joined by his National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, and others from the National Security Council," the document states.
"After the briefing, Obama dismissed the group but asked Yates and Comey to stay behind. Obama started by saying he had 'learned of the information about Flynn' and his conversation with Kislyak about sanctions. Obama specified he did not want any additional information on the matter, but was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently, given the information. At that point, Yates had no idea what the President was talking about, but figured it out based on the conversation. Yates recalled Comey mentioning the Logan Act, but can't recall if he specified there was an 'investigation,'" it continues.

That January 5 meeting appears to be critical, as Obama also gave his marching orders. Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist has a lengthy post detailing the meeting, the ensuing timelines, and how all the stars aligned to what Barry wanted. He wanted to make sure the incoming Trump administration didn’t find out about the FBI’s counterintelligence probe into Russian collusion. With that mindset, Obama officials soon weaponized the Russia collusion nonsense to inflict damage on the new Trump White House. Remember, Obama and most of the Democratic establishment thought Hillary was going to win. Obama administration officials thought so as well, as did the intelligence apparatus probably. They thought this could be swept under the rug once Hillary was sworn-in, washed away as if it never happened. Well, that plan got punched in the mouth. It was scrambling time (via The Federalist) [emphasis mine]:

A clearer picture is emerging of the drastic steps that were taken to accomplish Obama’s goal in the following weeks and months. Shortly thereafter, high-level operatives began intensely leaking selective information supporting a supposed Russia-Trump conspiracy theory, the incoming National Security Advisor was ambushed, and the incoming Attorney General was forced to recuse himself from oversight of investigations of President Trump. At each major point in the operation, explosive media leaks were a key strategy in the operation to take down Trump.
Not only was information on Russia not fully shared with the incoming Trump team, as Obama directs, the leaks and ambushes made the transition chaotic, scared quality individuals away from working in the administration, made effective governance almost impossible, and materially damaged national security. When Comey was finally fired on May 9, in part for his duplicitousness regarding his handling of the Russia collusion theory, he orchestrated the launch of a Special Counsel probe that continued his efforts for another two years. That probe ended with Mueller finding no evidence of any American colluding with Russia to steal the 2016 election, much less Trump or anyone connected to him.
An analysis of the timeline from early 2017 shows a clear pattern of behavior from the federal officials running the collusion operation against the Trump campaign. It also shows how essential media leaks were to their strategy to sideline key law enforcement and intelligence officials and cripple the ability of the incoming Trump administration to run the country.
[…]
January 5: Yates, Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper briefed Obama on Russia-related matters in the Oval Office. Biden and Rice also attended. After the Obama briefing, the intelligence chiefs who would be leaving at the end of the term were dismissed and Yates and Comey, who would continue in the Trump administration, were asked to stay. Not only did Obama give his guidance about how to perpetuate the Russia collusion theory investigations, he also talked about Flynn’s conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, according to both Comey and Yates. Interestingly, Clapper, Comey, and Yates all said that they did not brief Obama about these phone calls. Clapper testified he did not brief Obama on the calls, Yates learned about the calls from Obama himself during that meeting, and Comey also testified he didn’t brief Obama about the calls, even though the intelligence was an FBI product. Rice, who publicly lied but later admitted under oath to her widespread use of unmasked intelligence at the end of the Obama administration, likely briefed Obama on the calls and would have had access to the intelligence. Comey mentions the Logan Act at this meeting.
It was this meeting that Rice memorialized in a bizarre inauguration-day email to herself that claimed Obama told the gathered to do everything “by the book.” But Rice also noted in her email that the key point of discussion in that meeting was whether and how to withhold national security information, likely including details of the investigation into Trump himself, from the incoming Trump national security team.

And all of this was done for obvious reasons. The FBI’s actions here were deplorable. First, they used an unverified piece of opposition research, the Trump Dossier, to secure a FISA spy warrant on Carter Page, a former Trump campaign official. The FBI altered or omitted exculpatory evidence in the process to obtain the warrant, which DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz said was a systemic issue. Someone should be fired over this, but that won’t happen. The Horowitz report also drove a stake through the heart of the dossier, which was compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele which was funded by the Democrats and Hillary Clinton. The dossier was probably never vetted by the FBI since former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe refused to say otherwise. By the glaring errors in it, it wasn’t. Also, let’s not forget about the spying operation into the Trump campaign. Sorry, it’s not spying, just informants gleaning information from Trump campaign officials under false pretenses and then relaying said information to a third party. The FBI sent a woman, Azra Turk, to run the operation which included Stefan Halper, another informant. Trump campaign official George Papadopoulos, a target of this surveillance operation called ‘Crossfire Hurricane,’ felt Turk was CIA, not an FBI agent, but that’s a tale for another time.

And now we know this entire operation, the entire collusion narrative was a hoax. It was partially grounded in Russian misinformation which was surely fed to Steele when he was developing sources in Russia, some of which were intelligence officials still active in the Kremlin. Knowing Trump, Obama knew how the incoming president would react and moved to ensure a plan was set in place that would lead to the works getting gummed up. Hemingway’s excellent timeline analysis shows the leaks and other deep state antics that went along prior to and after Trump’s inauguration. CNN and The Washington Post appeared to be popular sites for these leaks to pop up. 

They tried but failed. The whole circus act has been revealed—and the hunters are slowly becoming the hunted. It’s about damn time. 

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2020/05/09/the-key-obama-meeting-that-got-the-antitrump-resistance-moving-n2568505