Chuck Ross:
President Obama’s ambassador to Russia and a former director of CIA operations in Russia are casting doubt on former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates’ claim that former national security adviser Michael Flynn opened himself up to blackmail by the Russian government.
“Seems unlikely,” Michael McFaul, Obama’s ambassador to Russia, tweeted on Tuesday.
On Monday, Yates told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee that she warned the White House in January that Flynn was susceptible to kompromot, the term for Russian blackmail, because he made conflicting statements about his phone conversations with Russia’s ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.
“We believed that General Flynn was compromised with respect to the Russians,” Yates said. “To state the obvious, you don’t want the national security adviser compromised by the Russians.”
Yates, who was fired by President Trump on Jan. 30, said that it is believed that the Russian government had recordings of Flynn’s call.
Flynn spoke with Kislyak in December, just before and after the Obama administration slapped new sanctions on Russia for its cyber attacks during the presidential campaign.
But Flynn, a retired lieutenant general, misled Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations, saying that sanctions were not discussed. And Yates implied that Flynn misled the FBI during a Jan. 24 interview about his conversations with Kislyak.
President Trump fired Flynn on Feb. 13 because of his false statements to Pence.
But McFaul, who has been heavily critical of President Trump and Flynn, wondered how a Russian blackmail operation against Flynn would have actually played out.
How would blackmail of Flynn have worked? "Unless you do X,Y & Z for Russia, we'll tell VP about your Kislyak chats." Seems unlikely
— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) May 9, 2017
Steven Hall, the former director of CIA operations in Russia, concurred with McFaul’s analysis.
“Kind of a stretch,” he said of Yates’ claim.
There are far too many liberal ideologues occupying important positions of our government.