Barack Obama sits with James Comey during a ceremony at the Federal Bureau of Investigation Headquarters in Washington, DC, Oct. 28, 2013. (Credit: Saul Loeb/Getty Images)
Even after Obama had left office and Comey had a new commander-in-chief to report to, Comey continued to follow Obama’s prompt by withholding intel from Trump. Recently released documents included as exhibits to the Department of Justice’s motion to dismiss the criminal charges against Flynn reveal this reality.
During that same January 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting in which Obama counseled Comey to be cautious in sharing information about Russia with the Trump administration, Obama and Comey discussed Flynn’s late-December telephone calls with the Russian ambassador.
Following Trump’s inauguration, Comey remained adamant that Trump not be briefed of the details of Flynn’s call with the Russian ambassador, and then “broke every protocol” to preempt Yates’s directive that he inform the White House of the conversation, by sending agents to interview Flynn in the West Wing on January 24, 2017.
But it wasn’t just Obama and Comey’s secreting of the supposed intel about Flynn that shows they put damaging the incoming Trump administration above protecting the country from purported Russian agents. The Flynn investigation was but one aspect of the Crossfire Hurricane probe, and Trump was not briefed on the other investigations either—most significantly the continuing investigation of Carter Page.
The FBI, however, is not solely to blame for keeping this “important” information from Trump: They were only following the counsel of former President Barack Obama.
Obama knew the Russia investigation was a hoax from the get-go.
(Read more: The Federalist, 5/11/2020) (Archive) (h/t X22Report)