This will not be the most artful of diaries, but I wanted to get it done and published before tomorrow’s revelations (or not) by Judge Sullivan.
First off, in my research, I discovered the Trump Twitter Archive. It’s wonderfully fast, and very searchable. You can even export data from a search. Very flexible. I highly recommend it.
And now I’ll get right to it!
On the theory that Trump tweets what someone has just put in his head, I started to put together a timeline of the Flynn case and then started to pull in Trump tweets and put them into a database I could sort by date.
At some point in this process, I came upon this tweet:
Now, aside from the “WTF you talking about?” factor, on which several twitter followers replied, something in this stuck me as seeming similar to something else I had recently read. And since “recently” meant “no earlier than May 1st of 2020”, I had this question regarding the statement “The FBI said he didn’t lie”. That question was:
How did Trump know of Flynn, on the morning of December 13th, 2018, that the FBI had said “He didn’t lie”?
The first time I remember this line of “The FBI said he didn’t lie” being used was in the Motion to Dismiss that Bill Barr filed on May 7th of this year. It included the following phrasing and produced the original documents as to where the information was from:
After the interview, the FBI agents expressed uncertainty as to whether Mr. Flynn had lied. See Ex. 4 at 5.
EX. 4: Sally Yates (FBI Interview 302) (Conducted 8/15/17, written up 9/7/17, filed 5/7/20)
FBI agents reported to their leadership that Mr. Flynn exhibited a “very sure demeanor” and “did not give any indicators of deception.” Ex. 13 at 3.
Both of the agents “had the impression at the time that Flynn was not lying or did not think he was lying.” Id.
EX. 13: Agent Peter Strzok 302 (Interview of Flynn) (Conducted 1/24/17, written up 7/19/17, filed 10/24/19)
When Director Comey was asked, based on his evaluation of the case: “Do you believe that Mr. Flynn lied?” Director Comey responded: “I don’t know. I think there is an argument to be made he lied. It is a close one.” Ex. 5 at 9.
EX. 5: James Comey (House PSCI testimony, and actually @10 not 9) (Conducted 3/2/17, filed 5/7/20)
Now, I believe Comey’s testimony was publicly available prior to 12/13/18, but it is the weakest of the statements. No one reading or knowing that would conclude the FBI as a whole said he (Flynn) didn’t lie just because of that. Trump’s language sounds much more like something from the 302s, which, AFAIK, have not been released until Barr did it with his filing on May 7th of 2020.
I have found no evidence that that information has been available to anyone outside of either the Mueller Investigation or the Michal Flynn case.
So where did Trump get it? And when? And from whom? And how bad is it for someone to have done that?
To me, the whole thing smell of Bill Barr. Just reading the language, it sounds like something Barr would say to Trump Trump would mangle the language of from what Barr told him. But in the context of the time frame, this is very alarming, because Bill Barr was, at the time, only just six days into being Trump’s nominee for the AG position. The Acting AG was one Matt Whitaker (remember him and how we worried he’d stop the Mueller investigation? Good times!).
It’s possible that Whitaker had been funneling info from the Mueller Report to Trump (or Trump’s people) even though he denied it in his February hearing, while being annoying cagey about answering other questions. But given that Barr sent his “Audition Memo” to Trump back in June of 2018, it would not surprise me in the least if Whitaker wasn’t handing all the Mueller materials over to Barr even that far back in time. With the expectation that it would all get spilled to Trump.
In any case, ‘tis a puzzlement. I would love to hear other thoughts.