A former adviser to President Trump slammed the FBI and members of the intelligence community who “ambushed” her and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
Former deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland told Fox News host Sandra Smith on Wednesday morning that partisan members of the intelligence community attempted to “trick” Flynn into committing crimes that could potentially bring down Trump.
“They lulled him into thinking, ‘Well, you’re not a subject, you’re not somebody under investigation.’ The whole time, they were targeting him, they were targeting me, and they were targeting the Trump administration,” she said before laying out “a couple of reasons” why.
“One, they wanted to bring the Trump administration to its knees before it even got started,” she continued. “No. 2, they wanted to protect whatever lies it now turns out they were saying, and I’m saying with this regard [to] the intelligence community at large. And third, they didn’t want to have the new administration see what they had done during the previous administration.”
Flynn was ousted from his role as Trump’s national security adviser less than a month after the Trump administration’s start. He pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents during the Russia investigation but later withdrew his plea. Unsealed FBI notes revealed agents discussed his possible prosecution before interviewing him in 2017.
McFarland said members of the intelligence community set up Flynn to block his attempts to “reorganize the intelligence community, which was our intention from the very beginning.”
“The real goal for them was to go after President Trump,” she said. “We were collateral damage. They didn’t care whose lives they ruined. They wanted to go after President Trump.”
McFarland recounted a meeting that took place in former national security adviser Susan Rice’s office weeks before Flynn was to take over her position. McFarland said Rice’s breakdown of international relations with the United States featured a “glaring exception” in regard to Russia, which McFarland said was done intentionally.
She also rejected the idea that the Trump administration had anything to do with Russian interference in the 2016 election and said she, as much as any member of the intelligence community, wanted to find out if election tampering had indeed happened.
“I’m a Girl Scout,” added McFarland. “I wanted to know what the Russians did during the election as much as anybody else.”
The Justice Department moved to drop the criminal charges against Flynn last week, but the federal judge overseeing the case indicated an openness to considering amicus filings in the case before accepting or rejecting the DOJ’s motion on Tuesday.
