Commentary editor John Podhoretz has a column in the New York Post on the wider implications—and brushed-over dangers—of the leaked information that felled former national security advisor Michael Flynn.
Here’s Podhoretz:
To be sure, Flynn’s ouster after three weeks is proof positive he should never have been given the national security adviser job in the first place. Flynn’s deceits about his conversations with a Russian official cannot be viewed in isolation from the overly close relationship with the Russian government he forged following his firing by the Obama administration in 2013. Still, unelected bureaucrats with access to career-destroying materials clearly made the decision that what Flynn did or who Flynn was merited their intervention — and took their concerns to the press. … This is the ultimate Pandora’s box. It makes a public mockery of the presumption of innocence that is the hallmark of our legal system. Such a thing is only acceptable, even morally, if you believe that the Trump White House represents such an unprecedented threat to everything that a higher law must govern your actions. It would be pretty to think so, but we also know that Flynn had an antagonistic relationship with America’s intelligence agencies. If these leaks came about not out of high principle but because officials at those agencies were taking out a potential adversary, that is nothing more or less than a monstrous abuse of power.
More here.
