White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany addressed the alleged crimes of “Obamagate” during Friday afternoon’s briefing.
“Look, there were a number of questions raised by the actions of the Obama administration. The [Christopher] Steele dossier funded by the Democratic National Committee. Opposition political party to the president was used to obtain [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] warrants to listen in on conversations of people within the Trump campaign,” McEnany said, before steering the comments to the unmasking of Flynn.
Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell declassified and released a memo earlier this week that contained a list of Obama administration officials who received information in response to unmasking requests targeting Flynn. Among the people on the list was former Vice President Joe Biden.
“There is the unmasking the identity of Michael Flynn, and we know that in a Jan. 5 meeting in the Oval Office with President [Barack] Obama, Sally Yates from the Department of Justice learned about the unmasking, not from the Department of Justice or the FBI, she learned about it from President Obama and was stunned and could barely process what she was hearing at the time because she was stunned of his knowledge of that,” McEnany added.
“We know that there was a lot of wrongdoing in the case of Michael Flynn. The FBI notes, for instance, that said, ‘Should we get him to lie?’ as they pontificated their strategy. We know that the identity of this three-decade general was leaked to the press, a criminal leak to the press of his identity in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights,” McEnany continued. “Justice does matter.”
Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents in 2017 but later filed to withdraw his guilty plea earlier this year after the Justice Department asked the judge to sentence him to up to six months in prison. His lead attorney, Sidney Powell, urged the judge to dismiss the case by arguing that the FBI unfairly treated Flynn, and the DOJ filed to do just that last week.
The judge presiding over the case invited outside opinions Tuesday and appointed a retired judge Wednesday to argue whether Flynn should be held in contempt for perjury.
The press secretary continued by naming former Obama officials who she said were guilty of “wrongdoing.”
“If you want to start talking about wrongdoing in the administration, happy to go through Andy McCabe leaking to the Wall Street Journal and then lying about it, happy to talk about James Clapper lying before Congress, saying the [National Security Agency] does not monitor phone calls, that was an inaccuracy, to say the least, if not a lie. John Brennan telling Congress that the bogus Steele dossier played no role in the Russia probe, when in fact, we know it did,” she said.
