Devin Nunes suggested those leaking dirt about Trump administration
officials could come after Kellyanne Conway (left) next, followed by
Steve Bannon (center) and then chief of staff Reince Priebus (right)
Is there a conspiracy inside Washington to destroy Trump's inner circle? That is what a top republican is claiming...
Read the report from UK Daily Mail below...
One Republican lawmaker is saying he sees a pattern in the leaks that
brought down President Donald Trump's National Security Advisor Michael
Flynn.
Speaking to national security columnist Eli Lake of Bloomberg View, Rep.
Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence, suggested that Flynn may be just be the beginning of
Trump's inner circle fallen by enemies within the U.S. government.
'First it's Flynn, next it will be Kellyanne Conway, then it will be
Steve Bannon, then it will be Reince Priebus,' Nunes told the
right-of-center Lake, who then referred to Flynn as the 'appetizer' and
the president as 'the entree.'
One of the most notable things about the Flynn fall-from-grace story,
Lake pointed out, was the fact that the contents of his conversation
with Russian Amb. Sergey Kislyak were clearly monitored by the
government, and then, so easily got out.
At the time, Flynn was the
incoming National Security Advisor, but his correspondence was
seemingly monitored by the FBI or the NSA, Lake wrote.
'It's
very rare that reporters are ever told about government-monitored
communications of U.S. citizens, let alone senior U.S. officials,' Lake
wrote.
Later he added, 'Normally intercepts of U.S. officials and citizens are some of the most tightly held government secrets.'
Not in this case, however, which caused Nunes to suggest that something really didn't smell right.
'There
does appear to be a well orchestrated effort to attack Flynn and others
in the administration,' Nunes told the Bloomberg View columnist.
'From the leaking of phone
calls between the president and foreign leaders to what appears to be
high-level FISA Court information, to the leaking of American citizens
being denied security clearances, it looks like a pattern,' Nunes said.
Days
after Trump conversed with foreign leaders, embarrassing details have
leaked out, including that the president had to ask aides about a
nuclear arms treaty, while on the phone with Russian leader Vladimir
Putin, and that he and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had a
fraught back-and-forth over an Obama era refugee resettlement plan.
On Friday, one of Flynn's top deputies, Robin Townley, was denied a
security clearance from the CIA, Politico reported, citing two unnamed
sources, which prevented Townley from serving on the National Security
Council.
Nunes
told Lake he planned to ask the FBI to investigate the Flynn leak and
find out if the outgoing national security advisor was the target of a
law enforcement investigation. The Washington Post previously reported
that Flynn was not being looked at by the FBI.
The New York Times reported that Flynn did
have a conversation with the FBI over his conversation with the
Kremlin representative, as they were concerned he didn't tell them the
whole truth.
Lake pointed out that
there were a number of places investigators could turn in sniffing out
Flynn's, and the administration's, adversaries.
'Flynn
was a fat target for the national security state,' the columnist wrote.
'He had cultivated a reputation as a reformer and a fierce critic of
the intelligence community leaders he once served with when he was the
director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Barack
Obama.'
The Bloomberg columnist suggested the Flynn leak could be over partisan politics as well.
He
reminded readers that Flynn became a national name when he spoke
onstage at last summer's Republican National Convention in Cleveland, on
the heels of being rumored to be Trump's veep.
'He was also a fat target for Democrats,' Lake wrote.
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