"What is our goal...Truth/Admission or to get [Flynn] to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired?"
Notes by Bill Priestap, FBI, prior to the FBI interview with Lt. Gen. Flynn in early 2017
Newly-unearthed notes handwritten by a senior FBI official build a strong case that agents set up Trump National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
The notes and emails, released by court order last night, were first reported by John Solomon of Just The News.
According to Just The News, the author of the handwritten notes is then-FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence, Bill Priestap, who supervised FBI agent Peter Strzok, who led the Trump-Russia probe. Strzok was ultimately fired over his anti-Trump text messages exchanged with his alleged mistress, FBI attorney Lisa Page.
"What is our goal," reads part of Priestap's notes made prior to the FBI's interview with Flynn in early 2017. "Truth/Admission or to get him to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired?"
After a meeting with FBI agents, Flynn was indeed charged with lying fo them. He pleaded guilty as part of what his attorney now says was a corrupt deal on the part of the FBI: they promised not to go after Flynn's son if Flynn would admit to lying. Flynn has now withdrawn his guilty plea and is awaiting court action in his case.
The question is why the FBI was so determined to go after Flynn. Insiders say that Flynn had made it no secret that once working in the Trump administration, he planned to root out corruption inside the intel agencies.
The newly-released documents also show FBI officials discussing the apparent goal of building a case against Flynn for lying in the meeting that had not yet occurred.
FBI attorney Lisa Page wrote that there would be "an easy way to just casually slip in" a required disclosure to Flynn that lying to federal officers is illegal.
"It would be an easy way to just casually slip the in. 'Of Cours as you know sir, federal law makes it a crime to..."
Another section of notes reads: "If we're seen as playing games, WH [possibly, White House] will be furious."
Read more at the link below from Just The News:
Of course, they went after him. He was out to expose the corrution in the FBI and the other assorted alphabet "intellegence agencies".
Priestap's remarks appear to be CYA in nature, in the event the operation blew up on the FBI.
He would then be seen as against it, after the fact.