[Salon] Were other Trump aides lobbying for Israel illicitly alongside Michael Flynn? | Michael Flynn | The Guardian

[Todd Pierce <tepierce@outlook.com>]

BLUF: "At a time when Israel was asking the Trump transition team to intervene to derail the resolution, the question is whether Flynn would have approached Kislyak on his own initiative.

Flynn’s own answer to that question – in his guilty plea – is now on the record, alleging that a senior member of the Trump transition team “directed” him to make contact with Russian officials in December 2016.”

With people having such short memories, this merits a reminder of: the Trump administration as a whole should have been required to register as “Foreign Agents” representing Israel under FARA. And as Obama wasn’t as solid on that as Trump promised Sheldon Adelson he would be, “regime change” was called for, by interference in our election by Israeli specialists in that “craft,” as we will see again in 2024 with even Biden not doing as much as Trump would for his Master, in my opinion: 

https://www.justsecurity.org/57245/russian-trolls-company-evidence-israel-based-psy-groups-social-media-efforts-2016-election/

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/did-israeli-spy-firm-help-trump-win-presidency

Even The Forward acknowledges the “Cognitive Warfare” operations conducted by Israel against its “enemies,” BDS, on behalf of its “friends,” American Conservatives like Trump, et al.:

 https://forward.com/news/411798/israeli-spy-firm-that-approached-trump-first-proposed-dirty-tricks-against/

BLUF: "Yet the discussions between U.S. Jewish donors and foreign private spies, which were facilitated by a leading Jewish organizational figure, show how Israel’s culture of intelligence and covert information warfare intersects with efforts to oppose the BDS movement in the U.S."

Given the history of the founding of the “Conservative Movement” by CIA officers in the 1950s as an “influence operation,” as even Frank S. Meyer supposed, it’s conceivable that the Mossad or some other Israeli intelligence agency is involved in some manner with the “National Conservative Movement” being propagated by Israeli Settler Yoram Hazony and The American Conservative magazine so much involved with it, and its propagation as an ideology, in my opinion. And DeSantis, Trump, Hawley, and Gaetz are their most favored “Leaders,” for good reason. Any one of them could also be a Leader in any of Israel’s right-wing parties, from Likud, on rightward. Maybe Yoram Hazony would be put in charge  of combining Church and State then, as his book “Conservatism: A Rediscovery,” virtually calls for, along with adopting legal precedents from the late Middle Ages, both of which Conservatives cry out for these days? And we could all be wearing yarmulkes, or whatever unique symbol that the “conservative" Christian sects attire themselves in, be they Christian Zionists/Evangelicals/Catholics, etc.?

It wasn’t a secret in 2016 that Israel was working all-out to get Trump elected, unless one was deliberately blind, or in favor of the “fusion” of US and Israel’s respective “right-wing parties,” so helped keep it a secret: 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/09/israel-donald-trump-netanyahu-jerusalem

BLUF: Israeli government ministers and political figures are pushing the US president-elect, Donald Trump, to quickly fulfill his campaign promise to overturn decades of US foreign policy and recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv.

"A Trump administration will be far more favourable to the Jewish state, another of the president-elect’s advisers on Israel has said.

"Shmuel Rosner, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, said a Trump administration is likely to be “much more understanding if Israel has to use force in order to tamp down Palestinian violence”.

He could say that again! 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/01/michael-flynn-israel-lobbying-russia-united-nations

Were other Trump aides lobbying for Israel illicitly alongside Michael Flynn?

Peter Beaumont

The United Nations security council passes resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlement building on 23 December 2016 with the United States abstaining. Photograph: Albin/Pacific/Barcroft Images

The guilty plea entered on Friday by Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, has raised critical new questions not only about the relationship between the Trump team and Russian officials – but also whether Flynn and other members of the Trump transition team were improperly lobbying on behalf of Israel.

Among the statements about which Flynn has admitted lying to the FBI is his depiction of a conversation with the then Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, relating to the run-up to the controversial December 2016 UN security council resolution 2334 on Israeli settlement building – which passed after the Obama administration abstained.

Israel, it was reported widely at the time, had been lobbying the team of then President-elect Trump in an attempt to derail the vote.

And according to the charge sheet against Flynn one of the false statements he has admitted giving to the FBI, was his denial that he had spoken to Kislyak on 22 December 2016 asking Russia to delay the vote on the UN resolution.

Quick Guide

Michael Flynn and Russia: what we know so far

Show

Michael Flynn is the fourth Donald Trump aide to face criminal charges in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election and any alleged collusion.

Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI – ‘making false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements’ about his contacts with Russia.

Flynn, as part of Trump’s transition team between the November 2016 election and the January 2017 inauguration, had secret contact with the Russian ambassador on at least two topics - shaping US and Russian policy on sanctions, and attempting to influence a UN vote about Israeli settlement-building.

Flynn is cooperating with investigators, and under the terms of his deal agreed to take polygraph lie-detector tests and appear as a witness in all relevant cases.

He admits that he discussed with another senior Trump transition official what he should say to the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

At least two members of the Trump transition team were briefed by him after his contact with Kislyak.

Flynn faces a maximum prison sentence of six months under the terms of his deal and a fine of up to $9,500.

While new information reveals secret contact with the Russians, it does not shed light on whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia’s interference in the US election.

Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP

One reason that conversation is important – and potentially highly problematic for Trump and his inner circle – is because of comments made to CNN on 23 December the day after Flynn spoke to Kislyak – by an anonymous Israeli official.

That official admitted that Israel – and reportedly the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, himself – had contacted Trump to seek his assistance in killing the resolution.

The official – in comments that may come back to haunt the White House – said that Israel had “implored the [Obama] White House not to go ahead and told them that if they did, we would have no choice but to reach out to President-elect Trump”.

“We did reach out to the president-elect,” the official added, “and are deeply appreciative that he weighed in, which was not a simple thing to do.”

Trump himself not only spoke out to condemn the resolution ahead of the vote – highly unusual for a president-elect – but his incoming national security adviser Flynn was also lobbying Moscow to act against then US foreign policy.

While the timeline remains circumstantial, it is highly suggestive. At a time when Israel was asking the Trump transition team to intervene to derail the resolution, the question is whether Flynn would have approached Kislyak on his own initiative.

Flynn’s own answer to that question – in his guilty plea – is now on the record, alleging that a senior member of the Trump transition team “directed” him to make contact with Russian officials in December 2016.

And while the identity of that “senior transition official” has not been revealed there have been hints, not least the Wall Street Journal’s report last month that special counsel Robert Mueller has been investigating the attempt by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to block the passage of the resolution 2334 – the same effort that Flynn, it now appears, lied to the FBI about.