It never ceases to amaze me how intrusive Israel’s penetration of U.S. foreign policy is. Until 2016, we would never have accepted such sabotage of our sovereign affairs. I recently posted about Israeli senior minister, Tzahi Hanegbi’s repeated attempts to offer the Trump campaign Israeli intelligence to ensure his election victory. Earlier, I posted about Netanyahu’s bid to derail efforts by the Obama administration to pass a UN Security Council resolution criticizing Israel’s illegal settlements (though the U.S. Abstained on the vote, it encouraged other states to vote Yes).
Michael Flynn’s case has now returned to the news, after the Justice Department sought (so far unsuccessfully) to dismiss the case it had prosecuted against him. We’ve learned that not only did Israel actively sabotage the Obama policy objectives, but it recruited Jared Kushner, working on behalf of Trump himself, as a key participant. It did so after appealing directly to the Obama administration to veto the vote, a request the president rejected. Whereupon, Netanyahu explicitly warned the administration that it would turn to Trump and enlist his involvement.
It is remarkable and disappointing that considering that Flynn lied to the FBI in claiming that he had no conversations with Russian ambassador Kislyak, that Kushner did not get swept up in the investigation as well. When Flynn lied, he didn’t do so of his own volition. And if Flynn lied certainly Kushner would’ve wished to conceal his own role. The fact that Trump’s son-in-law/poodle wasn’t prosecuted as well seems to indicate he had a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card in his pocket.
Kushner had directed Flynn to contact every Security Council member to vote against the resolution. In contacting the Russian, Flynn was following Kushner’s directive. And when he lied he was falling on his sword to protect Kushner. Keep in mind as well that Kushner suggested to Russian officials that they create a backchannel to the campaign using Russian diplomatic facilities as a secure facility to conduct the discussions.
Remember that Kushner had a far more than a passing relationship with Netanyahu who, when Kushner was a teenager, used to sleep in the boy’s bed when he visited the U.S. as a junior minister. This, of course, was well before he became Prime Minister and became used to traveling in luxury.
It is one thing for a foreign leader to plot their own covert intervention in U.S. Foreign affairs. But it is quite another when such a leader conspires with a U.S. citizen and senior operative of a political campaign to sabotage the nation’s foreign policy. This makes me wish that the Logan Act was one Mueller had been willing to use during his own investigation. Though politicians regularly use it as a cudgel to beat their opponents if they engage in foreign diplomacy, in this case, the Act was designed precisely to prevent the sort of skullduggery in which Kushner engaged.
I suppose that in the context of the enormous dysfunction and mayhem that Donald Trump has wrought on this country, that UN vote ranks as one of his less outrageous acts. But this country has always prided itself, and George Washington himself emphasized how critical this issue was in his speech warning against “foreign entanglements,” on retaining its independence from such intervention. In this case, Kushner and Trump trampled on such American values and precedents. They did so in a way that permitted this country to become a mere extension of Israeli interests. Netanyahu in effect made a laughingstock of America. Which is in no way surprising considering that in a video of a meeting he conducted with a settler family, he characterized the U.S. as a pushover he could manipulate at will. Even if you concede a certain element of boasting and political self-aggrandizement, his words were prescient in terms of what he did in 2016.
It is shameful we have permitted Israel hijack our own foreign policy for its own benefit. One of the Talmud’s more despairing sayings concerns the sage Elisha Ben Abuya lamenting the death of a young boy: “there is no judge and there is no justice.” Many of us in this country have found this to be true for the past three years and it has driven us too to despair. In the case of Jared Kushner, I hope that there is a judge and there is justice. He, and the American people, richly deserve it.
“When Flynn lied, he didn’t do so of his own volition. And if Flynn lied certainly Kushner would’ve wished to conceal his own role. The fact that Trump’s son-in-law/poodle wasn’t prosecuted as well seems to indicate he had a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card in his pocket.”
Of course Flynn lied of his own volition, same as when he lied about his being a foreign agent of Turkey, and the same as he lied to Vice President Pence.
Lying is Flynn’s modus operandi. Apparently, he even lied taking a guilty plea to lying to the FBI!
Why would Kushner want Flynn to lie? The pair were calling over a dozen countries to stop or delay the vote.
And what would Kushner have been prosecuted for anyway? What crime did Kushner commit in December, ’16?
As far as your amazement with Israel’s intrusive foreign policy, I hasten to remind you that your United States has the most intrusive foreign policy in the history of the world.
To wit: invasions of Spanish colonies, Central American countries, Middle Eastern countries, Asian countries, coups, assassinations, etc.
Jeez.
@ Lemonade: Flynn did not lie about being a Turkish agent. He was in fact one and had a Turkish client and he admitted to this in his guilty plea. He also did correct his lobbying registration to acknowledge this when it was pointed out to him by the FBI that he must do so.
As for Kushner, do you think he was smart enough to tell Mueller the truth that he suggested conspiring with the Russians and communicating with them at Russian government compounds? Or that he admitted to Mueller that he sabotaged Obama administration policy while Obama was sitting president? Kushner isn’t smart enough to run a Bodega, let alone run a country’s foreign policy or conspiring against a sitting president’s foreign policy. He’s an amateur. The only reason he wasn’t prosecuted was that Mueller realized that to do so he’d likely have to charge Trump as well and he didn’t want that legal nightmare.
Not to mention the Logan Act, which you’re apparently not smart enough to know anything about. Read up next time, bub before you reveal your ignorance.
As for U.S. Intervention in foreign affairs of other governments, that wasn’t the subject of my post. I’ve regularly attacked U. S policy on that score. Apparently you missed those scores of posts. To return to the subject, the point of this post was to speak of foreign intervention in U. S. Domestic politics. When I talk about US intervention in the affairs of foreign governments then you can chime in. But you won’t because it won’t offer you any way to defend against Israel’s outrageous behavior. That’s because you’re a hasbaroid hypocrite. So what else is new???
… look, it’s all wrong! I think that’s blowing it out of size.
Trump’s “no collusion” sing-song since 3 years ago comes to mind.All kinds of collusion happened, is happening.
Our defacto and actual cooperation with Israeli Likudist interests has been going on for a long time prior to Trump/Kushner. Democrats when in power, Obama included, were letting Israel get away with highway robbery literally there and interference here and at the UN. Israel complains about the UN yet manipulates it. Fears (political) win over moral courage.
Nepotistic Trump acts with unending impunity regardless of any push-back response, revelation. His boyish twit Kushner is part of the co-evil branch of the administration, unelected, minus security clearance (right?). Forget security and what is in the US interest. Kushner also qualifies through sheer imperviousness and chutzpah and incompetence. No shame. These people,Netanyahu included, push and get away with it.
The Israel of the people have fight their own devils. We have to fight ours: Trump and his co-evils in the WH and GOP Congress.
By lying to Pence about facts known to Russia, Flynn had compromised himself as national security adviser.
Mueller thoroughly investigated Russian collusion and found no links between Trump and Kushner and the Russians. You have not a scintilla of evidence vis-a-vis Kushner and the Russians. You’re talking out your hat.
And why you insult hard working bodega owners is beyond me. Have you ever shopped in a bodega?
I didn’t bring up the Logan Act, because it is a useless antiquarian, a throwback to the rough and tumble days of the founding of the new American republic.
No one has ever been convicted of violating the Logan Act, and only two citizens have been charged with violating it in over two hundred years of American jurisprudence.
It is a ‘dead law’, because it is a prima facie violation of the 1st and 6th Amendments.
Please. Spare yourself the embarrassment, and don’t even go there.
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/496926-logan-act-is-the-last-refuge-for-the-american-prosecutorial-scoundrel
Lastly, Flynn did admit to lying about being an agent for Turkish despot, Erdogan”
“In a Dec. 2017 legal filing, though, Flynn admitted lying in the March filings to the Justice Department, including by falsely stating that the Flynn Intel Group did not know to what extent the Turkish government was involved in the project and that the op-ed was written on his own initiative.”
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/421780-turkey-and-michael-flynn-five-things-to-know
Basta!
@ Lemonade: I always have to clean up after you publish one of your comments here. So here goes:
Another lie: Mueller was the one who uncovered Kushner’s plot to use Russian diplomatic facilities in the U.S. to form the back channel communication between the campaign & Putin. Now why would he have needed such a secret mode? Because he wanted a new Blini recipe? Further, Kushner directed Flynn to conspire with the Russians to sabotage the UN vote. Those are but two of many examples of the collusion you claim Mueller never found. Mueller refused to prosecute them for these criminal acts. But that’s another story.
As for the Logan Act, why would you use Jonathan Turley to try to prove your point? He’s one of the few law professors in the country who supports Trump. He’s a neocon and the darling of FoxNews. You won’t find him interviewed on any credible media outlet. So now why don’t you try to find a serious scholar or expert on the subject. The fact that Mueller didn’t have the balls to charge anyone but the underlings in this sordid caper reflects on him. It does not exonerate anyone he investigated and didn’t charge. The Logan Act was precisely made for traitors like Kushner and Trump. THe fact that it wasn’t used reflects on the prosecutor, not the law.
Finally, either you can’t read or you deliberately lied about what you did read. Here is what you claimed:
Parsing your jumbled syntax, it seems you meant to say Flynn lied about NOT BEING a foreign agent of Turkey. You actually wrote the opposite.
As for bodega owners, they are hard-working men and women. I respect their hard work and fortitude. That’s why I said Kushner couldn’t run a bodega. But if you prefer I could say Kushner wouldn’t even make a good drug dealer; or wouldn’t even make a good rag picker.