Dana Priest writing for The New Yorker has produced a brief profile of despot-elect Trump's national security adviser Retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn who you may already know to be a pro-Russian stooge who was canned after Edward Snowden absconded with classified material.
According to The New Yorker, Flynn once violated Pentagon policy and had a secret internet connection installed in his office.
Flynn broke rules he thought were stupid. He once told me about a period he spent assigned to a C.I.A. station in Iraq, when he would sometimes sneak out of the compound without the “insane” required approval from C.I.A. headquarters, in Langley, Virginia. He had technicians secretly install an Internet connection in his Pentagon office, even though it was forbidden. There was also the time he gave classified information to nato allies without approval, an incident which prompted an investigation, and a warning from superiors. During his stint as Mullen’s intelligence chief, Flynn would often write “This is bullshit!” in the margins of classified papers he was obliged to pass on to his boss, someone who saw these papers told me.
Flynn may have violated Department of Defense policy and installed a back door internet connection in his office, but did he send any emails through the connection?
If Flynn violated Pentagon policy by sending emails through a forbidden connection, our political press might care. Maybe.
Probably not.
You'd be a fool to expect the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee will investigate the Trump administration with any measure of vigor, but even if they proved us wrong and investigated Trump's staff, they've already delegitimized their own investigative powers.
As I've been saying for years through over half a decade of successive, failed witch hunts, House Republicans have transformed government oversight, which is a vital function of Congress, into a nakedly political sideshow. Even if it were their prerogative to investigate Trump's administration, there's a 99.9 percent chance Trump would use their own failure against them.
House Republicans told the world the Obama administration was the most corrupt administration in history, but they have nothing to show for their efforts to tear him down. Neither Democratic or even Republican voters have any reason to expect good faith from the Oversight Committee. To the left, they are liars, and to the right, they are incompetent.
The legacy of former Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa and current Chairman Jason Chaffetz can be seen in their thorough discrediting of their own institutions.