I do know she emailed herself to document what she was told, and the most likely explanation for that is she didn't believe what she was told, and didn't want to be the one held responsible for these crimes.
I don't know for sure either, and I do agree that this was her covering her ass, but I just don't see how this could be interpreted as Rice trying not to become the fall guy for Obama. It looks more like she was literally just keeping the record straight.
By law, her notes - and literally any other notes or emails involving the President or VP belongs in the Presidential records with plans to eventually be made public. I don't think it's unreasonable to think on her last day of work (Inaguration) she was taking care of the last of whatever it takes to put things in the record. I assume Obama, Biden and Comey all know how the system works and expected there to be a record of their meeting, like every other meeting. I bet Comey filed a memo also considering it was one of the few times they ever spoke.
The reason that is a big deal is because if they had information to support the claim that Flynn was working with the Russians, they had no excuse to not inform the incoming president about this so he could take precautions. So in the end this is not just about keeping Flynn in the dark, it is about keeping the president in the dark. If they really believed Flynn did this, they would intentionally be risking national security to go after Trump by not informing him. You can't have it both ways.
It was about whether or not they could trust Flynn with sensitive information regarding Russia.
It was already known that there were connections between Trump, his family, his campaign and Russia. In Flynns case, he was fired by Obama in 2014 as head of the DIA and a few months later was being paid by RT and having dinner with Putin.
Isn't that alone enough for Obama to ask Comey 'should I worry about what we hand over to Flynn about Russia right now?'. I know it was only a couple weeks left, but he was still President and responsible for the country. And he did reportedly warn Trump about Flynn. Told him not to hire him. Chris Christie (when he was head of transition) also said he was a train wreck waiting to happen or something.
If this is not her covering her ass from becoming the fall guy, what is she covering her ass from exactly? Please do tell me the liability you think she is concerned about. Of course the emails are part of the record, that is why she emailed herself explicitly to make it part of public record. Not all meetings are transcribed and recorded.
Yes, we get it, that is the pretext for the Flynn investigation. That still doesn't explain what evidence they had to get the warrant to begin with, and still doesn't explain why they did not inform Trump so he could take precautions to protect national security. Either they thought Flynn was a real threat or they didn't. Either they believed him to be a security risk, and put national security at risk to go after Trump by not informing him, or they knew it was a baseless illegal warrant used as pretext to go after Trump. Telling him not to hire him is not the same as briefing him on a potential security threat, one which never existed by the way.
There are ZERO documented connections involving ANY criminal activity linking the Trump campaign and Russia. This claim is based on 3 years of baseless investigation relying upon illegal warrants and media hype. There is no substance behind any of these claims. You can swear up and down there are but you can't actually ever provide any evidence of it. That makes this whole freak show A TOTALLY ILLEGAL PARTISAN OPERATION utilizing the intelligence and surveillance apparatus of this nation in a criminal attempt to target a duly elected sitting president by the outgoing administration. This is unprecedented criminal behavior putting the very nation itself at risk by threatening the peaceful transition of power that marks an actual democracy.
I think it's possible that Obama truly did make an effort to put a wall between himself and any criminal investigation into ties between Trump campaign and Russia and focus only the National Security side of things. There's obviously a bit of overlap, which makes things tricky and all the more reason to make the record very clear the motivations for his actions.
The now public Rice email seems to be doing just that.
You're right about the Warrant thing. The FISA system is a mess and the FBI basically just exploited it. I don't want to have another Russia collusion debate on what we learned years later, but I agree with you that in Jan 2017 the FBI did not have solid evidence that a crime was committed. There was smoke though. And the FISA warrants had nothing to do with spying on Russians. We have to spy on Russia.
I'm not sure if you believe it or not, but let's assume for sake of argument that the FBI had intercepted a call between Flynn and Russian Ambassador where Flynn told the Ambassador not to worry about the sanctions.
Is that a crime? I honestly don't know. I do think it's a big deal though. A retired 3 star general who had served as director of the DIA (basically the CIA for just the military) under Obama for 2 years, undermining the administration by telling our enemy not to worry about the sanctions his president had just applied.
If all that really happened, what's the right thing to do?
And what do you do when you see Flynn lie about it to Pence and Spicer, who turned around and told the Nation?
In hindsight, they probably just should've let Flynn get away with it. But at the time they didn't know what else Flynn, the National Security Advisor to the President, was lying about.
