Biden Among Obama-Era Officials Who May Have Received Flynn Intel Material

Former Vice President Joe Biden is on a list of names provided to Senate Republicans by a sympathetic spy boss this week in connection with the case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

That was the latest twist in a yearslong saga that changed course again this week following action behind the scenes by acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, who declassified the names of a number of people who requested information linked to Flynn in the final days of the Obama administration.

Sixteen former officials, including Biden, are on the list and described as having potentially received intelligence reporting connected to Flynn. A message from the National Security Agency included with Grenell's note to the Republicans says it isn't clear who may actually have viewed it.

Nonetheless, President Trump and his supporters have sought political revenge with the release of the material years after what they perceived as an out-of-bounds attack from the expiring Obama team.

You can see the list, and notes, here.

The Russia imbroglio

A White House official in the final days of the Obama era revealed to The Washington Post that Flynn had spoken with Russia's then-ambassador to the United States during the presidential transition period.

That kernel of news snowballed into a scandal that led to Flynn's ouster and a guilty plea for lying to the FBI.

But Flynn was never sentenced and has been battling back against federal authorities, helped politically by revelations about problems with the Russia investigation and by allies eager to rehabilitate him and get back at the Obama team.

This month, as the Justice Department said it was moving to drop its case against Flynn, Grenell was working behind the scenes to identify and then reveal the Obama-era officials who might have had access to the information about Flynn's phone conversation.

Grenell provided the list to Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who unveiled it on Wednesday. The senators demanded explanations from Biden and the others.

"The officials listed should confirm whether they reviewed this information, why they asked for it and what they did with it, and answer many other questions that have been raised by recent revelations," Grassley and Johnson said. "We are making this public because the American people have a right to know what happened."

Biden's campaign had not yet made any comment at the time this story was published.

Unmasking

The U.S. intelligence community produces a flood of reporting about myriad targets and issues around the world. In much of what it yields, the identities of "U.S. persons" are "minimized" — rather than saying "Foreign Agent X communicated with John Smith," a report might say, "X communicated with U.S. Person 1."

Government officials of sufficient stature can request that "person 1," in this example, be "unmasked" to learn more about the report. The officials may specialize in Foreign Agent X's home country or be working on an investigation that involves that target, placing the focus first on him and then, incidentally, on his correspondents.

So as Flynn and the Trump transition team began making contacts with foreign diplomats, many of whom are surveillance targets, "U.S. Persons" connected with the new administration likely began cropping up in the reporting about their conversations.

On Dec. 29, 2016, Flynn spoke on the phone with Russia's then-ambassador to the United States and asked him to ask his government not to retaliate against punitive measures then being imposed on Moscow by the outgoing Obama administration.

Russian President Vladimir Putin later announced he wouldn't retaliate.

The ambassador's communications were being monitored and U.S. officials learned about the contents of that conversation with Flynn. But when Flynn and the White House talked publicly about what was said, the two stories didn't match.

The backdrop for all this was a funhouse mirror political environment in Washington when many Americans were reeling from the revelations about the Russia interference in the preceding election.

Trump, meanwhile, was denying there had been any interference, claiming his campaign had no contact with those involved and that he had no business dealings with Russia.

For months, the FBI had been investigating whether anyone in Trump's camp — including Flynn — might have been coordinating with the Russians who were attacking the election.

Flynn had traveled to Russia for a dinner with Putin and took tens of thousands of dollars' worth of payments from Russian entities. Obama warned Trump personally about Flynn.

Subsequent evidence has suggested that in early 2017, investigators may have been ready to close the file on Flynn. Then came the flap over the sanctions conversation so special agents went to interview him about it.

Flynn lied to them and later accepted a plea deal in which he agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a comparatively lenient prosecution and for cooperating with investigators, which he did until a change of tune last year.

Investigations about the investigation have since shown how problematic the Flynn encounter was for the FBI and how divided was the leadership of the bureau and the Justice Department. And years later, investigators assessed there wasn't sufficient evidence to bring conspiracy charges against anyone in Trump's campaign.

Those new facts about the case, along with the presence of Grenell as the acting boss of the spy infrastructure, have created an opening for payback by Trump, Grassley and Johnson. The Justice Department has dropped its case against Flynn and, with the documents this week, put Biden and other figures from the Obama era in the hot seat. [Copyright 2020 NPR]