Thread by @GPIngersoll

1. A decent amount of people were confused about this tweet yesterday, so I’ll explain:

It’s late 2016. Obama is still in office. The IC, Democrats, and the media are fairly determined to investigate Trump criminally, to build a case based on innuendo, selective leaks, and lies.

https://twitter.com/gpingersoll/status/1399713347281506305

2. The case is that Don Trump teamed up with Vlad Putin to hack Podesta and the DNC’s emails and then leak them strategically in order to win the election for Trump, all while managing to avoid the most sophisticated surveillance apparatus mankind has ever known. (The NSA et al)

3. I know, it’s absurd on its face. Trump is smart, but he is not a Bond villain.

In any case, as a result, Trump camp has declared war on the Deep State. His chosen horseman for that war: Mike Flynn.

Yes, it is Flynn who will protect and guide Trump as he plumbs the Deep State

4. Flynn’s efforts to protect the president-elect resulted in two phone calls to Kislyak, the Russian diplomat in the US and a seasoned spy.

And this is where “the plan” loses me.

If you’re a spymaster, as many of the most ardent MAGAs insist Flynn was, why on earth

5. Would you call a bugged phone line amid this particular context? You’re taking office in four weeks. This phone call was essentially a call to James Clapper and John Brennan.

Flynn’s first stunning move to guide Trump in reform of the IC was to …

6. Gift wrap himself for it? Serve himself up on a platter?

As we all know now that call became the focal point for a sophisticated and coordinated operation against the Trump admin in its infancy.

It contributed in large part to the massive tension between Comey and Trump.

7. One might even argue, without much of a stretch, that Team Trump emerges much sooner from the Russia hoax if not for those phone calls.

Without Flynn for Comey to dangle over Trump’s head, that’s one less piece of leverage, and probably one less makes a lot of difference.

8. Mostly, I cannot emphasize this enough: If Flynn did not know a phone call to Kislyak was a phone call to Brennan, Clapper and the entire IC, he did not deserve to be Trump’s chosen horseman. Just the opposite.

You don’t deliberately offer yourself up as sacrifice to

9. The same apparatus that is hellbent on using everything + the kitchen sink to destroy you.

It was spycraft of the poorest level and they exploited it to full effect.

A seasoned intel operator says “fuck no, I’m not phoning that guy, are you folks even paying attention?”

10. And what did we really gain from the calls? What were the upsides? What was said then that couldn’t have been said later without much loss?

I’m still struggling to figure it out.

Last: Important not to forget though, the substance of the calls doesn’t matter. The legality of the calls doesn’t matter.

The call itself is all that matters because at that point, you have put yourself and the NSC and Trump at the whim of a merciless and dishonest “deep state”