Obama was the one who was really a Putin puppet.

Crimea was TAKEN by Russia during the Obama Administration. Was Obama too soft on Russia?

And look at this friendly piece that agrees with me about the snitches!

Thank you to Eli Lake of The Bloomberg View - "The NSA & FBI...should not interfere in our politics...and is" Very serious situation for USA

Slight problem. That Eli Lake piece isn’t exactly the blanket “it’s not my fault” that Trump is looking for …

The point here is that for a White House that has such a casual and opportunistic relationship with the truth, it's strange that Flynn's "lie" to Pence would get him fired. It doesn't add up.

It's not even clear that Flynn lied. …

What's more, the Washington Post reported Monday night that last month Sally Yates, then the acting attorney general, had informed the White House that Flynn discussed sanctions with Kislyak and that he could be susceptible to blackmail because he misled Pence about it. If it was the lie to Pence that sunk Flynn, why was he not fired at the end of January?

But Lake does go on to worry about the “red flag” of leaks coming out of the intelligence community, their ability to wreck reputations from behind the cloak of secrecy, and the unusual frequency of these leaks.

The background here is important. Three people once affiliated with Trump's presidential campaign -- Carter Page, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone -- are being investigated by the FBI and the intelligence community for their contacts with the Russian government. This is part of a wider inquiry into Russia's role in hacking and distributing emails of leading Democrats before the election.

Lake admits that there might be real ties to Russia, but worries that there might simply be bureaucrats run amok.

That's all these allegations are at this point: unanswered questions. It's possible that Flynn has more ties to Russia that he had kept from the public and his colleagues. It's also possible that a group of national security bureaucrats and former Obama officials are selectively leaking highly sensitive law enforcement information to undermine the elected government.

It’s also possible that even long time, staunchly apolitical elements of the intelligence community were simply royally pissed off  by Trump’s frequent attacks on their work in determining the source of hacks on the DNC and email of private citizens. Especially since Trump was, at the same time, praising Wikileaks. 

Lake can fret about the inappropriateness of Trump being hit with intelligence leaks, but Trump spent a year celebrating leaks and blaming those who suffered from the intrusion of a foreign government. 

Why is Donald Trump on the receiving end of an unusual amount of leaks originating in the intelligence community? Because Donald Trump ran a campaign that frequently degraded, attacked, and sneered at that community. No one else was foolish enough to take out a stick and keep poking that tiger.

Flynn was a part of that poking. His selection as NSA (and Trump actually considered Flynn for his running mate) was entirely based on his frequent, explosive attacks on the intelligence community and his aching desire to wreck bloody vengeance on those who made his time at the DIA difficult.

It’s also quite an assumption to believe that, at this point, the information is coming from the intelligence community directly. This information was in the hands of both Democratic and Republican legislators months ago. Harry Reid was begging James Comey to make this information public in October. No one should expect it to stay buried forever. By this point, there are likely hundreds, if not thousands, of aides, friends, and friends of aides who have some portion of the original intelligence reports.

And behind it all, there’s a simple question: What happens when members of the intelligence community have information that someone within the government has committed, not just a crime, but actions that threaten the nation itself? At some point staying quiet is in conflict with staying loyal. We may be at that point.