On Tuesday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel, columnist Charles Krauthammer argued that while the fact that information on former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn was leaked is a “scandal” and “scary,” “that doesn’t exonerate” the fact that Flynn lied and you can’t have officials doing that.
Krauthammer stated that Flynn engaged in a cover-up without a crime, and is out, not because of a political assassination, but because he lied to Vice President Mike Pence.
Later on, Krauthammer said, “Look, each side always wants to argue the real story is the misdeeds of the other guy. The fact is that there are misdeeds in these leaks. But that doesn’t exonerate what happened within the Trump administration. There are two stories. one is, the internal dysfunction in the Trump White House, the fact that Flynn lied internally, was untrustworthy. But the other story is the scandal of these leaks. Look, we cannot have the — our intelligence agencies eavesdropping on Americans, and releasing it to the press. We have extremely elaborate procedures when we eavesdrop on, say, and ambassadors from other countries, which we do all the time. everyone does. Everyone does it. That when the conversation involves an American, there are extremely strict procedures to blur the identity, to hide the identity, and to protect the information coming from the American. This is the exact opposite of that, and is scary, because it means everybody who communicates with a foreigner is subject to being exposed by his own government. We can’t have that.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett