| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019956)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019956" |
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| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
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| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| Yates now told the White House that Flynn's conversation with Kislyak had actually |
| been captured as part of an "incidental collection" of authorized wiretaps. That is, a |
| wiretap had presumably been authorized on the Russian ambassador by the secret Foreign |
| Intelligence Surveillance Court and, incidentally, picked up Flynn. |
| The FISA court had achieved a moment of notoriety after the Edward Snowden |
| revelations briefly made it a bête noire for liberals who were angry about privacy |
| incursions. Now it was achieving another moment, but this time as the friend of liberals, |
| who hoped to use these "incidental" wiretaps as a way to tie the Trump camp to a wide- |
| ranging conspiracy with Russia. |
| In short order, McGahn, Priebus, and Bannon, each with prior doubts about Flynn's |
| reliability and judgment"a fuck-up," according to Bannon conferred about the Yates |
| message. Flynn was asked again about his call with Kislyak; he was also told that a |
| recording might exist. Again he scoffed at any suggestion that this was a meaningful |
| conversation about anything. |
| In one White House view, Yates's tattling was little more than "like she found out her |
| girlfriend's husband flirted with somebody else and, standing on principle, had to tell on |
| him." |
| Of more alarm to the White House was how, in an incidental collection wherein the |
| names of American citizens are supposedly "masked"-with complicated procedures |
| required to "unmask" them —had Yates so handily and conveniently picked up Flynn? Her |
| report would also seem to confirm that the leak to the Post about these recordings came |
| from the FBI, DOJ, or Obama White House sources part of the growing river of leaks, |
| with the Times and the Post the leakers' favored destinations. |
| The White House in its assessment of the Yates message ended up seeing this as less a |
| problem with an always hard-to-handle Flynn than as a problem with Yates, even as a |
| threat from her: the Justice Department, with its vast staff of career and Obama-inclined |
| prosecutors, had ears on the Trump team. |
| * ** |
| "It's unfair," said Kellyanne Conway, sitting in her yet undecorated second-floor office |
| while representing the president's hurt feelings. "It's obviously unfair. It's very unfair. |
| They lost. They didn't win. This is so unfair. So POTUS just doesn't want to talk about |
| it." |
| There was nobody in the White House who wanted to talk about—or even anyone who |
| had been officially delegated to talk about Russia, the story that, evident to most, even |
| before they entered the White House, was certain to overwhelm the first year of the Trump |
| administration at the very least. Nobody was prepared to deal with it. |
| "There's no reason to even talk about it," said Sean Spicer, sitting on the couch in his |
| HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019956 |
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|
