Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden says he was “aware” of a probe into incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn in early 2017.
Biden was part of a Jan. 5, 2017 meeting during which then-President Barack Obama told administration officials he knew of details from wiretapped phone calls involving Flynn.
Asked on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on May 12 whether he knew about the moves to probe the retired lieutenant general, Biden said, “I know nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn.”
He said the topic was meant to divert attention from the COVID-19 pandemic.
ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos, the former aide to President Bill Clinton, pressed Biden, noting that he was present at the early 2017 Oval Office meeting.
Biden said he’d misheard the first question.
“I thought you asked me whether or not I had anything to do with him being prosecuted,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“I was aware that there was—that they had asked for an investigation. But that’s all I know about it and I don’t think anything else,” he added.
It’s the first time Biden professed awareness of the probe into Flynn, who was hired by then-President elect Donald Trump.
The FBI’s FARA probe into Flynn turned up nothing but was kept open by FBI agent Peter Strzok on the same day as the White House meeting involving Biden, Obama, and top White House officials.
Flynn eventually pleaded guilty to lying to Strzok and another agent in an interview later in January.
But the Department of Justice moved to dismiss the case against Flynn, citing FBI officials.
“The government has concluded that the interview of Mr. Flynn was untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn—a no-longer-justifiably-predicated investigation that the FBI had, in the Bureau’s own words, prepared to close because it had yielded an ‘absence of any derogatory information,’” said Timothy Shea, interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.
Trump has called the situation “the biggest political crime in American history,” while a top senator on Monday said he wanted answers about what Obama and Biden knew of the probe into Flynn.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said during an appearance on Fox News earlier Tuesday, “There are very real questions now that we know that President Obama was aware of the Flynn unmasking, and the former vice president too.”
Unmasking refers to intelligence officials deanonymizing a U.S. citizen’s identity.
From The Epoch Times