The case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn was "completely overblown," but when classified information was made publicly available, it exposed the "whole Russian collusion hoax" that had been staged against President Donald Trump, Richard Grenell, the former acting director of national intelligence, said on Newsmax TV Thursday.
"Once last summer started, with the declassification and all of the information that we were able to get access to, the public was able to get access to, you could see the entire case fall apart," Grenell told "John Bachman Now." "The innuendos and overclassification from some bureaucrats, I think, has been the problem."
The government gets its power, he added, "by pretending that it has information that the public doesn't and it spoonfeeds the public little by little."
But that was "totally blown open" with the released information, and the public could see the "collusion narrative was fake," said Grenell.
"We had several intelligence officials who raised their hand and said this is all a bunch of baloney, this overclassified information, the secret process that bureaucrats are spoonfeeding political people at the top of the DOJ, CIA, and at the FBI," he added.
It's also overblown to charge Flynn with a crime for speaking with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak because he was "doing exactly what we wanted him to do" during the transition ... he was being a diplomat. The innuendo that was flying from inside the [Barack] Obama administration at the time was really shameful," Grenell said.
He also pointed out that "transparency is not political" to the American people.
"If they can get the information and look at it, they can see exactly what's going on," said Grenell. "I think that we've got a problem in Washington, and one of the solutions is to push back on the overclassification and transparency of declassified documents so that the American people can have more faith in their government."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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