Neil McCabe appeared on Boston radio talk show king Howie Carr’s program on Tuesday to discuss his recent Treasury Department whistleblower story.
Carr: There is an article that is written by Neil McCabe who I’ve known for a long time who is now a big national correspondent for Star News Digital Media newspapers and he’s a media fellow at the Gold Institute. I saw this story today that “The Treasury Department Spied on Flynn, Manafort and the Trump Family Says Whistleblower.“
And you saw last week Rick Grenell the acting director of National Intelligence released the list of the people who had unmasked Michael Flynn in the post-election transition to the Trump administration on January 20. And seven of them were from the Treasury Department.
We all kind of wondered what was going on with all these treasury people wanting to look at Flynn’s phone records. Now it turns out there’s more context to what happened with the Treasury Department that was illegally bird-dogging Flynn. So joining us now is Neil McCabe. Neil, thanks for being with us on the Howie Carr Show.
McCabe: Oh absolutely Howie and I really want to thank you when I was with One America News you were the cornerstone of our news special on the truth behind Elizabeth Warren. That was great stuff and I really appreciate you coming on with us man.
Carr: My pleasure Neil. You found this Treasury Department whistleblower. Tell us what she said to you and what she told you about the Treasury Department under Obama was doing to Michael Flynn.
McCabe: I’ve been talking to someone close to her for over a year and she just didn’t want to come forward. So there was a lot of back and forth. Like you, I saw this unmasking where there were seven treasury officials including Jacob Lew who is the Treasury Secretary and Sarah Raskin who is the deputy secretary and the wife of Congressman Raskin who of course was part of the impeachment team.
And they had that meeting on December 14, I still don’t know what happened on December 14. She doesn’t know what happened on December 14. But what she did tell me that in December of 2015 she started seeing metadata that is name, time, access.
Not actually what they were looking for but she started seeing reports come through that somebody in the treasury in the office of intelligence and analysis was going through his financial records and monitoring his financial transactions.
And that continued into 2016 when she reached out to someone else who is a woman who has been in the intelligence community. She reached out to somebody else who is also in the treasury intelligence community. The two of them basically looked at this and said this is wrong, we’ve got to speak up. They tried to ring the bell and they got shut down.
Carr: Let me just point out again. This started according to Neil’s source here in December of 2015. Donald Trump wasn’t even the front runner for the Republican nomination at that point. It kind of puts the lie to this Susan Rice memo that was declassified today where they make it appear that they only became interested in Flynn when he began talking with the Russian ambassador after the election. So 11 months before the election they are not dipping into his phone records with the Russians but these hacks in the treasury, these Democrat hacks are looking at his financial transactions. Is that the bottom line?
McCabe: Yes, and I will point out maybe you know the details better than I do but it’s my understanding that Flynn hadn’t even endorsed Trump until later. Flynn was actually talking to other candidates. This was very much a Flynn centric operation.
The other name was Paul Manafort’s name and Flynn’s name are in her complaint to the office of the special counsel and the IG at the treasury. There are other names she can’t say because they are not part of the paperwork. So I asked her who else? Where there members of Congress? Yes. Were there senior staffers in the Trump campaign? Yes. And I said (Inaudible talk) years? And members of the Trump family? Yes.
Carr: You know Trey Gowdy the former Congressman from South Carolina who was in a lot of these intelligence committee hearings and he said they were unmasking members of the Trump family on inauguration day in the morning. I just want to read something from the story here. This rouse tapping into their financial transactions was used to get around using classified resources to surveil Americans because they didn’t have a court warrant and hadn’t gone to FISA.
Once the treasury had more information is more accessible than they were targeting from the black box meaning more accessible information they would go to the white box for a faster and more informed search. This was a strictly illegal dirty tricks situation. This is the kind of stuff they accused Nixon of doing. He never had the capacity or resources. I don’t think he had the will to do something like this you know?
McCabe: I will also point out if you want to talk about unmasking. On January 12 Obama signed a rendition of the executive order that governs surveillance EO-12333 and it was like the 12th that you see that the secretary to the treasury Jack Lew accesses Flynn’s records. And on the 12th you see a ton of people access that list on the 12th because that was the day that Obama opened it up to everybody.
Carr: This surveillance program, again this is the illegal surveillance program that was run out of the Treasury Department. Which was then under the leadership of SS. Leslie Iowa. He was at the CIA and had a one year stint as an Obama intelligence briefer.
So, in other words, he was a soldier in the Obama crime family and they put him in their just like they put Lew in there because he was the chief of staff for Obama. They needed to keep the lid on these dirty tricks. Do you think they were dipping into all the financial records?
Is that where you think she’s getting at your whistleblower? Do you think they were dipping into the financial records of all the Republican candidates? Senator Grassley said they were probably illegally surveilling all the Republican candidates. Do you think that’s what she was getting at your whistleblower?
McCabe: I mean think about it. You are a reporter. If a cop leaves a folder off a desk and walks away would you look through the folder? Why would you stop? Think about it if you go back to Watergate and Nixon most of those investigators weren’t looking into Nixon. They were auditing Bob Dole. They were auditing Ronald Reagan. They investigated every Republican who could have run for president in ’76 and just charged it to the Watergate account.
Carr: If you are digging through financial records and you do it very carefully you might be able to spot something a check, let’s say just to make something up like an abortion and you got some kids adopted and you didn’t do it in a proper way through a back door payment to somebody all of a sudden you have a lot of blackmail material even if they are not a candidate for president.
McCabe: So go back Howie to black-box versus the white box. In the black box, you see a check to the abortion clinic then you go to the white box and you say, “Oh, on Facebook they were out of town on the same day. Oh, OK let’s go to the security cameras.”
We see them walking into the building. Once you have all the details you need on the black box you can go to the open-source white box and that’s sort of how they get a parallel description on you to say we don’t need a warrant it’s right on your Facebook page.
Carr: This is pretty amazing. We’ve got another woman coming up in the next hour that’s sort of on the same topic how Adam Housely on Fox has been saying that this thing is just massive. It’s almost unbelievable how many people were under surveillance and the depth of the surveillance that they were under. It could be hundreds of people couldn’t it, Neil McCabe?
McCabe: Well, yes I don’t have proof it was hundreds of people but why would you stop? If I had all afternoon to just look up anybody I want why wouldn’t I?
Carr: Right. (Chuckles) We’re both reporters. It’s very addictive once you get started.
McCabe: Of course.
Carr: Then you are just digging. Pretty soon it becomes a hobby. You go home and put your feet up on the couch and you just dig through the evening. It’s more fun than watching TV.
McCabe: OK. Then you see the connections. Then you see something in the Flynn file and you say oh, now I get what the connection is.
Carr: Yes. There have been other stories earlier on the surveillance on Flynn in various forms that were going back to 2014. Your story says you have it connected back to 2015. He’s got a hell of a civil suit once he gets rid of this criminal case in front of Judge Sullivan. Can you imagine that? How much time and effort did they expend and how many people were involved in trying to kill this guy a three-star general?
McCabe: You saw what they disclosed today the declass of Susan Rice memo of Comey going after Flynn. I had no idea that Flynn was the scariest guy on earth. Who knew that Mike Flynn was such a scary guy.
Carr: Neil McCabe this is a great story. We’re going to tweet it out.
This is really good. Keep us informed about this. You’ve really advanced the story here. This is quite interesting. I think we’ll be reading more about this. Thank you, Neil McCabe, of the Star News Digital Media newspapers. He’s also a media fellow from the Gold Institute.
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Photo “Howie Carr” by Howie Carr. Background Photo “Treasury Building” by Sealy J. CC BY 4.0
