Mollie Hemmingway on significance of Obama White House meeting
Was Obama meeting on January 5, 2017 the genesis of the Russia probe? The Federalist's Mollie Hemmingway weighs in.
The Federalist senior editor and Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway told "The Ingraham Angle" Monday that new information proves former President Barack Obama sought to use the Russia investigation to hinder the incoming Trump administration.
Hemingway focused on a Jan. 5, 2017 Oval Office meeting that was attended by Obama, then-Vice President Joe Biden, then-FBI director James Comey, then-CIA Director John Brennan, and then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, as detailed in documents that were declassified last week as part of the DOJ's motion to dismiss the case against former National Security adviser Michael Flynn.
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At one point, Hemingway said, "Obama asked the people who would be leaving at the end of his administration to leave the meeting. And he kept only those two people who would be continuing on into the Trump administration: James Comey and [deputy Attorney General] Sally Yates.
"And that's where they started hatching their plan to make sure that the incoming administration would not find out what they had been doing or what they planned to continue doing in terms of spying on the Trump campaign and people affiliated with it," she added.
Obama told Comey and Yates he had "learned of the information about Flynn" and his conversation with Russia's then-ambassador to the U.S. about sanctions. Obama "specified that he did not want any additional information on the matter, but was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently, given the information."
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Hemingway also criticized NBC News' "Meet The Press" for playing an out-of-context clip from an interview Attorney General William Barr gave to CBS News.
"This is an example of what has been going on for years, where the exact opposite of the truth keeps on getting reported. And they just keep on suppressing information," Hemingway said. "This idea that Attorney General Barr, by caring transparently about the rule of law, doesn't care about the rule of law while the people who lie on 302's [FBI interview report forms] or destroy 302's ... who destroy evidence, who illegally spy on the Trump campaign with these warrants that were ill-gotten, who illegally interview people. That's not rule of law. That is a problem.
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"And I think people are aware that Attorney General Barr cares deeply about rule of law and wants to hold people accountable for not caring about it over the course of the last several years," Hemingway added.
Fox News' Gregg Re contributed to this report.
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