Former national security adviser instructed by Obama White House to write memo on Flynn

A recently declassified email that former national security adviser Susan Rice sent to herself that documented an early 2017 meeting in the Oval Office turns out to have been drafted at the behest of White House counsel.

Rice wrote the memo on the same day that President Donald Trump took office, which laid out what she and other within the Oval Office discussed two weeks prior, according to the Daily Wire.

Fox News correspondent Gillian Turner reported Wednesday that Rice's team had confirmed to the news outlet that "she was directed by White House Counsel to write the Jan 20, 2017 memorandum documenting an Oval Office meeting in which President Obama [and] National Security officials discussed Michael Flynn."

"The meeting took place on January 5, 2017, and involved Rice, Obama, and Vice President Biden, the administration’s top political hierarchy on national-security matters, along with Obama’s top law-enforcement and counterintelligence officials, deputy attorney general Sally Yates (soon formally to take the acting AG role she was already performing), and FBI director James Comey," former US Attorney Andrew McCarthy wrote Wednesday.

"Prior redactions had already demonstrated that the meeting’s central purpose was to discuss the rationale for withholding intelligence about Russia from the incoming Trump national-security team."

Based on Rice's partially redacted email, it is evident that the Obama administration had reservations about sensitive information possibly leaking to the Russian Ambassador Kislyak by way of Michael Flynn. The amount of communication between Kislyak and Flynn was, according to Comey, "unusual."

Attorney General William Barr shot down the idea that there was anything wrong or over the line with the communication Flynn had with the Russian ambassador.

"That call, there was nothing wrong with it whatever," Barr said. "In fact, it was laudable. And it was nothing inconsistent with the Obama administration’s policies. And it was in US interests. He was saying to the Russians, you know, 'Don’t escalate.' And they asked him if he remembered saying that, and he said he didn't remember that."

McCarthy noted later on that as more information was being declassified, Rice seemed to change her story, writing: "Rice has gone from claiming to have had no knowledge of Obama administration monitoring of Flynn and other Trump associates, to claiming no knowledge of any unmaskings of Trump associates, to admitting she was complicit in the unmaskings, to — now — a call for the recorded conversation between retired general Michael Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak to be released because it would purportedly show that the Obama administration had good reason to be concerned about Flynn (y'know, the guy she said she had no idea they were investigating)."