Napolitano: Intelligence Community Leaked Because Flynn 'Knew Too Much'

People in the intelligence community feared former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and wanted him out because he "knew about them and knew too much about them and knew their sources," Judge Andrew Napolitano said Thursday, and he does not believe Flynn was asked to leave over a "white lie" to Vice President Mike Pence.

"My theory is that the people in the intelligence community feared Mike Flynn because he was one of them," Napolitano, the senior judicial analyst for Fox News, told the "Fox and Friends" program. 

Flynn wasn't as "steeped in the spy craft," he said, but he was "just as tough and just as loyal."

"I do not buy the fact that Mike Flynn was asked to leave because of telling a white lie to Mike Pence," Napolitano said. "First of all Mike Pence knew exactly what Mike Flynn said. The president knew what Mike Flynn said."

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is in a complex situation where the intelligence community is concerned, as there are members who say they don't trust him, said the judge.

"You know what? If you don't trust your boss and you can't work for your boss, get another job," Napolitano said. "We have one president. The intelligence community works for him. They do not work for each other."

Flynn, as the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, had a career in spying, said Napolitano, and he knew that when he was on the telephone with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, "American spies were listening to everything he said."

"He knew it," said Napolitano. "It was absolutely standard operating procedure. But he thought he was being listened to by patriots. He didn't think he was being listened to by people who would try to undermine the presidency of Donald Trump, and destroy the most important person in his national security entourage by leaking to the public or leaking to enough people in the government exactly what they heard."

Now there is a state of affairs in which professional spies in the intelligence community "can turn on or off information to the president of the United States, who can decide what to give him and what to keep from him. Decide what to reveal and what to keep secret and basically are a shadow government in an effort to control and frustrate the president."

Trump's comments on Wednesday about illegal leaks is "100 percent correct," Napolitano continued. "What the president just said about those illegal leaks is 100 percent correct. They are illegal. They are immoral. They are criminal. Will we ever find those people? Absolutely not."

The United States intelligence community, he said, "are the best stealers of secrets, keepers of secrets and leakers of secrets on the planet. They are the same people that concocted that stuff and leaked it about the president supposedly in a motel room in Moscow."

Further, Napolitano said, there was nothing wrong with Flynn calling Kislyak and talking about the sanctions former President Barack Obama imposed less than a month before leaving office, if that's what happened.

"Donald Trump wanted a better relationship with Russia," said Napolitano. "He didn't want the Russians to think that Barack Obama's tail end of his presidency would taint that."

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• WSJ: Intel Community Keeping Info From Trump