Barbara Ledeen and her husband, the influential Neo-Con Michael Ledeen, are close friends and political allies of Michael Flynn, who is a central subject of the Senate’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. According to the Guardian, she also currently “works for the Republican senator Chuck Grassley on the Senate judiciary committee.”

This morning the Guardian broke the story that, while on the staff of the judiciary committee, Ledeen spent much 2015 conducting opposition research against Clinton. Specifically, she sought help from several sources including two defense contractors trying to find evidence that Clinton’s server had been compromised.

Critical new information from the Guardian article:

According to interview notes released by the FBI last year, Ledeen decided in 2015 to launch her own investigation into Clinton’s use of the server. At the time, she was a staffer on the Senate judiciary committee. According to the FBI files, Ledeen wanted to determine whether the emails had been hacked by a “foreign power”, because the incident angered her as a citizen and because she wanted to know whether such a hack would put her children, who served in the military, in danger. Clinton’s use of a private server was steeped in controversy throughout her unsuccessful presidential bid, but Ledeen’s concerns proved to be unfounded. A federal investigation found no evidence that the emails on Clinton’s private server were ever compromised. Ledeen’s name was redacted on the FBI documents describing the investigation, which were released last year in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. But a person who reviewed the unredacted documents confirmed to the Guardian that Barbara Ledeen was the subject. Her involvement was also confirmed by the Senate judiciary committee in response to the Guardian’s questions. According to the FBI notes, Ledeen wanted to pursue her own investigation in 2015 into whether or not Clinton’s emails had been compromised but could not finance the work. She sought out the help of an unnamed defense contractor and also turned to Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House, for help. According to the FBI notes, Gingrich “wanted to speak to others about the project” and asked Judicial Watch, the conservative activist group, for financial assistance. Judicial Watch allegedly turned to another, unnamed, contractor who was familiar with the “deep web and dark web”, according to the FBI files. The parties were concerned about what they would do if they came across any emails that contained classified information. According to the FBI investigation, the project was later halted.

A little background on the Ledeens.

Barbara Ledeen is a conservative political operative with, according to The Forward, “ties to right-wing pro-Israel circles” (10/27/06). In the 1980’s and 1990’s she worked as a Defense department assistant and then a Senate aide, and started to conduct agitprop. She was a vocal critic of Anita Hill and, in the wake of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, a co-founder of the anti-feminist, Scaife-funded “Independent Women’s Forum.” She was a defender of Paula Jones and chair of “The Coalition to Free Elian.” She split with the IWF group and worked for The Israel Project, and at the same time was an advisor the Santorum campaign.

Her husband Michael Ledeen is a failed academic who was an early adopter of the style of lunatic anti-Muslim conspiracy theories that were later to become all the rage. His history Ph.D and partisan zealotry made him invaluable to the to the Reagan and Cheney administrations, where he was involved with both the Iran-Contra affair and the Niger uranium forgeries. Today he is a vocal hawk whose only remaining passion in life appears to be the desire to invade Iran.

And did I mention they are close friends with Michael Flynn? That Michael Ledeen co-authored The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies with Michael Flynn? That the Ledeens introduced Flynn to Ezra Cohen-Watnick, who is also implicated in covering up Russian interference and who began the ‘un-masking’ charade?

Rosie Gray in the Atlantic wrote:

According to a third person familiar with the matter, the real story is that Cohen-Watnick actually met Flynn much later, in 2016, at a coffee arranged by Michael Ledeen’s wife Barbara, who Cohen-Watnick knows from growing up outside of Washington. Ledeen is a friend of Flynn’s and co-authored the book Field of Fight with him. Barbara introduced him to Cohen-Watnick; the couple connected the young officer with Flynn, and the two kept in touch over the course of the year. Flynn became a prominent surrogate for the Trump campaign, famously leading a “lock her up” chant at the Republican National Convention, and was even considered as the running mate.

This is hiring a fox with feathers sticking out from between her teeth for the 2 am shift guarding the henhouse.

The Guardian article notes that Barbara Ledeen’s staff position on the committee is not technically part of the Russia investigation. But she was not in charge of an investigation into Clinton, and yet, as a well-connected insider and staffer on the powerful committee, that didn’t stop her (“We hired Pablo Escobar to work for the DEA, but it is okay, because we put him in charge of the motor pool.”)

To sum up, Barbara Ledeen is a “Professional Staff Member” on the committee that is investigating the potential treason of a disgraced official she and her husband put into office.

Of a committee that is investigating obstruction of justice by a group with which they are intimately connected.

Barbara Ledeen should not be working for the committee that is investigating Michael Flynn.