It was very likely Celeste Wallander, a former National Security Council staffer for The One, and her smile gives it away. Perhaps the reason she is smiling these days is that she is The Hologram’s nominee for assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs.

Biden rounds out his Pentagon team with Russia expert Celeste Wallander https://t.co/yKfY0y2XRI

— Axios (@axios) June 22, 2021

Call it a payback tour for a job well done, and yet another Obama retread in the Hologram regime.

Let’s explore the evidence.

First of all, recall that the January 2017 leak to the press about Flynn’s “Russia contacts” was the spark that ignited the Democrat-media complex feeding frenzy leading to the rigged Mueller special counsel (they were all Democrats) and the first impeachment that fizzled when Mueller’s clowns could not produce the smoking gun evidence. Of course, there was none, as we now know that the “dossier” was nothing but a Democrat dirty trick concocted by the Shrillary campaign et al. It is also important to understand that whoever leaked that info is a felon walking, as pointed out here:

Attorney Sol Wisenberg said officials responsible for leaking information about the investigation into retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn should be charged with a felony for their actions.

“What shows disrespect for the law is when you unmask officials who shouldn’t be unmasked and then leak classified material and leak the Kislyak-Flynn phone calls to the press, which is a felony offense punishable with a 10-year statutory maximum,” Wisenberg said, referring to the contacts Flynn had with Russian envoy Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition period.

When the trail was still hot, and at least a few people were interested in ferreting out the rat, the legacy media was filled with speculation about all the usual suspects—Susan Rice, Sally Yates, James Clapper, John Brennan, James Comey, etc. Those names are intended to misdirect away from the real culprit (one of the legacy media’s main functions being to spin narratives and hide Democrat perfidy). Who haven’t you been told about? Dr. Celeste Ann Wallander, President and CEO of the U.S.-Russia Foundation, former Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia/Eurasia on the National Security Council (2013-2017), and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia (2009 to July 2012). She has lots of Democrat street cred, having worked for Obama in two different high-level jobs!

Wallander was Obama’s Russia expert on the NSC. And oh, by the way, Fiona Hill and Celeste Wallander are old-time pals. You remember Fiona, don’t you? She of the tortuous gotcha weasel-wording testimony during the second Trump impeachment. K.T. McFarland, Flynn’s former deputy National Security Advisor, spoke with Fiona on 29 December just before Gen. Flynn called Russian Ambassador-to-the-US Sergey Kislyak, as detailed in The New Yorker (emphasis added below). That article also sheds some light on a VERY interesting Wallander-Hill breakfast conversation, too:

[Hill] had not been seeking a position in the new Administration, but that she was “open to advising whoever came along and offering my two cents’ worth.” McFarland called Hill on the afternoon of December 29, 2016, asking what she thought about the sanctions that the Obama Administration had just imposed on Russia in retaliation for Putin’s election interference. Hill urged McFarland to avoid thinking about them as a “political issue”; they were, she said, simply “the appropriate action.”

….

Old acquaintances also pressured Hill to change her mind. On March 8th, before Hill was scheduled to meet with her staff for the first time, she had breakfast with Celeste Wallander, at the Blue Duck Tavern, near Georgetown. Wallander had worked as Obama’s White House adviser on Russia, and she and Hill had crossed paths for more than twenty years. There was clear evidence that Trump and members of his circle had coordinated with the Russians, Wallander said. Trump’s recent attack on nato as being “obsolete” showed that he intended to do whatever Putin wanted. To work in the Trump Administration was to endorse its policies. “You can’t pick and choose,” Wallander said. “You can’t say, ‘Well, I didn’t support that.’ You own those policies, even if you, on the inside, disagreed with them.” Hill wasn’t persuaded, telling Wallander that the Administration still needed advisers with “no illusions” about Putin to defend against future Russian election meddling. “When your house is on fire, you’ve got to go in and save something,” she said.

According to the Mueller Report and this Fox News article, Flynn called Michael Ledeen (Flynn’s co-author on The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies and a former NSC consultant) right before calling Kislyak. But we were never told about that call between K.T. McFarland and Fiona Hill (Fox does its share of obfuscation, too).

As the “Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia and Eurasia on the National Security Council,” Wallander would qualify as a “senior U.S. government official” defined by The Washington Post’s David Ignatius, who was the recipient of the Flynn leak and broke the story. The Flynn-Kislyak transcripts surely came across her desk. How else could Wallander allege in her conversation with McFarland that there was “clear evidence” Trump’s team had “coordinated with Russians”?

Many Democrats consider Victoria Nuland and Celeste Wallander as Obama’s top two Russia experts who tried to “warn everyone” and offer “solutions” re: Vladimir Putin. Always being “dismissed” and “sidelined” by the new president, Wallander had no choice but to leak to Ignatius in order to “get Trump” because he was “obviously compromised” by Putin – or “controlled,” as the Democrat narrative later became.

Here is Wallander’s “candid, full interview on Putin and allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election – all part of ‘The Putin Files’” from 2018 (part of the Democrat-media echo chamber reporting aimed it impeaching President Trump). Watch that interview and tell me she wasn’t obsessed with getting Trump:

35:10 – discussion shifts to the election
51:44 – “What were the options?” (START WATCHING HERE)
52:31 – Implementing sanctions and planning for Russian retaliation
53:38 – “And we were very surprised—I was very surprised to come in the next day to find out they weren’t going to do anything.”
53:50 – “It was puzzling.”

We can safely assume her puzzlement was short-lived thanks to the tip from Fiona Hill and the FBI’s routine surveillance of Kislyak revealing his conversations with Flynn.

A few more things…

Fiona Hill likely alerted old pal Celeste Wallander about the Flynn-Kislyak transcripts, who then reported this to David Ignatius. Even though Wallander would have seen the transcripts/intel reports, her “leaking” would be considered legal (by some) because her source was Fiona Hill, not the intel community.

Fiona Hill may have been a source “whispering” to Adam Entous about the Flynn-Kislyak calls. From Fox News (emphasis added):

But, Ignatius wasn’t the only one at the paper with information on the communications. Washington Post reporter Adam Entous stated at a 2018 Georgetown Law panel discussion that “sources start whispering to me that there were all these mysterious communications between Michael Flynn, who was then the National Security Advisor designate for Trump and the Russian ambassador, Kislyak.

According to Entous, this information caused “divisions within the newsroom.”

The transcript of Entous’ remarks at Georgetown was first spotted Sunday by Twitter user Techno Fog, who has extensively reported on the Trump-Russia investigation.

“Initially, I didn’t know what to make of it,” Entous said. “There were divisions within the newsroom. At that point, I’m at the Washington Post… Why is it news that Michael Flynn is talking to the Russian ambassador? He should be talking to the Russian ambassador. He should be talking to him about saving the children of Aleppo, for example. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t be having that conversation. I was arguing internally that we need something more than just the fact that there was a conversation, but I’m one of many reporters.”

Interestingly, Barack Obama knew about the Flynn-Kislyak calls before Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates! And Celeste Wallander was probably the source who passed along this information (most likely via Susan Rice). From Fox News (emphasis added):

President Obama was aware of the details of then-incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn’s intercepted December 2016 phone calls with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, apparently surprising then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, according to documents released Thursday as exhibits to the government’s motion to dismiss the Flynn case.

…

On January 5, 2017, Yates attended an Oval Office meeting with then-FBI Director James Comey, then-Vice President Joe Biden, then-CIA Director John Brennan, and then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, according to the newly declassified documents, including an FD-302 FBI witness report. They were discussing Russian election interference, along with national security adviser Susan Rice and other members of the national security council.

After the briefing, Obama asked Yates and Comey to “stay behind,” and said he had “learned of the information about Flynn” and his conversation with Russia’s ambassador 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.”

A previous memo from Rice stated that Biden also stayed behind after the main briefing had ended.

At that point, the documents showed, “Yates had no idea what the president was talking about, but figured it out based on the conversation. Yates recalled Comey mentioning the Logan Act, but can’t recall if he specified there was an ‘investigation.’ Comey did not talk about prosecution in the meeting.”

The exhibit continues: “It was not clear to Yates from where the President first received the information. Yates did not recall Comey’s response to the President’s question about how to treat Flynn. She was so surprised by the information she was hearing that she was having a hard time processing it and listening to the conversation at the same time.

To summarize, the flow of information likely went from McFarland to Hill to Wallander. Once inside the White House, it went from Wallander to Rice to Obama (and later onto Ignatius at the Washington Post).

The Bottom Line: Wallander possessed a virulent anti-Trump sentiment, motive, access, and credibility because of her senior position and experience – she had it all. She’s the leaker. Prove me wrong.

Will any of the Republicans who will interview her during her Senate confirmation process ask Wallander a few direct questions about this? How about a simple question that highlights that she was dead wrong about President Trump and Russia (which exposes her “expertise” for what it is)? Don’t hold your breath, but in this new era of grassroots activism, you might want to pressure your Senator beforehand.

The end.