General Michael Flynn's resignation was a predictable outcome in Washington politics.  This type of political assassination goes back as far as Julius Caesar, only in modern-day Washington, they use the media and not daggers.  Usually, Republican administrations will buckle under to get the roiling topic out of the news cycle in order to move on with the tasks at hand.  The examples are seemingly endless.

Perhaps one of the more ridiculous forced resignations was that of White House Chief of Staff John Sununu in the Bush 41 administration.

John Sununu was accused of using a government car and driver to go to a coin show in his "off time."  The vehicle was equipped with secure communications equipment in the event that the chief of staff had to communicate with the White House on an emerging sensitive matter of national interest.

In John Sununu's case, a mountain was made of a molehill over the use of the government car and driver.  But in typical Republican fashion, he fell on his sword in order to get the topic out of the news cycle so that Bush 41 could manage the end of the Cold War without distraction.

By contrast, nearly 100% of the time, Democrats circle the wagons and defend the individual under attack, regardless of the scope of the accusations, with the notable and isolated exceptions of Anthony Weiner and Vince Foster, both of whom were forced to leave the public arena one way or another.

These are the rules for playing out the Sununu Gambit – until now.  Government employees in the intelligence community violated their oath and their National Security Agreement, which is essentially a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) on steroids.  Violating an NDA in the private sector usually results in dismissal, and in cases where patent infringement occurs or trade secrets are disclosed, lawsuits are filed.  Not so for violating a national security agreement – just ask Bradley Manning.  He went to prison, and rightly so.

Now that the disloyal opposition has its first scalp on their lodge pole, they are hungry for more.

An aspect of the Sununu Gambit played by the disloyal opposition that has yet to be realized is that the new POTUS is of a mindset to break the rules and raise the stakes.  This is not the usual chess game of moves and counter-moves; this is now Texas hold 'em.

The law has been violated by the leaking of signal intelligence information, which has now alerted the Russian government (and all others) that we are listening to everything.  Additionally, in the wake of Edward Snowden, it is no surprise to us that an illegal wiretap was conducted on a U.S. citizen without a court order.  

It is time to unleash the law dogs and sniff out who allowed this to happen.  It might be time for Congress and a Grand Jury to subpoena James Clapper (the former director of National Intelligence) to begin this investigation.  It has been alleged that General Clapper has already lied to Congress concerning the collection of cell phone metadata on U.S. citizens without a court order of any sort.  They collected the data just because they could, not because they had any justification, probable cause, or reasonable suspicion.

The trail of these civil liberties violations of General Flynn's rights, in the name of intelligence, will likely not end with General Clapper.  It is possible that Loretta Lynch (the former attorney general) and her predecessor Eric Holder conspired to spy on the American public without any legal authorization whatsoever.  All these individuals were in positions of public trust and authority when the illegal wiretapping and metadata collection occurred.  And, as the disloyal opposition demands, we must hold our public officials accountable.