Justice for Michael Flynn

As it happened, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn opposed the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal. As a senior intelligence official in the Obama administration, he could not be allowed to do that. So, to save Obama’s sellout to the mullahs and his support for state sponsored terrorism, Michael Flynn had to be destroyed.

Let us weigh out words carefully. The James Comey-led FBI, the Obama foreign policy apparatchiks, the Robert Mueller prosecutors were not interested in debating any issue. They were not interested in deliberating. They were certainly not interested in allowing the duly elected Trump administration to conduct foreign policy.

Instead, they tried to take out Michael Flynn. They tried to destroy him, to bankrupt him, to threaten his son with prison. And this, as a wise commenter reminded me this morning, from the group that touts its superior capacity for empathy.

No empathy for Michael Flynn. And no empathy for Brett Kavanaugh. The radical American left has nothing to contribute to the national debate. So, it has set out to destroy people, beginning with Donald Trump, and his family and his associates and his nominees. See also a prior post on sadistic empaths. It is the recourse of the powerless. Those who do not know how to build work tirelessly to destroy what others have built.

It is not about the rule of law. It is a sadistic exercise worthy of Storm Troopers. It is profoundly unamerican. And it has nothing to do with the rule of law. You know that the sanctimonious hypocrites of the radical left are out in force denouncing Attorney General Barr for having dropped charges against Michael Flynn. Clearly, they fear being caught in the headlights and being prosecuted themselves. 

So, for the legalities of the case, I report the views of two fair minded and non-partisan writers, Eli Lake for Bloomberg and Alan Dershowitz for the Gatestone Institute. Lake has been on the story and has been right on the story from the beginning. Dershowitz brings us his legal expertise on these matters.

Lake explains the details of the dismissal motion:

In a motion to dismiss the case against him, U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea argued that the FBI had no basis under which to interview Flynn, that agents who interviewed him did not believe he lied, and that what he told those agents on Jan. 24, 2017, had no material effect on the bureau’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

“Mr. Flynn’s request that Russia avoid ‘escalating’ tensions in response to U.S. sanctions in an effort to mollify geopolitical tensions was consistent with him advocating for, not against, the interests of the United States,” Shea wrote. “At bottom, the arms-length communications gave no indication that Mr. Flynn was being ‘directed and controlled by … the Russian federation,’ much less in a manner that ‘threatened … national security.’”

What could be more appalling than the canard, circulated widely by the media elite and by numerous members of Congress, that the Trump administration was colluding with Russia. Then again, we know well that the Obama administration bent over to do the bidding of Vladimir Putin and to elevate his status. Have you noticed that, since the advent of the Trump presidency, there has been very little talk about Putin?

Shea found the decision to continue with the case risible. “The FBI sidestepped a modest but critical protection that constrains the investigative reach of law enforcement: the predication threshold for investigating American citizens,” he wrote.

By keeping the investigation open, the FBI was able to secure an interview with Flynn without going through the proper channels at the White House. “The irregular procedure that preceded his interview, suggests that the FBI was eager to interview Mr. Flynn, irrespective of any underlying investigation,” Shea wrote. In other words, the FBI was more interested in catching Flynn in a lie than in investigating an actual crime.

Anyway, Flynn made a deal with Robert Mueller’s office, without having the relevant information and in order to spare his son from prosecution:

All of this is important because almost a year after that interview, Flynn pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements to the FBI in a deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller. In exchange for cooperation and a side agreement not to pursue charges against his son, the special counsel agreed to recommend a lenient sentence.

At the time, Flynn did not know about all the shortcuts, missteps and irregularities in the FBI’s investigation into him. What’s more, the FBI agents who interviewed him at the time did not even think he was lying. Shea writes: “The statements in question were not by their nature easily falsifiable. In his interview, Mr. Flynn offered either equivocal (‘I don’t know’) or indirect responses, or claimed to not remember the matter in question.”

And, Mueller’s lawyers issued a series of appalling threats against a man who had served at the highest levels of the American military. I find it likely that the Obama satraps, what with their visceral dislike and distrust of the military, was more than happy to attack it through the person of Michael Flynn. 

Instead, Flynn faced the full brunt of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. He was threatened with enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act for minor omissions in his contract to represent a Turkish businessman who Flynn later admitted was standing in for the government of Turkey. In September a judge threw out the prosecution of his business partner in a separate case brought by the Justice Department. His son was also threatened with prosecution. After fighting the case for nearly a year, Flynn wanted the nightmare to be over.

Lake concludes:

But it’s also fair to ask why, just before a new president took office and against its own investigators’ recommendation, the FBI’s leadership kept the case open without proper predication. Equality under the law is a bedrock American principle. So is the peaceful transfer of power.

Now, Alan Dershowitz weighs in, following the single principle that has brought him to denounce the legal tactics brought by Democrats against the Trump administration. I think it fair to say, and to say clearly, that Dershowitz is arguing for a single set of standards, one that would be applied equally and fairly to all of the accused. When you have one set of standards applied to Democrats and one applied to Republicans, you are effectively living in two countries.

Anyway, here is Dershowitz for the defense:

More than a year ago I wrote that it was clear General Michael Flynn should never have pleaded guilty because he did not commit a crime. Even if he lied to the FBI, his lie was not "material." For a lie to be a crime under federal law, it must be material to the investigation – meaning that the lies pertain to the issues being legitimately investigated. The role of the FBI is to investigate past crimes, not to create new ones. 

Because the FBI investigators already knew the answer to the question they asked him—whether he had spoken to the Russian Ambassador—their purpose was not to elicit new information relevant to their investigation, but rather to spring a perjury trap on him. When they asked Flynn the question, they had a recording of his conversation with the Russian, of which he was presumably unaware. So his answer was not material to the investigation because they already had the information about which they were inquiring.

It was pure entrapment, served for political ends, even though it was only designed to destroy a man’s life.

You will have noted that the mainstream media is presenting the story today by stating that Flynn admitted to lying to the FBI. It is typical of biased reporting, and shows, Dershowitz says, a malicious intent. Just because one is trapped and bullied into admitting to a lie, that does not mean that one has committed a lie.

Some may wonder why an innocent man would ever plead guilty. Anyone who knows how the system works in practice would understand why an innocent man—or a defendant in a close case—might be coerced into pleading guilty. The cruel reality is that if a defendant pleads not guilty and is found guilty, the sentence will be far greater than if he had pled guilty—perhaps even 10 times greater. Moreover, in this case, it is alleged that the government threatened, if Flynn did not plead guilty, to indict his son. 

These are the kinds of pressures routinely used by prosecutors. Civil libertarians have long been critical of these pressures, but fair-weather civil libertarians refuse to object when these improper tactics are used against Trump's associates. Partisan hypocrisy reigns.

Dershowitz concludes:

The time has come, indeed it is long overdue, to de-politicize our criminal justice system and to forbid it from becoming weaponized by either side for partisan purposes. Dropping the case against General Flynn is an important first step, but it cannot be the last if we are to restore the criminal justice system to its rightful place as a non-partisan institution of justice.