Tuesday’s surprise developments in a Washington courtroom have prolonged the political persecution of Lt. General Michael Flynn and once again shown how ruthless that special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of partisan henchmen are.
The decorated former military man who was forced out of the Trump administration by a ferocious media campaign after only weeks as the president’s national security adviser was going to be sentenced for the dubious crime of lying to the FBI in what was a clear cut attempt to entrap him.
Flynn’s legal team had begun making noises that that was indeed the case when the disgraced former FBI deputy director deputy director Andrew McCabe downplayed the grilling that the one time head of the Defense Intelligence Agency would get from corrupt Trump hater Peter Strzok last January.
But Team Mueller had more dirty tricks left in their bag and clearly threatened Flynn with additional charges if he didn’t continue to cooperate. Then when the retired general showed up before Judge Emmet Sullivan, he was confronted with a suggestion that he had committed treason which the judge later walked back.
As a result, Flynn’s sentencing was put off so that he could continue to be browbeaten and threatened by Mueller’s goons and now he is in limbo as the usual hate mob and the media talking heads will flail away at him like a punching bag.
But is Flynn really a victim of gross injustice who is deserving of an apology? That would be what Bloomberg’s Eli Lake has suggested in his latest column that is well worth the time spent reading it.
Michael Flynn is Owed an Apology https://t.co/Gb9ZFzB0s2
— Eli Lake (@EliLake) December 18, 2018
The following are excerpts from Lake’s piece, “Michael Flynn Is Owed an Apology”:
So how did Washington get sucked into believing that Michael Flynn had betrayed his country? Part of it, surely, is guilt by association; the proposition that Trump wants to appease Russia — even if he has not acted on his wishes — is not far-fetched. Trump has denied that the Russians hacked Democrats and released their emails, openly contradicting the U.S. intelligence community (and, for that matter, Flynn). During his campaign Trump flattered Russian President Vladimir Putin, and has continued to do so during his presidency.
AND
According to the House Intelligence Committee’s report on the bureau’s investigation into the Trump campaign, former FBI Director James Comey himself authorized ending the bureau’s counterintelligence investigation into Flynn by the end of December 2016. That investigation remained open after the bureau learned that Flynn had misled Vice President Mike Pence and others in the Trump orbit about a phone call between himself and the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak. U.S. intelligence monitored the conversation.
That conversation proved to be Flynn’s undoing. As I wrote at the time of his resignation, it is highly unusual for the contents of these monitored conversations to become public. But those leaks revealed that Flynn had misled the incoming Trump White House about the phone call.
It remains a mystery why Flynn, a man with a reputation for integrity and valor as both an officer and government official, would lie. Perhaps it was untoward, but there is nothing unusual about an incoming national security adviser contacting foreign diplomats during the presidential transition. Trump himself was doing this openly from Trump Tower. According to the House Intelligence Committee report, Flynn “requested that Russia not escalate the situation and only respond to the U.S. sanctions in a reciprocal manner.”
In no other era would these be grounds for treating a national security adviser like a member of a crime family. And yet that is exactly what the FBI did. On Jan. 24, 2017, then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe sent agents to discuss the phone call with Flynn without letting him know that he was being investigated. McCabe himself urged Flynn not to have a lawyer present, according to recent court filings. The agents interviewing Flynn knew exactly what he had said to Kislyak — they had a transcript of the call. The purpose of the interview was to try to catch Flynn in a lie.
AND
Americans might want to ask themselves if they want the FBI to investigate senior White House staff for misleading their colleagues. If this is the case, the current crime wave in official Washington dates to the late 18th century.
None of this is an excuse for Flynn. Lying to FBI agents is a serious matter. And not only did he lie about Russia, he also failed to register as a foreign agent for the government of Turkey, a crime that two of his former associates have now been charged with (Flynn has not).
But the context of a lie also matters. Nearly two years after the FBI trapped Flynn, the crime the Justice Department was investigating remains unknown. If it turns out that the reason Flynn was a target is as flimsy as violating the Logan Act or not being candid with his colleagues, then that itself is a scandal. The FBI’s independence is not a license to interfere in American politics.
That Flynn was set-up is indisputable and what went down in that courtroom only validates the belief of many that Mueller is a rogue prosecutor conducting an anti-American witch hunt with the clear objective to assist the Democrats in removing Trump from office and to hell with the lives that are destroyed in the process.
If Mueller actually has a soul, it stinks.
