Every American should be shocked at the treatment of Gen. Michael Flynn, an accomplished military officer who made his reputation on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Flynn was a casualty of the campaign waged against candidate and President Trump by the Washington establishment, with the Department of Justice as the tip of the spear.
It was a forgone conclusion for many anti-Trump individuals inside of government that something transactional must have happened between the Kremlin and the candidate to give the New York billionaire his election victory over Hillary Clinton.
Intelligence officials were looking at Flynn for signs of collusion or coordination with Russia. They found nothing on him and agents were requesting an end to the investigation in early January 2017 but FBI leadership jumped in and ordered agents to interview him anyway.
They brainstormed how to approach him. According to notes unearthed last week, Bill Priestep, the FBI’s former head of counterintelligence, questioned in a note, “What’s our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?”
James Comey’s FBI had bypassed the usual course of approaching administration officials, including notifying the White House Counsel, and he later bragged about his maneuver in an interview noting that it was “something I probably wouldn’t have done or maybe gotten away with in a more … organized administration.”
The FBI had recorded a 2016 conversation between Flynn — soon to be named national security adviser — and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Among other things, the two talked about sanctions and reprisals. The conversation was not illegal nor are such conversations between incoming administrations and foreign countries abnormal.
Flynn was fired, shortly thereafter, for misleading Vice President Pence about his conversation with the Russian diplomat.
But then Comey was fired on May 9 and Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe immediately authorized an investigation of President Trump for obstruction in the Russia case. Comey then leaked to the press details of a conversation he’d had with Trump about Michael Flynn, which prompted Rod Rosenstein to act and thus the Mueller investigation was born.
The FBI moved away from collusion as the Steele Dossier had long been tossed in the dumpster as the rubbish it was.
But the friends of Comey were not through.
If they couldn’t get Trump on Russia, they’d get him on something else and they would use Michael Flynn to do it. They threatened Flynn with the Logan Act and making false statements to the FBI. If he didn’t plead guilty they would charge his son with a felony violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). By this time, Flynn was already financially ruined, forced to sell his house and he and his family under a mountain of stress and anxiety.
He pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
The implication is that Flynn had impeded the FBI’s Russia investigation but there was nothing to the investigation and anyway, the FBI had recorded Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak and already knew what was on the tapes.
U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan should allow Flynn to take back his guilty plea. Then the Department of Justice should not pursue the case against him. That would mean that Flynn is vindicated without a pardon.
If that does not happen President Trump should pardon him.
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Time to give Michael Flynn his life back - Lowell Sun
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