But Judge Sullivan should let Flynn walk, and not just because he may lack a photographic memory. Instead, Flynn should be liberated due to the FBI’s evident misconduct.
According to recent news reports, the FBI encouraged Flynn to meet Strzok and his fellow interrogator without the benefit of legal counsel. In another redacted FBI document dated January 24, 2017, an apparent FBI official writes:
“I explained to LTG Flynn that my desire was to have two of my agents interview him as quickly as possible. He agreed and offered to meet with the agents today. … I explained that I thought the quickest way to get this done was to have a conversation between him and the agents only. I further stated that if LTG Flynn wished to include anyone else in the meeting, like the White House Counsel for instance, that I would need to involve the Department of Justice. He stated that this would not be necessary and agreed to meet with the agents without any additional participants.”
Last week on MSNBC, fired FBI Director James Comey admitted that he avoided normal procedures in Flynn’s case. “If the FBI wanted to send agents into the White House itself to interview a senior official, you would work through the White House counsel, and there would be discussions and approvals of who would be there,” he admitted.
Instead, on its fourth day in office, Comey took advantage of the neophyte Trump White House and its staff, and sent the agents anyway. “I thought: It’s early enough, let’s just send a couple guys over.”
Comey bragged that this was “something I probably wouldn’t have done or maybe gotten away with in a more … organized administration.”
The fact that the FBI encouraged Flynn to exclude his or the White House’s lawyers from the interview is a brand new monument to Miranda rights abuse.
The Supreme Court ruled in a 1966 case, Miranda V. Arizona, that all Americans have the right to have an attorney present when speaking with law enforcement and need to be warned that they have the right to remain silent, and that anything they say can and will be used against them in a court of law.
It would be bad enough had the FBI not reminded Flynn of this right. But to go the extra mile and bamboozle him into excluding an attorney during what Flynn seemingly considered a friendly chat was abominable.
The idea of Flynn going to prison because the FBI “got away with” hoodwinking him out of having an attorney on hand as he was grilled by FBI agents reeks of the legal systems in Venezuela or Russia, where the accused do not have legal protections that Americans enjoy. The FBI should not get into the habit of un-Mirandizing interrogation subjects.
"I hope this results in an investigation by the inspector general of the tactics used by the FBI," Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz said Tuesday on Fox News Channel's “America's Newsroom.”
"I think that Flynn was coerced into pleading guilty to a crime of which he was innocent,” Dershowitz added. “He was coerced by threats against his son, threats against his fortune."
Indeed, Flynn had to sell his house to pay his attorneys. Such financial ruin has befallen Special Counsel Robert Mueller's victims – even witnesses not accused of crimes who drown in lawyers' bills simply to testify.
Judge Sullivan should vacate Flynn's guilty plea, dismiss charges against him, order the FBI to pay his legal fees, and sanction Mueller and his band of enraged Democrats for this grotesque miscarriage of justice.
The above was printed ONE YEAR AGO ... December 18, 2018