Posted on 12/18/2018 11:35:27 AM PST by Liberty7732
Every once in a while, you come across a set of circumstances that brings you great sadness about our country’s state of affairs. (Yes, it may be happening more frequently.) The events surrounding the prosecution of General Michael Flynn and his treatment by the FBI and Special Counselor Robert Mueller is such a situation — and the reason that Judge Emmet Sullivan has been having a difficult time with the plea and sentencing that was scheduled for today and has now been delayed.
By now, most of you are aware of the circumstances of clear entrapment behind the charges against Flynn, but they nevertheless require elucidation, because they loom large beyond Flynn’s case. First, General Michael Flynn is a 33-year veteran of the United States Army with an impeccable history of patriotic service to his country. His service specialized on counter-intelligence, and he is likely responsible for the identification, capture, and destruction of more anti-American terrorists than anyone in the history of the United States. In other words, a true hero.
On Jan. 20, 2017, Flynn assumed the office of National Security Advisor to the President Trump. Just prior to taking on that role, on Dec. 29, 2016, Flynn had contact with Russian Ambassador to the United States, Sergei Kislyak. The details of this contact are somewhat sketchy, but suffice it to say that the contact took place.
During this time, the Obama Administration, still reeling from the Democrats’ unexpected loss to Donald Trump in the presidential elections, was bent on blaming Russian interference for the defeat of the anointed Democrat darling, Hillary Clinton. The shock associated with the defeat led to a zealous effort to identify and understand the extent and machinations of this interference and to discover whether the Trump campaign was in any way involved.
The agency tasked with the investigation of potential Russian meddling was the Federal Bureau of Investigation headed at the time by James Comey. The FBI was very interested in the specifics behind the interactions between Flynn and the Russian Ambassador because it wanted to know whether there was any evidence of promised benefits to the Russians under the new administration in exchange for Russian assistance in tilting the election in Trump’s favor. To be clear, the mere fact that the Russian Ambassador had made contact with Flynn was not illegal, or even unusual during a transition.
For the sake of our discussion, I am going to assume that the Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s version of the details regarding the contact between these two men is correct. I am going to grant the Mueller team’s assertion that Flynn had not forgotten about the contact he had with the Kislyak (even though both FBI agents who conducted the interview did not believe Flynn was lying.) I am going to assume, as Mueller reports, that by the time the FBI agents contacted him, Flynn was already relating a false narrative regarding his conversation with the Ambassador. I am also going to assume that, as Mueller says, Flynn was given more than ample opportunities to correct the falsehoods he delivered to the inquiring agents on Jan. 24, 2017. I am also going to acknowledge, for the sake of argument, that Flynn was not coerced into admitting that he had lied when he struck a plea deal with the FBI and that he was actually being accurate when he admitted his illegality to them.
But even if those assertions are true, Judge Emmet Sullivan, the judge responsible for sentencing Flynn on Tuesday and the one who has asked to review any exculpatory evidence in the case, must still throw out the case against Flynn.
The principal question is whether the FBI induced Flynn into lying during its interview of Jan. 24, 2017. More directly, did the FBI conduct its interview in such a manner as to induce the general to lie. After reviewing the Mueller memo to the court, my conclusion is that it absolutely, positively did.
In arriving at this conclusion, I first take note that prosecutorial entrapment is clearly illegal and fatal to the prosecution of a suspect. Entrapment, the act of government agents or officials that induces a person to commit a crime he or she is not previously disposed to commit, is a vile and vicious technique that if allowed to run unabated represents a fundamental threat to our liberties and to our abilities to live our lives in peace and free of government persecution.
Entrapment cannot be tolerated.
Consequently, if the FBI induced the general into committing the crime of lying to the FBI, it would nullify its prosecution of him and force the case to be dismissed.
According to the memo produced by Robert Mueller in defense of his prosecution of Flynn, Mueller admits that the FBI knew prior to its interview that Flynn had made contact with Ambassador Kislyak on Dec. 29, 2016, “the same day the US announced sanctions against Russia for its interference with the 2016 elections. ” Moreover, Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe, the man who contacted Flynn about a potential meeting with FBI investigators, believed Flynn had already lied to others regarding his contacts with the ambassador and that he was already “committed to that false story.” Even so, those deceitful acts of delivering a false narrative on the part of Flynn, whether excusable or not, were not illegal. Despite this, McCabe, in coordination with James Comey, made the decision to bypass protocol in seeking the interview with Flynn in the hopes that he would repeat those lies to investigators. In other words, McCabe and Comey built a trap for Flynn.
Additionally, we know from comments made by Comey that when McCabe set up the interview with Flynn, he knowingly bypassed protocol. We also know that Flynn inquired as to whether he should have his attorney present and was dissuaded from doing so by McCabe.
More egregiously, McCabe and Comey purposely decided not to warn Flynn that it was illegal to lie to the FBI. This is an important detail because it is distinguishable from the mere omission of the information, which is how the media generally reports this fact. Instead, according to Mueller’s memo to the court, McCabe and Comey made the purposeful decision to conceal the subject’s legal peril. The reason for this purposeful omission was to fool Flynn into being “relaxed,” and because “they were concerned that giving the warnings might adversely affect the report.” The implications of this admission are fatal to Flynn’s successful prosecution since they acknowledge that if the FBI had properly performed its job, Mueller would not have committed the crime of lying to them. Once again, the FBI investigators admit to the entrapment of Flynn.
Judge Sullivan is clearly aware of all of these facts as he tries to decide how to rule on the Flynn plea and sentencing.
As the Mueller memo states, the overall effect of the FBI’s efforts was to make Flynn believe that he was dealing with allies in an investigation, not that he was the subject of one.
With these admissions, Mueller has essentially painted a picture whereby the FBI created an environment by which Flynn would be induced into committing a crime he would not otherwise have committed; the very definition of entrapment.
With this information, it is very likely that, should this have gone to trial, it would have been thrown out because of entrapment of the defendant and due to the FBI’s advice to Flynn against obtaining legal counsel. Instead, the case was pleaded out by a defendant who was on the verge of bankruptcy from the mammoth legal defense bills he had incurred and whose son was being threatened with prosecution should he not submit to the FBI’s demands.
This story reveals one of the grossest displays of reckless disregard for prosecutorial restraint and for the rights of the defendant imaginable. With any luck, Judge Sullivan will see the brazen unprofessionalism displayed by McCabe, Comey and Mueller and bring some semblance of justice to the negatively impacted life of a man who is nothing short of a great American hero.
aka....Comey should have kept is mouth shut....”I wouldn’t have gotten away with it”....
From my vantage point, here's the dilemma in this case as I see it:
1. If Flynn were to fight this case, he would most likely win -- maybe even win so big that the FBI and Mueller's team would be cited for prosecutorial misconduct.
2. If Flynn were to fight this case, Mueller's team would simply drop the charges for lying (since they can't present any of the evidence of his lying -- from the Kislyak wiretaps -- in a court of law).
3. Instead, Flynn would be prosecuted for the more serious Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) violations.
Any Freepers have any insight on this? If you're a lawyer representing a client in Flynn's position, how would you go about dealing with this dilemma?
“The shock associated with the defeat led to a zealous effort to identify and understand the extent and machinations of this interference and to discover whether the Trump campaign was in any way involved”
Bunk. They knew damn well Trump and his people weren’t involved. How could they be? They were the ones who started the hoax in the first place in the summer with the Steele fabrication.
You are absolutely correct about the illicit FISA warrant and associated surveillance.
The Flynn case, on the other hand, is built on legitimate surveillance of Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Flynn's communications with Kislyak had nothing to do with FISA warrants. There is no FISA warrant needed to intercept communications of a foreign diplomat.
So, basically he was under investigation, they didn’t let him know that he was under investigation, they didn’t advise him of his Miranda Warnings and they interviewed him, under those circumstances anyway. Hmmmmmmm..... in REAL law enforcement investigations this is called, The Fruit From The Poisonous Tree. And everything obtained from it should be tossed. But, this is the FBI(Famous But Incompetent) and the DOJ at its most corrupt, so none of those rules matter.
However, the General should have been smarter than to talk to a bunch of flat foot FBI weenies who didn’t have the clearance to know what he knew and did.
That’s true, just taking issue with the notion that the Clinton campaign and the Obama government had any real “concern” over “Russian involvement”. They knew there wasn’t any and all they were trying to do was take ordinary situations and exaggerate them into something they were not: like the incoming NSA having an offhand talk with an ambassador, which is an ordinary event. And one that the FBI is almost never invited to or involved in.
And I'm sure Comey NEVER expected Flynn to opt out....even temporarily....which is why Comey confessed to "I wouldn't have gotten away with it"....
Is Comey due back before Congress for another amnesia session?
Bump!
They treated Flynn like he was a subject of investigation (which the FBI clearly knew he was because they already had surveillance information on him, the ‘transcripts’). Clearly the FBI engaged in illegal conduct.
FBI could not get away with this with even a mafia suspect.
What a mess. Praying for Flynn. This is so unfair.
And he should have disclosed that he was working as an agent for another county. It is somewhat a shame that conservatives forget this detail....but it is a pretty big deal.
That said, Comey/McCabe and the rest of the traitors working for Obama should be facing a firing squad.
Good article. I will keep my fingers crossed that larger forces are in play and that in the end, Gen. Flynn will be 100% vindicated.
Mueller must have known about the compromised interview of Flynn from the beginning. He knew Flynn had been advised against having legal representation. He knew the FBI deliberately withheld the warning about the legal consequences of lying to the FBI, yet he still pursued this case against Flynn. I don’t understand how any competent, or ethical lawyer/prosecutor could, in good faith, move ahead with charges against an American citizen when any evidence gleaned from that person was based on the failure of the FBI to follow standard protocol. Thus, the so-called evidence itself is compromised because the way the interview was obtained, and the methods used were inappropriate, and not standard procedure of the FBI. The fact that FBI officials argued about how the interview was handled is proof of that.
You don't expect a crowd that's the same as back-shooting Taliban Muzzies to be disguised as American fibbie agents...
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?
Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?...
The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...
We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation....
"We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
Shades of Richard Jewell?
“As part of another investigation, we’d like you to read this script admitting to planting a bomb”.
I remember the Jewell case....he died young...
What put Flynn on the FBI's radar with regard to Kislyak were his text and cell phone conversations with Kislyak -- which were intercepted by U.S. intelligence as is routinely done with foreign officials -- while Flynn was vacationing in the Dominican Republic.
I'm no expert in U.S. intelligence matters, but I'd presume that conducting cell phone and text communications with a foreign official while I'm on vacation in a Third World sh!t-hole is probably the dumbest thing I could possibly do.
I suggest we set the FBI to the same standards as other law enforcement agencies.
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