Tag Archives: General Michael Flynn

The Senate Should Focus On What The Flynn Transcripts Do Not Contain . . . Starting With A Crime, by Jonathan Turley

Posted on June 3, 2020 | 1 comment

The Flynn prosecution has been a travesty based on nonexistent evidence and the absence of an actual crime. From Jonathan Turley at jonathanturley.org:

440px-Michael_T_FlynnBelow is my column in The Hill newspaper on the new disclosures in the prosecution of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.  Yesterday, the attorney hired by Judge Emmet Sullivan responded on his behalf to defend his controversial orders in the case to invite third parties to argue the merits of the motion to dismiss as well as raising his option to substitute his own criminal charge of perjury against Flynn.  The Justice Department responded with a 45-page filing to a three-judge appeals court panel.

The attention will now focus on the appearance tomorrow of former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in the Senate.  For me, the most pertinent question is why this investigation continued past December and seemed to become to a search for a crime rather than the investigation of any crime or collusion with Russia.

Here is the column:

“Remember … Ambassador, you’re not talking to a diplomat, you’re talking to a soldier.” When President Trump’s incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn, said those words to then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, he also spoke to American intelligence agents listening in on the call. For three years, congressional Democrats have assured us Flynn’s calls to Kislyak were so disturbing that they set off alarms in the closing days of the Obama administration.

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The Unspooling, by James Howard Kunstler

Posted on May 25, 2020 | 1 comment

Way back in early 2017 when Trump fired Michael Flynn, SLL said the story had gaping “Plot Holes.” Now that Flynn is close to exoneration, he may fill in some of those holes. From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:

What “the Resistance” really fears more than anything is General Michael Flynn’s mouth. He’s been under a judicial gag order since his case went before Judge Emmet Sullivan’s federal district court. Understandably, Gen. Flynn wasn’t eager to complicate his unjust plight with a contempt citation. Judge Sullivan’s recent shenanigans have one object: to keep that gag order in force as long as possible. The moment Judge Sullivan confirms the DOJ’s move to dismiss the charges, as he is duty-bound to do, General Flynn will be free to offer his views to the public. That might be inconvenient in an election season.

I’m sure he has a lot to say. Gen. Flynn was head of the Defense Intelligence Agency for two years (2012 – 2014) under Barack Obama, and he knows a ton about every crooked operation Mr. Obama presided over, including the Benghazi fiasco, the Ukraine regime change op, and especially Mr. Obama’s hijacking of the NSA supercomputer surveillance database known as “the Hammer,” which was set up originally to track terrorists and then used by DNI James Clapper and CIA chief John Brennan to spy on Americans, most particularly Mr. Obama’s political adversaries. It’s rumored that Mr. Obama took the database with him when he left the White House, and it is said to contain great gouts of usefully damning information about just about everyone in government, including senators, congressmen, and Supreme Court justices.

Gen. Flynn became an antagonist to Obama & Co. when he objected to the nuclear deal they were cooking up with Iran and when he spoke out against the CIA’s 2013 Timber Sycamore op to arm and give money to Isis terrorists opposing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Mr. Obama canned Gen. Flynn in 2014. What really sealed Gen. Flynn’s fate was when he started publicly complaining about the politicization of John Brennan’s CIA. The New York Timesquoted him saying, “They’ve lost sight of who they actually work for. They work for the American people. They don’t work for the president of the United States. Frankly, it’s become a very political organization.”

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Get Flynn – Part 2, by Skinny

Posted on May 23, 2020 | Leave a comment

A detailed examination of the plot to railroad Michael Flynn and depose President Trump. From Skinny at theburningplatform.com:

In part 1 I looked at the background of the Mike Flynn case and why Obama wanted him nailed.  This picks up with the deep state efforts to entrap Flynn.

Mary McCord was the Principal Deputy Assistant General for the National Security Division (NSD).  Its quite the trick.  You combine education, law enforcement, administration, military, and security (not to mention a parenthetical) all in one attorney.  With a title like that, it’s easy to look down one’s nose at someone like Trump.  What’s he like the President-elect or something?  Big deal.

Mary was recruited into the Get Flynn conspiracy by FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe on January 3rd.  It turns out Mary was a stickler for taking notes but her ability to recall the meaning of those notes is somewhat lacking.  Throughout her July 17, 2017 interview with the Special Counsel’s Office we learn that “McCord could not recall,” or “McCord didn’t recall” the meaning of her notes.  We also learn that McCord learned about the existence of the Logan Act, from Bob Litt, an attorney at the Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).  That’s the deep state bureau run at the time by the unintelligent James Clapper.  Anyway, Mary made a note to look it up.  Once she did, she discovered the act was signed into law by John Adams in 1799.  She would also discover that in the laws 217 years of existence no one would ever be convicted of violating it.  No matter, when the President tells you to Get Flynn you get him any way you can.

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The Flynn Puzzle, by the Zman

Posted on May 21, 2020 | 1 comment

Why was the huge but groundless legal assault mounted against Michael Flynn? From the Zman at theburningplatform.com:

Imagine you are out and about and you come upon something that is so incongruous, you can’t help but take note of it. Maybe it is a car parked on the roof of an old barn or a cat chasing a horse around a field. The thing itself is not all that interesting, but its improbability or its incongruousness is what gets your attention. How is it possible that a horse is afraid of a cat? Why would someone put a car on a barn? The strangeness of the possible reasons is what draws your attention.

That’s what is happening with the General Flynn case. Originally, it looked like the same old political shenanigans we always see in Washington. The establishment wants a scalp to parade around so they find a patsy to frame for a minor crime. In the case of Flynn, the inner party needed some red meat for their crazies. Over time, it became clear that the FBI had framed him and the careerists in the system were working to prevent that reality from becoming explicit to the public.

At some point, it was too obvious to everyone to maintain the charade, so the information that was being hidden for three years was made public and the DOJ moved to dismiss the case. The people who conspired to frame Flynn were not being charged and the people who systematically concealed information from the courts for three years were not fired. Instead the whole thing would be made to go away. At some point, Flynn would be paid for his trouble and his silence.

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To Write Off “Obamagate” As Conspiracy Is Ignoring Well-Documented Reality, by Jon Hall

Posted on May 19, 2020 | 1 comment

Obama was up to his eyeballs in the conspiracy to depose Trump. From Jon Hall at fmshooter.com:

Between the 2016 election, Donald Trump’s historic upset win, and his inauguration in 2017, Michael Flynn – Trump’s then-National Security adviser – was unmasked nearly 50 times in foreign intelligence.

For comparison – in his entire career, even as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Flynn only requested once to have someone unmasked.

The FBI scrutinized and investigated Michael Flynn’s communications with Sergey Kislyak, who was ambassador to Russia and a target of U.S. surveillance.

Usually in foreign intel, any U.S. person is anonymously referred to in intelligence documents – being unmasked, however, means that Flynn was identified in Kislyak’s intercepted communications.

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Turn Out the Lights, Russiagate is Over, by Ray McGovern

Posted on May 19, 2020 | Leave a comment

It’s long past time to put Russiagate to bed. There never should have been a Russiagate. From Ray McGovern at consortiumnews.com:

The possibility that Trump will not chicken out this time, and rather will challenge the Security State looms large since he felt personally under attack.

Seldom mentioned among the motives behind the persistent drumming on alleged Russian interference was an over-arching need to help the Security State hide their tracks.

The need for a scapegoat to blame for Hillary Clinton’s snatching defeat out of the jaws victory also played a role; as did the need for the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MICIMATT) to keep front and center in the minds of Americans the alleged multifaceted threat coming from an “aggressive” Russia. (Recall that John McCain called the, now disproven, “Russian hacking” of the DNC emails an “act of war.”)

But that was then. This is now.

Though the corporate media is trying to bury it, the Russiagate narrative has in the past few weeks finally collapsed with the revelation that CrowdStrike had no evidence Russia took anything from the DNC servers and that the FBI set a perjury trap for Gen. Michael Flynn. There was already the previous government finding that there was no collusion between Trump and Russia and the indictment of a Russian troll farm that supposedly was destroying American democracy with $100,000 in Facebook ads was dropped after the St. Petersburg defendants sought discovery.

All that’s left is to discover how this all happened.

Attorney General William Barr, and U.S. Attorney John Durham, whom Barr commissioned to investigate this whole sordid mess seem intent on getting to the bottom of it. The possibility that Trump will not chicken out this time, and rather will challenge the Security State looms large since he felt personally under attack.

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Ghost of J. Edgar Haunts Flynn Investigation, by Coleen Rowley

Posted on May 19, 2020 | 1 comment

What the FBI did to Michael Flynn demands dismissal of the case. From Coleen Rowley at consortiumnews.com:

In this time of unprecedented political polarization, it’s disappointing but not surprising to see the Justice Department’s recent request to dismiss its prosecution of retired General Michael Flynn causing yet another media firestorm to swirl around Attorney General William Barr.

Obama Administration former officials, like the hyperventilating authors of this New York Times’ op-ed, “The Appalling Damage of Dropping the Michael Flynn Case,” go so far as to claim that dropping the case “embeds into official U.S. policy a shockingly extremist view of law enforcement as the enemy of the American people.”

In stark contrast, other former FBI agents, myself included, are appalled at Bureau and other “national security” officials’ numerous suspicious departures from standard FBI/Department of Justice policies that have finally been brought to light, marking this most bizarre investigation aimed at “get(ting) Flynn to lie.”

Flynn. (US Defense Dept.)

Flynn was asked to “a friendly chat” with the FBI on Jan. 24, 2017, for which he was told he would not need a lawyer present. The interview was part of the FBI’s Russiagate investigation, a purported scandal that has now all but totally collapsed.

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Taibbi: Democrats Have Abandoned Civil Liberties

Posted on May 19, 2020 | Leave a comment

A life-long Democrat bemoans what has happened to one of the Democratic party’s proudest traditions—upholding civil liberties. From Matt Taibbi at zerohedge.com:

Emmet G. Sullivan, the judge in the case of former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, is refusing to let William Barr’s Justice Department drop the charge. He’s even thinking of adding more, appointing a retired judge to ask “whether the Court should issue an Order to Show Cause why Mr. Flynn should not be held in criminal contempt for perjury.”

Pundits are cheering. A trio of former law enforcement and judicial officials saluted Sullivan in the Washington Post, chirping, “The Flynn case isn’t over until a judge says it’s over.” Yuppie icon Jeffrey Toobin of CNN and the New Yorker, one of the #Resistance crowd’s favored legal authorities, described Sullivan’s appointment of Judge John Gleeson as “brilliant.” MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner said Americans owe Sullivan a “debt of gratitude.”

One had to search far and wide to find a non-conservative legal analyst willing to say the obvious, i.e. that Sullivan’s decision was the kind of thing one would expect from a judge in Belarus. George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley was one of the few willing to say Sullivan’s move could “could create a threat of a judicial charge even when prosecutors agree with defendants.”

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Had Enough? by James Howard Kunstler

Posted on May 17, 2020 | Leave a comment

Imagine being charged with perjury because you pleaded guilty but were really innocent and you changed your plea. Welcome to Michael Flynn’s Alice-in-Wonderland case and judge. From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:

In this springtime of the corona virus, Fridays creep around like hooded sentinels of dread as America faces another weekend of social emptiness and vanishing prospects. The bars have opened back up in some quarters of the country, sure, but who has the spare cash to pay for three margaritas at ten bucks a pop? Anyway, who expects the government hand-outs to go on forever? And if they did, as in current Democratic Party theory, what kind of country would we be, and what kind of people?

Fridays are also the days when things drop ominously: stock indexes, releases of shocking information, indictments coming down. Which brings me to the recent antics of Judge Emmet G. Sullivan. What sort of mischief has this cheeky fellow cooked up in the drawn-out case of General Flynn? Why, to draw it out months further by demurring to grant the DOJ’s motion to dismiss and to take over its role as prosecutor, which is not exactly consistent with American workings of jurisprudence.

Last weekend, in a well-leaked conference call, it appears, Judge Sullivan took marching orders from former President Obama who suggested snaring General Flynn on a perjury rap for withdrawing his guilty plea, and whaddaya know, the stratagem laid itself out this past week like a fully-crafted macramé, all the little tufts and knots neatly in place ­— thanks to the busy little fingers of Lawfare attorneys burning the midnight oil all week to get the thing hoisted up on the wall. The tortured logic of the scheme was really something to behold: by withdrawing a guilty plea Flynn had entered under oath, he would be guilty of lying to the court about being guilty in the first place, and therefore had perjured himself. Imagine the interior of the legal minds responsible for that: dank chambers of rot crawling with centipedes and mealybugs of subterfuge.

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Judge Sullivan: A Prosecutor in Robes, by Alan M. Dershowitz

Posted on May 15, 2020 | 1 comment

If the two sides in a criminal case agree to drop the case, the judge doesn’t get to substitute a new prosecutor to prosecute the case. From Alan M. Dershowitz at gatestoneinstitute.org:

  • In the Flynn case, the prosecution and defense both agree that the case should be dropped. Because there is no longer any controversy between the parties to be resolved, there is no longer any case properly before the judge. His only job is to enter an order vacating the guilty plea and dismissing the case with prejudice.
  • Under our constitutional system of separation of powers, the new prosecutor has no standing…. the separation of powers…. allocates the power to prosecute to the executive not judicial branch.
  • It makes no constitutional difference that Flynn pleaded guilty — even if his plea was voluntary, which is questionable in light of the threats against his son.
  • The Justice Department has the constitutional authority to dismiss a prosecution that it has brought at any time and for any reason, without being second-guessed by the judicial branch.
  • [Sullivan] is endangering our system of separation of powers and he should be stopped by a writ of mandamus or a motion to recuse. Judges, too, are not above the law or the Constitution.
Judge Emmet Sullivan is exceeding his authority by turning his courtroom into a three-ring partisan circus, designed to allow him to get his way despite the agreement of the actual parties before him. Pictured: Michael Flynn, former National Security Advisor, departs the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse following a pre-sentencing hearing on July 10, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)

Judge Emmet Sullivan’s decision to appoint a retired federal judge to argue against the Justice Department’s entirely proper decision to end the criminal prosecution of General Michael Flynn is designed to circumvent the constitutional limitation on the jurisdiction of federal judges. The Constitution limits this jurisdiction to actual cases and controversies. There must be disagreement between the parties that requires resolution by a judge. If the parties agree, there is nothing for the judge to decide.

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