The news Friday that the Department of Justice had decided not to charge former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe got me thinking once again about the legend chiseled into the façade of the Supreme Court: “Equal Justice Under Law.”
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Attorney General William Barr has reportedly assigned a prosecutor to review the criminal case against General Michael Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser.
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Former national security adviser Michael Flynn filed a court motion Tuesday seeking to withdraw his guilty plea in a case that originated with the special counsel’s investigation.
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The whistleblower, speaking to internal investigators, pulled no punches in his assessment of the government’s mishandling of the war in Afghanistan.
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Federal prosecutors said Monday that Michael Flynn should serve up to six months in prison for lying to the FBI, a stark reversal from late 2018, when the government said that the former national security adviser should serve no jail time because he provided “substantial assistance” in multiple investigations.
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A federal judge on Monday scheduled Michael Flynn to face sentencing on Jan. 28 in a case stemming from the special counsel’s probe, while rejecting the former national security adviser’s allegations that he was entrapped by the FBI and forced into entering a plea deal.
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Former national security advisor Michael Flynn’s attorney said in a court filing Thursday that the case against her client should be dismissed “for outrageous government misconduct” and that the court should “issue an order to show cause why the prosecutors should not be held in contempt.”
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Michael Flynn’s lawyers want a federal judge to force prosecutors to turn over 40 categories of documents they say will vindicate the former national security adviser, according to a court filing released Wednesday.
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An attorney for Michael Flynn said in federal court Tuesday she may seek a dismissal of charges against the former national security adviser, citing “egregious conduct and suppression” of exculpatory information in the case.
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by Chuck Ross The FBI was investigating Michael Flynn’s possible relationship with the Russian government much earlier than previously known, the special counsel’s report revealed. Flynn, who served as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, was also under investigation for four separate sets of allegations, says the report, which was released Thursday. It was already known that Flynn was under investigation over phone calls he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in late December 2016, during the presidential transition period. Flynn pleaded guilty in the special counsel’s investigation on Dec. 1, 2017 for making false statements about those phone calls. But special counsel Robert Mueller’s report reveals for the first time that Flynn was a target of the FBI’s Russia probe before the Kislyak calls. “Previously, the FBI had opened an investigation of Flynn based on his relationship with the Russian government,” reads the report, which cited FBI interviews given by former Justice Department official Mary McCord and former FBI Director James Comey. “Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak became a key component of that investigation,” it said. It is unclear what would have prompted scrutiny of Flynn’s ties to Russia prior to his Kislyak calls. Flynn was reportedly one of…
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by Adam Mill Donald Trump, we are told over and over and over again, threatens the “rule of law.” To pick a piece at random, I note that Joel Mathis of The Week recently wrote, “When we talk about Trump and the rule of law, mostly we talk about how he’s flouting and evading the constraint of laws he doesn’t like: His newly declared state of emergency to circumvent Congress’ refusal to appropriate funds for a Mexican border wall is just the best recent example.” You don’t have to take my word for the absurdity of this claim that the emergency declaration flouts the rule of law; read the New York Times: Trump has, at a minimum, a colorable legal claim for this emergency declaration. In the Mathis example, as in most of these cases, the “violation” generally amounts to a policy difference or the departure from a “norm” like the one used to buck presidential oversight of powerful federal agencies. The suffocating sanctimoniousness of the “Trump-is-threatening-the-rule-of-law” crowd is exceeded only by their hypocrisy. Don’t believe me? Here is a list of 18 actual violations of the law and Constitution done in service of removing Trump from office. I’ll bet you can’t find a single objection from any of these “rule-of-law” hand wringers to these flagrant and unpunished transgressions…
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by Victor Davis Hanson Certainly, no one should defend a top-ranking federal employee’s lying to federal investigators or to his superiors in the Trump Administration, if that is what former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn did, as evidenced by his own confession. Note if Flynn lied to President Trump or Vice President Mike Pence about details of his private conversations, then that is unethical and understandably should be grounds for dismissal. The distinction, however, is whether Flynn deserved to be fired or to be in jail. What put Flynn in legal jeopardy were the general’s statements to FBI investigators that purportedly were false, and allegedly given deliberately to mislead two federal investigators. I express doubt here only because of media reports and leaks that Special Counsel Robert Mueller later either pressured Flynn for a confession, by strategies of financial exhaustion or leveraged him by threats to indict his son, or both. Without that pressure, one wonders how Flynn might have explained his earlier alleged inconsistencies in recounting a private off the record conversation with a foreign diplomatic official to two FBI officials. That is, had he had adequate legal resources or not faced prosecutorial threats to indict his son,…
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A U.S. judge in Washington on Tuesday sternly rebuked President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, for lying to investigators about his contacts with Russia in the weeks before Trump assumed power in early 2017, but delayed his sentencing. “I can’t hide my disgust, my disdain,” U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said of Flynn’s behavior, before later acceding to a request by Flynn’s lawyers to postpone his sentencing. Flynn acknowledged to Sullivan, “I was aware,” that it was a crime to lie to interrogators when they asked him about his discussions with Russia’s then-ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak. The judge told Flynn that his offense was “very serious” and that “arguably, you sold your country out.” Special counsel Robert Mueller had recommended the 60-year-old Flynn, a retired Army general and once head of the country’s Defense Intelligence Agency, not be sentenced to any prison time because he had provided “substantial” cooperation with prosecutors in their ongoing 19-month investigation of Trump 2016 campaign links with Russia and whether, as president, Trump obstructed justice by trying to thwart the probe. But Sullivan said he could not guarantee that Flynn will avoid a prison term when he is eventually sentenced, sometime…
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by Julie Kelly For those concerned that former FBI Director James Comey is suffering from early dementia, have no fear: His memory returned with a vengeance during a Sunday night interview with MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace. On Friday, under questioning by House Judiciary Committee members, Comey answered, “I don’t know,” “I don’t recall,” or “I don’t remember” nearly 250 times during a six-hour closed-door hearing. His memory lapse included critical details like how the infamous Steele dossier reached his agency; who at the FBI drafted the initiation document to investigate the Trump campaign; who at the FBI had authority to open a counterintelligence probe into a presidential campaign; and his own comments about the tarmac meeting between his boss, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and former president Bill Clinton. He said he didn’t know what the word “insidious” meant and couldn’t explain the difference between collusion and conspiracy. But perhaps Comey loaded up on ginseng over the weekend because his vague and convenient memory miraculously returned when he was questioned by a fawning Wallace at a 92nd Street Y event just two days later. Tiny details about dates, locations, meeting participants and a funny moment during a briefing with President…
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by Chuck Ross The FBI investigated former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe in March 2017 for an alleged unauthorized leak to the media regarding former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and President Donald Trump, according to documents released Monday. The alleged leak, which has not previously been reported, occurred in early February 2017, shortly before Flynn was fired as national security advisor for lying about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador. According to the FBI documents, the FBI’s office of public affairs received a complaint “regarding a media leak involving a statement overheard in early February 2017.” “Specifically, the alleged comments were made by DD A. G. McCabe and pertained to General Michael T. Flynn and the POTUS,” reads the FBI document, which the bureau released as part of a trove of documents related to an internal investigation of McCabe. The investigation, which was into the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information, appears to have been opened on March 20, 2017. The FBI became aware of the complaint on Feb. 21, 2017, reads the document, which was prepared by the FBI’s internal investigations section. The documents do not reveal the nature of the information that McCabe allegedly leaked or what determination the FBI made. McCabe,…
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by Robert Romano Whatever case Special Counsel Robert Mueller intends on bringing against President Donald Trump, it does not look like it will be a collusion-with-Russia case. So far, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has not brought a case against anybody from the 2016 Trump campaign for assisting Russia with hacking the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and John Podesta emails and putting them on Wikileaks. That is the crime that Mueller was tasked by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosensteinwith investigating on May 17, 2017: “a full and thorough investigation of the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election” and “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.” In short, that Russia hacked the Democrats, put the emails on Wikileaks, and Trump helped, or so the allegation goes. No collusion Since that time, Mueller has brought two cases on election interference by Russia, for purchasing Facebook ads, and to be certain, for hacking the DNC and Podesta emailsand putting them on Wikileaks. But nobody from the Trump campaign is named in those indictments. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, in announcing each of these indictments, took great pains to remind everyone that neither…
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President Donald Trump claimed Sunday that newly released documents about the origins of an investigation of a former adviser’s links to Russia help vindicate his claim that U.S. government investigators were spying on his 2016 election campaign. He contended in Twitter remarks that “as usual,” the documents “are ridiculously heavily redacted but confirm with little doubt that the Department of ‘Justice’ and FBI misled the courts. Witch Hunt Rigged, a Scam!” Congratulations to @JudicialWatch and @TomFitton on being successful in getting the Carter Page FISA documents. As usual they are ridiculously heavily redacted but confirm with little doubt that the Department of “Justice” and FBI misled the courts. Witch Hunt Rigged, a Scam! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2018 It was not immediately clear how Trump felt the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was misled in the government’s four applications in 2016, and last year after Trump took office, to wiretap Carter Page, his one-time aide. Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a 2016 opponent of Trump’s, told CNN that he did not think the Federal Bureau of Investigation “did anything wrong” in surveilling Page. The FBI said in the first application in October 2016 that it “believes Page has been…
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Former Trump National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn pled guilty to providing false information to FBI agent in December and the more we learn about the events leading up to that plea, the more it stinks to high-heaven. Byron York’s recent article at the Washington Examiner reveals that then-FBI DIrector James Comey testified that the agents who conducted the interview of Flynn did not think he had lied to them.
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NBC News is reporting that Michael Flynn has resigned as President Trump’s National Security Adviser: Michael Flynn abruptly resigned as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser Monday night, hours after it was learned that the Justice Department informed the White House that it believed he could be subject to blackmail. Retired Army Gen. Keith Kellogg, a top policy adviser for Trump’s presidential campaign, was appointed acting national security adviser, the White House said in a statement announcing Flynn’s replacement. Kellogg, 72, a former commander of the fabled 82nd Airborne Division, was chief operating officer of the Western coalition in Baghdad, Iraq, after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. A senior administration official told NBC News that Kellogg was under consideration for the permanent job, along with retired Navy Vice Adm. Robert Harward, former deputy commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command, and former CIA Director David Petraeus.
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