The Curious Michael Flynn Guilty Plea

Loading

Back in early December, Trump fans started throwing stuff at me for suggesting that we await more information about FBI agent Peter Strzok before demanding that he be drawn and quartered.

Yes, it was clear that Strzok engaged in serious misconduct: The married G-man’s reported extramarital affair with his married FBI colleague Lisa Page was scandalous not only for the obvious reasons but as potential blackmail material against counterintelligence agents. Plus, Strzok appears to have been the main investigator in the Hillary Clinton emails case that the FBI and Justice Department bent over backwards not to prosecute; and there is reason to believe his rabidly anti-Trump text messages with his paramour crossed the line from arrogant political banter to unprofessional investigative decision-making.



But there were dissonant notes, too, cutting against the neat ditty about a high-ranking government agent acting on a corrupt partisan agenda. For one thing, I was hearing from people with good national-security credentials that Strzok was a highly effective counterintelligence agent.

And then there was Mike Flynn.

The first revelations about Strzok’s texts came only days after General Flynn, who had fleetingly served as President Trump’s first national-security adviser, pled guilty in the Mueller investigation to a charge of lying to FBI investigators. Strzok had conducted the interview with Flynn. Combine that with the fact that he had been a principal in all the important FBI interviews in the Clinton caper, and the presumption crystalized: Political hack Strzok went kid-gloves on the Hillary Gang and scorched-earth on Trump World.

That’s not reality, though. Here’s how I recounted what actually happened in the December column:

Strzok did not decide on his own to interview Flynn. We know the matter was being monitored at the highest level of the Justice Department, by then–acting attorney general Sally Yates and then–FBI director James Comey. Strzok and a colleague were assigned to interview Flynn. More importantly, Strzok apparently reported that he believed Flynn had been truthful. Shortly after the interview occurred, it was reported that the FBI had decided no action would be taken against Flynn. On March 2, Comey testified to a closed session of the House Intelligence Committee that, while Flynn may have had some honest failures of recollection during the interview, the agents who questioned him concluded that he did not lie.

Far from setting Flynn up, it seems that Strzok would exculpate him. Flynn was prosecuted not because Strzok is an anti-Trump zealot, but apparently because Strzok’s finding that Flynn was truthful was negated by Mueller’s very aggressive prosecutors. Did they decide they knew better than the experienced investigators who were in the room observing Flynn’s demeanor as he answered their questions?

Of course, the point is moot now because Flynn has admitted his guilt. Still, I wonder whether Mueller’s team informed Flynn and his counsel, prior to Flynn’s guilty plea to lying to the FBI, that the interviewing agents believed he had not lied to the FBI.

I still wonder what Mueller’s team told Flynn before the guilty plea. There are good reasons to do so.

Flynn’s case is back in the news thanks to Byron York’s important Washington Examiner report yesterday. He retraces the history: Because Flynn was a Trump transition official and incoming national-security adviser, there was nothing at all inappropriate about his discussing Obama-imposed sanctions against Russia with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Nevertheless, then–acting attorney general and Obama partisan Sally Yates seriously considered prosecuting Flynn under the absurd, never-invoked Logan Act. This misconception that Flynn had done something wrong led Yates and Comey to have Flynn interviewed as if he were a criminal suspect. Apparently unconcerned, Flynn agreed to be interviewed without counsel. Strzok came away from the session believing that Flynn had told the truth. Comey, Byron York reports, “told lawmakers that the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn did not believe that Flynn had lied to them, or that any inaccuracies in his answers were intentional.”

Yet, ten months later, with Yates, Comey, and Strzok now out of the picture, Mueller decided to charge Flynn with lying to the FBI anyway. And Flynn decided to plead guilty — perhaps because he was guilty . . . or perhaps because he lacked the resources to sustain the legal fight . . . or perhaps because he feared Mueller’s team would otherwise prosecute his son.

There are a few other oddities about the case.

After Flynn pled guilty, I argued that this showed Mueller did not have a collusion case. If he did, he would have forced Flynn to plead guilty to some kind of criminal conspiracy involving the Trump campaign and Russia, and had Flynn implicate his Trump World coconspirators in the course of allocuting in court. Instead, Flynn pled out to a mere process crime, giving Mueller a scalp but not much else.

The judge who accepted Flynn’s guilty plea was Rudolph Contreras. Mysteriously, just days after taking Flynn’s plea, Judge Contreras recused himself from the case. The press has been remarkably uncurious about this development. No rationale for the recusal has been offered, no explanation for why, if Judge Contreras had some sort of conflict, the recusal came after the guilty plea, not before.

Read more

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
1 Comment
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Mysteriously, just days after taking Flynn’s plea, Judge Contreras recused himself from the case. The press has been remarkably uncurious about this development. No rationale for the recusal has been offered, no explanation for why, if Judge Contreras had some sort of conflict, the recusal came after the guilty plea, not before.

The leftist media is only curious about that which can promote the liberal agenda. They are not in the business of protecting rights or justice.

No doubt whatever means Mueller used to extract a guilty plea to something Flynn did not do, you can bet it was honorable. Because, we are constantly reminded how honorable Mueller is.