One would have to be totally oblivious to the realities and fact to not see that General Flynn was intentionally targeted, with the objective of taking him down............not with letting actual crimes determine where the investigation would go(there were none before they got a hold of him) but actually creating the crimes with the investigation.
Entrapping him with a set up to get him to lie about something(in an environment that misled him about legal counsel), then prosecute him for lying to them. Did he lie about a crime? No. But they got him to lie and used it to prosecute him.
"The documents, unsealed late Wednesday, revealed that top FBI officials openly questioned if their “goal” was “to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired.”
The handwritten notes -- written by the FBI’s former head of counterintelligence Bill Priestap after a meeting with then-FBI Director James Comey and then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Fox News is told -- further suggested that agents planned in the alternative to get Flynn “to admit to breaking the Logan Act” when he spoke to Kislyak during the presidential transition period.
The Logan Act is an obscure statute that has never been used in a criminal prosecution; enacted in 1799 in an era before telephones, it was intended to prevent individuals from falsely claiming to represent the United States government abroad.
"What is our goal?" one of the notes read. "Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?”
"If we get him to admit to breaking the Logan Act, give facts to DOJ + have them decide," another note read. Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University called the document's implications “chilling."
Right on cue, the MSM came out to mislead us about what really happened and twist the narrative to use against Trump.........instead of wanting justice for this poor guy who devoted 3 decades of his life to this country with an impeccable record..........until he became a political target.
Trump claims they’re a “total exoneration” for his former top adviser. They aren’t.
metmike: They show blatantly unethical behavior by those deciding to go after him.
Trumps threatening tweet that earned the headline for this story:
“@CNN doesn’t want to speak about their persecution of General Michael Flynn & why they got the story so wrong,” Trump tweeted. “They, along with others, should pay a big price for what they have purposely done to this man & his family.”
“They won’t even cover the big breaking news about this scam!” he added."
metmike: So now, instead of covering what is really important.......the facts about this interview and the unethical/unprofessional conduct of those involved, we are turning it into a "Trump threatens CNN" narrative.
Published
Asked to describe how two FBI agents ended up at the White House to interview Flynn in January 2017, Comey, speaking to MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace during a forum discussion Sunday, said flatly: “I sent them.”
JUDGE IN FLYNN CASE ORDERS MUELLER TO TURN OVER INTERVIEW DOCS AFTER BOMBSHELL CLAIM OF FBI PRESSURE
Comey went on to acknowledge the way the interview was set up – not through the White House counsel’s office, but arranged directly with Flynn – was not standard practice. He called it “something I probably wouldn't have done or maybe gotten away with in a more … organized administration.”
Describing how it is usually done, Comey said, “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 and who would be there.”
Recalling his decision to bypass those steps, Comey said, “I thought: ‘It’s early enough, let’s just send a couple guys over.’”
metmike: In other words, they entrapped him/set him up without the legal councel that would have been present for anybody else in this situation.
I admit to being biased towards Dershowitz......but it's because he nails so many good points.............and he was wrong initially in stating that he didn't think that Flynn had committed a crime here.
ALAN DERSHOWITZ: I've read the indictment. It's a typical Mueller indictment. Very, very heavy on stories, stories involving collusion and WikiLeaks but the indictment itself all relates to obstruction of justice, tampering of witnesses. In other words, crimes that occurred as a result of the investigation.
This is typical of Mueller. He has found almost no crimes that occurred before he was appointed special counsel. He was appointed special counsel to uncover crimes that had already occurred. He has virtually failed in that respect in every regard."
metmike: Perfect example here with Flynn, of a crime committed by the investigation that was not a crime before the uniquely set up interview.
C'mon. Let's be fair and just and stop making this poor guy suffer any more. The sad thing is that its turned into one political side against the other and winning the political battle is paramount............above justice.
The only reason to have Trump constanly in the headlines on this is exactly for this.......connect it with Trump and make it look like he's protecting the guy because Flynn is a republican associated with Trump.
It looks as if the docs unsealed in court will prove Flynn innocent
If he wins with his lawyer presenting strong evidence of entrapment, then what
I looked it up and can find no evidence of punishment for those who tried to entrap Flynn except most were fired
In my book, being fired is not enough. These people, all at a high level were biased to remove Trump and Flynn was just a pawn
His life is ruined and I hope he can sue in civil court
But 1st he has to win his present court case
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/496640-justice-drops-case-against-flynn
The DOJ said in a court filing Thursday that it no longer believed it could make a case against the former three-star Army general.
"The Government is not persuaded that the January 24, 2017 interview was conducted with a legitimate investigative basis and therefore does not believe Mr. Flynn’s statements were material even if untrue," the department said in its motion. "Moreover, we do not believe that the Government can prove either the relevant false statements or their materiality beyond a reasonable doubt."
Jeffrey Jensen, the U.S. Attorney in St. Louis who Attorney General William Barr had tapped to review Flynn's case, said he had recommended dropping the charges.
“Through the course of my review of General Flynn’s case, I concluded the proper and just course was to dismiss the case," Jensen said in a statement. "I briefed Attorney General Barr on my findings, advised him on these conclusions, and he agreed.”
Flynn's attorney did not immediately respond when asked for comment. His legal team had been accusing the government for months of malfeasance in its investigation and of entrapping Flynn during his interrogation.
The DOJ said that it believed the FBI investigation into Flynn had been conducted improperly after uncovering new internal bureau communications.
According to those records, the FBI had initially moved to close the investigation in 2016 after finding a lack of evidence, but the bureau neglected to approve the move, allowing agents to probe Flynn's conversations with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian diplomat.
The filing submitted Thursday also notes that FBI officials had expressed doubt about whether they believed Flynn had lied during his interview.
Just before the department moved to drop the case Thursday, one of the prosecutors abruptly withdrew from the case with a one-sentence court filing.
The developments come amid Trump's recent public attacks on the case against his former national security adviser.
"What happened to General Michael Flynn, a war hero, should never be allowed to happen to a citizen of the United States again!" the president tweeted last week.
The case has become a flashpoint between the president and Democrats who have pushed for investigations into his administration. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, called the move to drop the case "outrageous" and promised to bring Barr to testify before his panel soon."
READ THE DOJ'S MOTION TO DISMISS W/ EXHIBITS
"The Justice Department on Thursday moved to drop its case against Flynn, in a stunning development coming after internal memos were released raising serious questions about the nature of the investigation that led to Flynn’s late 2017 guilty plea of lying to the FBI as his legal fees mounted. One of the documents was a top official's handwritten memo debating whether the FBI's "goal" was "to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired"; other materials showed efforts by anti-Trump ex-FBI agent Peter Strzok to pursue Flynn on increasingly flimsy legal grounds.
The FBI possessed word-for-word transcripts of Flynn's December 2016 conversations with Kislyak, and publicly admittedto reviewing those transcripts and clearing Flynn of any wrongdoing.
Both during and before the January 24, 2017 White House interview that led to Flynn's prosecution for one count of lying to the FBI, the bureau acknowledged having those full transcripts, raising the question of why agents would need to ask Flynn about what he said during the calls with Kislyak, except potentially as a pretext to obtain a false statements charge.
Flynn was accused specifically of giving equivocal and evasive answers to FBI agents in the White House during a casual interview concerning those phone calls, but no transcript of the conversation exists. Instead, after-the-fact FBI notes of the interview with Strzok and Joe Pientka were the primary evidence."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/07/politics/michael-flynn-prosecution/index.html
"In its filing, the Justice Department condemned the FBI's work when it interviewed Flynn in the West Wing in the first weeks of the Trump presidency. The FBI's Flynn investigation was already going to be closed, they wrote, when the FBI learned of Flynn's calls with Kislyak before deciding it wanted to interview him.
"After a considered review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including newly discovered and disclosed information appended to the defendant's supplemental pleadings, the Government has concluded that the interview of Mr. Flynn was untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn -- a no longer justifiably predicated investigation that the FBI had, in the Bureau's own words, prepared to close because it had yielded an 'absence of any derogatory information,'" DC US Attorney Timothy Shea wrote in the filing.
The Justice Department also said it can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Flynn lied, nor that his lies were substantial.
"The Government is not persuaded that the January 24, 2017 interview was conducted with a legitimate investigative basis and therefore does not believe Mr. Flynn's statements were material even if untrue. Moreover, we (do) not believe that the Government can prove either the relevant false statements or their materiality beyond a reasonable doubt," the filing states."