Adventures in American Lunacy: Michael Flynn
Following a weekend during which President Trump posted over 100 tweets accusing former President Barack Obama of unspecified crimes that seem to have something to do with Michael Flynn, he was asked:
“Mr. President, in one of your Mother’s Day tweets, you appear to accuse President Obama of ‘the biggest political crime in American history, by far.’ … What crime, exactly, are you accusing President Obama of committing?”
President Trump quickly replied, “Obamagate,” before rambling on about vague “terrible things” that are apparently associated with “Obamagate.”
When the reporter followed up and asked the President to specify exactly what crime Obama had committed, Trump responded: “You know the crime. The crime is very obvious to everybody.”
And that was that. No details or specifics, just an incoherent exchange resulting from Donald Trump’s escalation from blaming Obama for just about everything, to accusing his predecessor of crimes that will apparently make “Watergate look small time.”
Trump’s sudden shift in focus from the COVID-19 pandemic to Obama may be little more than a distraction from his administration’s incompetent response to the pandemic and the subsequent economic fallout. However, there is a more cynical context in which to place current events. Trump has been trying to erase the very real history of Russian interference in the election that put him in office since, well, ever since he was elected to the office. These actions seem to be the next in a long line of attempts to void his own administration’s role in Russia’s interference, now crossing over into the dangerous territory of voiding actual crimes.
Or… Obama?
Let’s take a trip down memory lane, shall we?
After the election (and before, for those paying attention), it became clear that Russia was executing misinformation campaigns designed to sow discord between Americans and ultimately influence the presidential election in favor of Donald Trump (and before anyone loses their partisan minds, remember that it was Republicans on the intelligence committee who came to this conclusion — a conclusion that is now an accepted fact among every intelligence agency).
On December 29, 2016, the Obama Administration placed sanctions against Russia to punish them for their “election hacking” exploits.
But then something strange happened: Russia didn’t retaliate.
It is highly unusual for Russia to not retaliate or at least publicly refute American sanctions, so late in 2016, the Obama Administration engaged with U.S. intelligence agencies to try and understand why. The agencies reviewed conversations that were intercepted by routine monitoring of the Russians and discovered that, on the same day the sanctions were implemented, the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, had spoken with an American, and that this American was undermining U.S. foreign policy by telling the ambassador not to worry about the sanctions, because when Donald Trump takes office they would be dropped.
That American is Michael Flynn.
During the presidential transition of 2017, President Obama directly warned incoming President Trump about Michael Flynn’s behavior, and advised him not to hire Flynn. Trump didn’t listen and, on January 23, 2017, appointed Flynn as National Security Advisor. The FBI interviewed Flynn the very next day, during which they read transcripts of his calls with the Russian Ambassador — his own words. Flynn denied having said them. Not exactly entrapment — you can listen to the crime…
Three days later, on January 27, the acting Attorney General concluded that Flynn was “compromised,” possibly open to blackmail by the Russians, and that he had misled Pence and other administration officials about the nature of his conversation with the Russian ambassador. Media reports begin swirling that it was Michael Flynn who was “the American” who had been talking to the Russian Ambassador and undermining American policy.
On February 13, 2017, Flynn resigned as National Security Advisor. His 24-day tenure is the shortest in the 63-year history of the office.
The next day, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer informed the public: “We got to a point not based on a legal issue, but based on a trust issue, where a level of trust between the President and General Flynn had eroded to the point where he felt he had to make a change … The issue here was that the President got to the point where General Flynn’s relationship — misleading the Vice President and others, or the possibility that he had forgotten critical details of this important conversation had created a critical mass and an unsustainable situation. That’s why the President decided to ask for his resignation, and he got it.”
President Trump later stated that he “had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI”, noting that Flynn had “pled guilty to those lies.”
Vice President Pence stated that by the time Flynn departed the Trump administration, “I knew that he lied to me.” Pence also said that Trump “made the right decision” to remove Flynn.
Additional information about Flynn begins to surface about other crimes he had committed, including one in which he had represented the Turkish government as a foreign agent without registering as a foreign agent, then lying on forms that he filed afterwards — he would later admit to this crime under oath.
In December of 2017, Flynn seeks out and agrees to a plea bargain, by which he pleaded guilty to “willfully and knowingly” making “false, fictitious and fraudulent statements” to the FBI regarding conversations with Russia’s ambassador. Flynn’s guilty plea acknowledged that he was cooperating with the Mueller investigation, and it was accepted by the court.
A year later, in the middle of Trump’s impeachment hearings, Flynn’s lawyers introduce a new argument that FBI agents had tricked him into lying during the January 24, 2017 White House interview — when he was read an exact transcript of his own words from a recorded call… — and complained that the White House did not advise him that lying to federal agents is a felony.
Seriously. The former National Security Advisor to the United States was unaware that lying to federal agents under oath is a felony. That’s the argument.
Two days later on Twitter and Fox News, President Trump asserts: “They convinced him he did lie, and he made some kind of a deal.”
On February 5, 2020, days after refusing to accept any witnesses, the Senate acquits Donald Trump on the two counts for which he is impeached. A few days later, at the direction of attorney general William Barr, Flynn’s sentencing is postponed indefinitely to allow both sides to prepare arguments in response to Flynn’s claims.
These arguments are never formally made.
On May 7, 2020, Barr instructs the Department of Justice to drop all charges against Flynn, and President Trump begins to claim that Michael Flynn’s crimes were not crimes at all, but part of a conspiracy orchestrated by President Obama to take down the Trump administration: “Obamagate.”
Today, Trump tweeted: “Thank you to Fox & Friends for covering, supremely, the greatest political scandal in the history of the United States, OBAMAGATE. Fake News CNN and Concast’s own MSDNC are only trying to make their 3 year Con Job just go away. They are embarrassed and don’t know what to do….”
Ok…
What the…
JFC…
Given the unprecedented (and potentially criminal) nature of all this back in real life, the federal judge overseeing the case against Flynn has appointed a former prosecutor and judge to oppose the Justice Department’s effort to drop the case and to explore a perjury charge against Flynn. This is now being spun as part of the conspiracy — Trump is battling the “Deep State” after all, and what’s more Deep State than a corrupt judge? And through it all, Michael Flynn has found himself evolving from an admitted felon to Right Wing martyr and likely member of the Trump administration should Trump win a second term.
If any of the people peddling this easily-fact-checked-away conspiracy theory bullshit would talk to anyone outside of the Trump media bubble, e.g. Fox & Friends, this whole thing would fall apart. That’s what real reporting does and people who have truth on their side aren’t afraid of real reporting. Yet like a child screaming, “I know you are, but what am I?” the Right screams “fake news!” in the face of reality.
We are 6 months away from an election. In the last few weeks, Trump’s Attorney General has dropped charges against Trump’s long-time political advisor, Roger Stone, undone a guilty plea from Trump’s National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, and released Trump’s Presidential Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort from jail even though he meets none of the criteria required for low risk prisoners to be released from prison to avoid the coronavirus. Imagine what this administration’s corruption and disregard for the rule of law will look like when Trump isn’t reined in by the prospects of re-election.
We’re better than this.
-AN 🥃
