By Donald Jeffries
A few weeks ago, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it was dropping its case against former National Security Advisor Gen. Michael Flynn. This came in the wake of internal memos that demonstrated the dubious and prejudicial manner of the investigation. “After a considered review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including newly discovered and disclosed information,” DOJ officials deemed Flynn’s FBI interview “untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn . . . conducted without any legitimate investigative basis.”
The documents revealed that FBI agents had discussed how to “get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired,” which eventually resulted in Flynn pleading guilty of lying about his contacts with the then-Russian ambassador. Flynn, however, never admitted any wrongdoing. Government officials had been so desperate they even suggested invoking the Logan Act (designed to prevent individuals from falsely claiming to represent the United States government abroad), which despite being enacted in 1799 has never been successfully used in a criminal prosecution. The DOJ concluded, in dropping the charges, that it was “not persuaded that the Jan. 24, 2017 interview was conducted with a legitimate investigative basis and therefore does not believe Mr. Flynn’s statements were material even if untrue.” President Donald Trump responded by declaring, “He was an innocent man. . . . Now, in my book, he’s an even greater warrior.” The president also lashed out at Obama administration officials, calling them “human scum. . . . It’s treason.” Trump’s critics reacted just as strongly, with former FBI Director James Comey tweeting, “The DOJ has lost its way.” House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler termed the decision “outrageous.”
However, Gen. Flynn is not out of the woods yet. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan resisted the DOJ’s dismissal of the case. As classical liberal Jonathan Turley wrote in a May 18 column, “Sullivan decided to create a contested case by inviting in third parties to create a conflict and now is suggesting that he may substitute his own criminal charge rather than let Flynn walk free. . . . [T]his is fast becoming a case of gross judicial overreach as the court appears to assume both judicial and executive powers. Sullivan can disagree with the exercise of prosecutorial discretion, but he cannot substitute his own judgment for it.”
Turley called out our emotion-driven, politicized legal system for “asking a court to consider sending a man to prison after the Justice Department concluded it can no longer stand behind his prosecution. Under this same logic, any defendant could face public outrage over an unopposed motion to dismiss, and a court could invite third parties to make arguments against him. Rather than protecting an unpopular criminal defendant from those outside clamoring for his head, the court is inviting them inside to replace the prosecutors.”
Last December, at Flynn’s sentencing hearing, Sullivan’s bias was on full display. Admitting he couldn’t hide his “disgust” at Flynn, he charged, “Arguably, you sold your country out.” While Flynn was never charged with treason, Sullivan noted that he was “just curious” if the former national security advisor had committed it. Sullivan is involved in another related lawsuit, where Trump is being sued for allegedly violating the Constitution’s emoluments provision by accepting gifts related to his business interests. Sullivan was appointed to the District of Columbia’s U.S. District Court by Bill Clinton in 1994 but was actually first nominated to the Superior Court by Ronald Reagan 10 years earlier. On May 19, Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell filed an emergency writ of mandamus (an order for a government official to correct an abuse of discretion), seeking the immediate removal of Sullivan from the case. Powell argued, “Neither the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure nor the District Court’s local rules authorize amicus participation in criminal cases. Prior to issuance of its extraordinary May 12, 2020, order, the district judge adhered scrupulously to the District Court’s rules, denying some two dozen attempts by third parties to intervene or file amicus briefs in this very case.”
Powell explained Flynn’s guilty plea by saying, “Gen. Flynn could swear truthfully that he committed the acts constituting the crime with which he was charged—after all he had no duty to tell FBI line agents about missions he undertook in his capacity as security advisor to the president elect—but he had to accept on faith that the questions were ‘material’ to a legitimate criminal investigation, even though that was not made clear to him at the time. In truth, they were not. Because the government failed to disclose this information to the defense, Gen. Flynn had no way of knowing that it was false.”
Like the “Russiagate” fantasy, and the politicized prosecutions of Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, the judicial targeting of Flynn is an outrageous abuse and the antithesis of “justice.”
Donald Jeffries is a highly respected author and researcher whose work on the JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations and other high crimes of the Deep State has been read by millions of people across the world. Jeffries is also the author of three books currently being sold by the AFP Online Store.
How They Got Gen. Flynn to Plead Guilty
On Dec. 1, 2017, lawyers for Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn (ret.) told the court that the decorated senior military official and former national security advisor to President Donald Trump would be pleading guilty to “willfully and knowingly” making “false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements” to the FBI regarding conversations with Russia’s ambassador. Two years later, the Department of Justice announced it is dropping the case against Flynn now that the full extent of the FBI’s highly questionable tactics used to take down the retired general have seen the light of day.
As a result of work done by his new legal team, we now know that FBI agents and prosecutors sought to entrap Flynn for the perfectly legal phone call he made as an incoming official of the Trump administration.
There is more, though. It turns out U.S. prosecutors targeted his family, too. According to multiple reports, Flynn agreed to the deal with special prosecutor Robert Mueller after Mueller’s team had threatened to go after Flynn’s son, Michael Flynn Jr., for work the young man had done for his father’s lobbying firm.
The world of lobbying, especially when it comes to foreign countries, is often murky and can be subject to legal actions on the part of U.S. prosecutors if they are so inclined. Critics of Mueller have argued that the move targeting Flynn’s son was solely designed to provide leverage against the former general to force him to cooperate with the special prosecutor’s office.
The young man was not targeted because he did anything wrong. Prosecutors claimed they were looking at, among other things, a trip he and his father took to Moscow in December 2015 for the general to deliver a paid speech at a 10th anniversary celebration for Russian television network RT. They also went after him for work he and his father had done with Turkey.
Now that Flynn has hired new legal representation—and we know that there was zero evidence Trump officials ever conspired with the Russians to steal the 2016 election—we’ve learned the legal maneuver was just one of many sleazy and underhanded moves designed to pressure Flynn and destroy his family, his life savings, and his reputation.
This is the real crime in the Flynn case.
