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SPECIAL MICHAEL FLYNN VINDICATION EDITION: It’s impossible to know where the Flynn case will go in light of newly disclosed evidence of FBI malfeasance. What does Judge Emmet Sullivan — who once suggested Flynn betrayed his country and has taken a hard line stance toward some of Flynn’s arguments — do now?
We already knew that the FBI investigated Flynn in 2016. Now we know they used “confidential human sources” to search for evidence that Flynn, a top Trump campaign adviser, somehow colluded with the Russians to fix the presidential election. It all came to nothing, and now we learn that in early January 2017, the FBI decided to close the investigation. It would have been over. But at that very moment, top bureau officials intervened to kept the probe going. They came up with the pretext of a Logan Act violation to question Flynn in the White House on January 24, 2017 — just four days into the new Trump administration. They didn’t get much; in March, the FBI’s then-director, James Comey, told Congress that the agents who questioned Flynn — to whom the bureau had given the codename CROSSFIRE RAZOR — did not think he had lied and that he, Comey, did not expect any charges to be brought against Flynn.
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But then everything changed. The president fired Comey and a Trump-Russia special counsel, Robert Mueller, was appointed. Mueller’s prosecutors took the Flynn matter off the shelf. They played hardball with Flynn, pushing him to plead guilty to a charge of making false statements. The idea was to pressure Flynn into telling prosecutors everything he knew about Trump and collusion — which had not, of course, actually happened. Mueller never established collusion — officially referred to as “conspiracy or coordination” — between the Trump campaign and Russia. But he got Flynn’s scalp.
Now, Flynn has newly-released evidence on his side. And Judge Sullivan faces a choice. Should he go ahead with Flynn’s long-delayed sentencing? Does he grant Flynn’s request to withdraw his guilty plea? Does he throw out the case altogether?
Sullivan might stick to his old, tough line and sentence Flynn. Just because a lot of Republicans are excited about the Flynn revelations does not mean the judge has to change his position. If, however, Sullivan chooses to let Flynn withdraw his plea, that would toss the hot potato to the Justice Department, which would have to decide whether to try Flynn. Would they really want to go to trial with all the evidence of FBI dirty tricks? Or Sullivan could just wash his hands of it all and throw the case out altogether.
Meanwhile, some Republicans are having an I-told-you-so moment. “It’s what we suspected all along,” says one GOP lawmaker closely involved in the Flynn matter. “They [the FBI] were fighting us on getting those 302s every step of the way. This is a microcosm of their whole methodology. It’s entrapment.” (“302s” are the FBI’s written records of interviews, in this case the interview with Flynn.)
One last thing. On the one hand, the Flynn revelations are not getting a lot of media attention in the midst of the coronavirus crisis. On the other hand, they’re not just about Michael Flynn and Donald Trump any more. They’re also about Barack Obama and Joe Biden — after all, who was spying on the incoming national security adviser during the transition, and who was running the executive branch when the Flynn investigation was dropped and magically revived in a single day in January 2017? Now, the Republican lawmaker hopes more comes out — sooner rather than later. “This is pretty darn damaging,” he says. “I think the people deserve to know what was going on during the Obama-Biden administration — before the election.”
