Former Attorney Gen. Michael Mukasey said the guilty plea from former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn signals that perhaps there were no severe crimes committed by the Trump campaign.
In an interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Mukasey, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, said the plea, which was announced Friday by special investigator Robert Mueller, should tamp down speculations about collusion with Russia.
“What I made of it is a lot of the heavy breathing and a lot of the speculation is completely unwarranted,” he said. “That plea agreement does not, to me, indicate that there’s very much else there.”
Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with Russian officials during the transition period after the election.
Mukasey said such a plea does not appear to indicate a large collusion conspiracy.
He said in cases like Flynn’s, prosecutors “can make them plead guilty to participating in the same criminal conduct that you’re trying to prove against the other people you’re after, because that’s the most convincing evidence of the existence of the conspiracy.”
The White House has dismissed the charge against Flynn as “nothing.”
