Just days after receiving a controversial pardon from President Trump, retired Gen. Michael Flynn showed some of the character defects that got him into hot water in the first place. Worse, he did it in a way dangerous for the republic, which makes it and him inexcusable. He should apologize and take a long, self-imposed hiatus from the public eye.
Specifically, Flynn approvingly retweeted a press release from a radical group calling for the Constitution to be “temporarily suspend[ed]” and a form of martial law enacted. It also threatens “to take matters into our own hands” if Trump does not order the military to conduct a new national election. Is that a threat of rebellion? Seriously?
The group also demanded that Trump “silence the destructive media’s one-sided propaganda” — not to try to counteract it with his arguments, mind you, but to “silence” it.
The proper attitude after receiving clemency is humility, but Flynn doesn’t seem to have any.
Flynn’s recent pardon came after he pleaded guilty (under duress) to lying to the FBI, but he clearly had danced near the edge of illegality while dissembling in several ways. Several elements of the Justice Department misbehaved while entrapping him, though, to the extent that Trump’s pardon quite arguably was justified. Remember, Flynn filed papers that improperly failed to list some of his foreign business dealings, he evaded questions from the FBI, and he lied to Vice President Mike Pence, among other ethical transgressions. He pleaded guilty but then changed his mind, tying the court system in knots.
Only by the grace of our great Constitution’s fail-safe provision of a presidential pardon did Flynn escape a stint in prison. Yet now, he has had the sheer gall to suggest that the same Constitution be “temporarily suspend[ed]” and a form of martial law be enacted.
This is beyond inappropriate. It is appalling and vile.
That’s a nice day’s work for the disgraced but pardoned general: Ask for military rule, and stifle the First Amendment freedom of the press. What next? Dismissal of Congress, perhaps, for the sin of failing to acknowledge Trump as supreme ruler? Elimination of jury trials for those whom Flynn’s cohorts deem to be “the enemies … within our gates?”
This press release is crazy talk. It is a deeply dangerous call for the breakdown of civil authority. It might not be treasonous, a word Trump flagrantly misuses, but it certainly is subversive.
Flynn, who is fortunate to be a free man again, swore an oath to defend the Constitution. For him to endorse this is for him to betray everything our military stands for. It is flat-out dishonorable.
