President Trump’s short-tenured national security advisor, Mike Flynn, is under fire from Democrats. They want him prosecuted, and they want it now. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called for an “independent investigation” into Flynn on Tuesday, and Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., suggested that a special prosecutor should be appointed. The two are calling Flynn’s phone calls with the Russian ambassador to the United States a “national security issue.”
Appointing a special prosecutor to handle the Flynn case would be absurd, not to mention quite hypocritical for Democrats. Since Schumer made no similar call for an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s errors that led to national security threats, it’s obvious his call for an investigation into Flynn has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with party politics.
Schumer and Merkley are on a witch hunt, and Flynn is a suitable witch.
They hope an investigation into Flynn will dig up dirt on Trump’s ties with Russia, which is unlikely. Whatever ties Trump may have had with Russian officials were unrelated to Flynn’s call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
If Democrats want national security to be a top priority, they can demand investigations. But that starts with Clinton. She committed significant crimes over a much longer time period. To this day, we still don’t know how much damage she did to our national security.
If Schumer doesn’t think Attorney General Jeff Sessions can be impartial, then he should have said the same thing about former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who had a one-on-one meeting with former President Bill Clinton while investigating his wife.
Sessions said if he was the attorney general on her case, she would have been in jail by now. She violated three laws, including the 2009 Federal Records Act, the Freedom of Information Act, and mishandled classified information. Schumer made no peep then, but now he wants to prosecute Flynn.
There’s no reason to think Flynn has anything to hide, so the Trump administration has no reason to shy away from an investigation. But there is still much to lose.
A Flynn investigation would be all about finding a scapegoat, be tedious for everyone involved and a waste of taxpayer money.
Special prosecutors are tasked with finding corruption and they fail if they don’t. The Scooter Libby investigation of 2005 shows us just how deep the rabbit hole can go. They sift through mountains of data looking for a crime.
If a special prosecutor interviews 100 people and finds evidence of any crime, even one unrelated to what prompted the original investigation, it could result in a multi-year investigation and trial.
An investigation into Flynn would not benefit our country, it will only raise tensions and politicize justice. The country can afford neither.
But if Democrats are so intent on a witch hunt against Flynn, let’s give it to them — so long as Clinton is hunted too.
Pardes Seleh is the contributors editor for Red Alert Politics (a sister publication to the Washington Examiner).
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