I obviously don’t know if it’s true that Michael Flynn has flipped on Donald Trump, nor do I really know what evidence he could provide if he decided to spill the beans. But I have noticed that he’s gone completely quiet. I still see people like Roger Stone and Carter Page mouthing off on a regular basis, but Flynn seems to have vanished.
He faces the prospect of being charged with many of the same crimes that have been leveled against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, but he hasn’t been charged with anything so far unless those charges are under seal and we simply don’t know about them yet. That’s what happened with George Papadopoulos who was arrested at Washington-Dulles International Airport on July 27 and pled guilty on October 5th. We didn’t learn about any of that until the day before Halloween.
One thing to keep in mind is that Flynn was much more of a direct cause of the Russia investigation and the Special Counsel than Manafort. The FBI went to Trump almost as soon as he was inaugurated and told him that his National Security Adviser was a national security risk who was subject to Russian blackmail. He’s probably been the highest priority subject of the counterespionage and counterintelligence investigation from the beginning, both because of his former position as the Director of Defense Intelligence and because he was known to be buddying up to Vladimir Putin and communicating with the Russian ambassador. When Trump put him in charge of our national security, that was a bridge too far for the Intelligence Community, and they’d like to prove that their fears were justified.
So, for all these reasons, it was a little surprising to see Manafort charged before Flynn. And the explanation could be as simple as the fact that Manafort wouldn’t cooperate but Flynn did.
I don’t expect it to take to much longer before we get some news on this front.
Flynn also got his son involved, and he has also gone quiet. I often thought Flynn was the main one to talk, because of the leverage the FBI has over him through his son.
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Junior mouthed off just this morning. I’ve also seen previous tweets of his, so he hasn’t been quiet.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/conspiracy-theorist-michael-flynn-jr-claims-victimhood-says-he-wont-go
-to-jail
NBC reporting Mueller team have enough for charges against both Flynn and his son. Heat being turned up much?
Flynn, like Manafort, is a slam dunk felon just from publicly available facts.
His silence could very well be just that he’s a little bit smarter, not much, than say Don T, Jr and realizes there’s no upside in publicly antagonizing Mueller.
Manafort and Papadopoulos seem to be general warnings to the Trump administration (Sessions, et al) while Flynn’s indictment I expect will be closer to home for Kushner, Don T, Jr.
The fact that Kushner hasn’t had his security clearance revoked at this point is atrocious – I’ll bet every non-true believer in the FBI (both of them) is appalled by that.
I suspect a key factor is Mueller wants to drag out indictments as long as possible so that if Trump pardons he has to do it repeatedly as the investigation gains weight. He wants to put off letting Trump do a mass pardon as long as possible. The obvious undercharging of Manafort and the cutoff on Papadopolous is another tell that he’s trying to box in Trump on pardons.
There are other explanations.
The double jeopardy laws in NY State prevent Schneiderman from prosecuting crimes that Trump has pardoned.
Not charging stuff leaves the NY State legal system and prosecuters as Plan B.
Yes, he’s moving very deliberately.
It is offensive that Flynn allegedly planned to kidnap Gulen. But I know Erdogan has been after him for some time. I guess laws don’t matter if you get paid enough.
You write:
The laws are written and enforced by people who get “paid enough,” Jonf. Just like Flynn. Paid by equivalent if not the same people as have been paying Flynn and the rest of the thousands of DC swamp dwellers.
That’s why there are so many escape chutes and loopholes.
AG
Flynn was paid over half a million by a company with ties to Erdogan and one of his tasks was investigative research on Gulen. So the question is what more was involved? I suppose the idea of a kidnapping made me think that was part,of his task, but I don’t know that. He also tried to have him given to Turkey but the Obama administration found no evidence to support it. Flynn subsequently signed as an agent of a foreign government. Go figure.
Let’s focus that up a little.
Laws don’t matter if their enforcers [sometimes] don’t care.
Exactly why they [sometimes] don’t care doesn’t matter, at all. This is because the effects are the same, regardless of the reason, and because the effects are irreversible.
Preen all you like — do you think you alone have the crucial insight that “it’s the money”, or the transcendental courage to point that out? Neither: and suppose it’s not the money? Suppose it’s the laziness, suppose it’s the complacency, suppose it’s the ideology, suppose it’s the politics, suppose it’s the sadism, suppose it’s the fact that civilization has lost its fan club? Are any of these any better, or any worse, or any more or less thrilling to observe or to remark upon? …no, they are not.
Sounds important to you. I am only aware that Erdogan has wanted to get him for some time believing he is inspiring an insurrection. The allegation that Flynn was involved in a kidnapping scheme seems an extension of that. People do things like that for all sorts of reasons, money being near the top, I suppose. But you’re right. The list is lengthy.
On the money thing again, Flynn was paid as a foreign agent for Turkey. I don’t know, and you don’t either, what that money paid for.
I wasn’t talking about Flynn, or about anyone who breaks the law. I was talking about people whose responsibility is to uphold the law.
I’m not sure what you are getting at. So feel free to chime in.
It is pretty clear this administration is corrupt and is all about the money and how they can enrich themselves. As Richard Painter was saying on tv last evening, we are now a banana republic. Flynn seems to have contracted for money to find a way to extradite Gulen. Did the law stop him or did some intervening event, like him getting fired, prevent it – at least temporarily?
My point, if I had one, was not about reasons why the law is broken. I am (for better or worse) not curious about this.
My point is about the reasons why the law is not enforced. This is a separate issue, and I am curious about it because this is what does the harm at a civilizational level.
I can only say that laws are made and enforced by men. The administration is corrupt. Hence, the law is enforced according to their own benefit.
NO. Not according to their own benefit; according to other people’s harm. This is crucial. It is no longer cui bono? but cui malo?
This is not to say that there is no skimming going on, but sadism is an incomparably more powerful emotional driver than greed. If you get this wrong, you will design the wrong civilizational institutions. That is where we are. We have the wrong institutions, the institutions have given up through sheer exhaustion at trying to do mismatched jobs, and the institutions have accordingly become ridiculous and ineffective.
Interesting idea. So how would you change the institutions to reflect that change?
It is, of course, irresponsible to say “this is broken” without, in the same breath, saying how to fix it. But sometimes that is all that can be done, particularly if silence would imply that it isn’t broken.
That said, and for example, the (original and abstract) definitions of our (now concretely failed) institutions lay great stress upon the notion of “representation” — alongside a very deep assumption that that ideal will not be misused.
Our experience of the past 38 years shows that if a faction, large enough to at least pretend to be a majority, takes advantage of its “representation” to participate in the institutional system only in order to destroy it from within, then that institutional system is bound to fail and is therefore unfit to survive within its actual environment. The system had two options at that point: become unrepresentative or become dysfunctional. It is not even that the wrong choice was made: the choice, and the fact that it was a forced choice, was never even understood or faced up to.
The wildcard with Flynn, in my view, is that the road to charges against Pence goes through him. If Mueller is contemplating leveling charges against Trump and Pence, he may very well want those charges to go public at the same time, as to prevent Trump from naming his successor.
Hence it would make sense for him to sit on the Flynn aspect of the story for awhile longer.
According to a small number of sources there are up to 4 more sealed indictments waiting in the wings. I really don’t know how the courts assign docket numbers.
O/T Another week and another mass shooting
Up to 24 dead church in Texas
http://bnonews.com/news/index.php/news/id6701
First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas
yeah, and the parishioners are proclaiming that it “wasn’t the gun, it was the man” …
Xtians are a death cult.
But we haven’t heard from Flynn, really, since he walked out of the White House months ago. And Carter Page has never shut up.
Point being, nothing’s really happened to suggest Flynn is or isn’t cooperating. His silence tells us nothing because he’s been silent all along.
I should add, the most obvious explanation for who’s talking and who isn’t is that it merely indicates who is listening to their lawyer.
Any halfway competent lawyer would have told Flynn to keep his trap shut. He’s been doing that.
Not to go off topic (but to go off topic): what was Papadopolous doing in Athens in late May 2016, at the same time Putin was visiting – and meeting with two high ranking Greek politicians who were also meeting with Putin.
This has been confirmed by the Greek press, with accompanying pictures.
Seth Abramson has laid it all out in his Twitter feed. No one is reporting it, even though it’s all there to see in the Greek press.
My prediction last week was that Flynn would be the first domino (#Flynndicted), so I was actually pleasantly surprised that it was Manafort (and Gates) that were indicted and that Papadopoulos had pleaded guilty earlier this year.
Based on the latter fact, my guess is that Flynn has flipped and is cooperating. After all, he was shopping for immunity 6+ months ago, and if Papadopoulos worked out a deal then perhaps Flynn did too.
I’m also curious if Mueller thought that Manafort was too much of a flight risk and needed to bring him in before anyone else to prevent him from fleeing to Russia or something (unless there are worse people there that are waiting for him…).
I thought Flynn was going to be first too. Think the son thinks they will get off like Oliver North.
Manafort is currently having trouble making bail. Seems strange for a guy who could work for the donald for free.
The link above says somebody, maybe not too reliable, but in any event, is saying Flynn is cooperating.