The coverup of the 2016 Trump-Russia conspiracy continues unabated. First, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to block the DC Court of Appeals’ requirement that they turn over Robert Mueller’s grand jury materials to the House of Representatives. They know that their line of bullshit will be exploded if people get to see the raw testimony.
Even more shockingly, William Barr’s DOJ decided to drop the case against Michael Flynn even though the bastard has already confessed and was awaiting sentencing.
The Justice Department on Thursday said it is dropping the criminal case against President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, abandoning a prosecution that became a rallying cry for the president and his supporters in attacking the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation…
…The JDepartment said it had concluded that Flynn’s interview by the FBI was “untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn” and that the interview was “conducted without any legitimate investigative basis.”
The U.S. attorney reviewing the Flynn case, Jeff Jensen, recommended dropping the case to Attorney General William Barr last week and formalized the recommendation in a document this week.
“Through the course of my review of General Flynn’s case, I concluded the proper and just course was to dismiss the case,” Jensen said in a statement. “I briefed Attorney General Barr on my findings, advised him on these conclusions, and he agreed.”
I can’t imagine this is a popular move at the FBI, the DOJ or within the Intelligence Community in general, but it does relieve Trump from any temptation to pardon Flynn.
Now they’ll argue that he was wrongly prosecuted for something he actually admitted and pled guilty to doing, I especially like the finding that the FBI had no legitimate investigative purpose for interviewing Flynn about phone calls he had with the Russian ambassador in which he undermined a sanctions regime put in place to punish Russia for their interference in the 2016 election. At the time, Flynn was known to have been an unregistered lobbyist for Turkey who had suspicious Russian contacts dating back to his time as the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He’d feted Vladimir Putin as a dinner celebrating the anniversary of the Russia Today (RT) news network, and given a speech in Russia critical of U.S. foreign policy. He was suspected of being compromised at a minimum, and outright traitor at the worst. He had also subjected himself to blackmail bylying publicly about something the Russians could contradict with incontrovertible evidence. Now he was the National Security Adviser, in charge of the nation’s foreign policy. Seems like a crisis to me, and I’m glad the FBI treated it that way.
William Barr has been trying to clean this up, and he’s had a lot of success. But this charade isn’t going to hold water if Trump loses the election.
Through the thousands of lies Trump has spewed out these past three years plus, it seems there is hardly a smidgen to blame on him. He wanted Flynn exonerated and he got his way as it is with so many things these days. And now even his FBI investigator is accused of malfeasance. Lots of human scum going after Flynn. Put up by Obama no doubt. Billy Bob, he who chased Mueller out and declared Trump an innocent man, will continue his task of unmasking those scum. Next up the Blue State lies about virus deaths and their overstatement. Before long we will all come to believe there was no virus, just Obama that made us believe it . Anyway, now Flynn is just a good guy, I suppose, and the virus is a myth.
I have conservative friend from college who is jumping up and down with glee at this moment, certain that justice is being done. He completely buys into the idea that the Trump-Russia investigation was a set up by the intelligence community, and that it was an extra-constitutional attempt at a coup, and pretty much the worst crime in American history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_investigation_origins_counter-narrative
He and his conservative FB friends all salivating about the “Durham train that’s coming down the tracks” and they expect that Comey, Clapper, and (especially) Brennan will be indicted, imprisoned, and maybe even executed. Given what we’ve seen from the Barr justice department, it wouldn’t surprise me if the indictments, at least, come to pass. One would hope that a career prosecutor like Durham would have some sense of what is a real, prosecutable case or not, but who knows? We were told that Barr was an institutionalist and he turned out to have a brain marinated in Fox News conservative culture war BS, so maybe Durham is the same. Conservative media is reporting that Barr and Durham talk every day, so that can’t be good.
So a future DoJ could resurrect the prosecution, right?
I have no idea but I wonder if the judge can appoint a Special Master to review the case.