President Trump’s ill-fated former security advisor, Michael Flynn pled guilty last week but does anyone in Washington or the rest of America have any idea what that means in the long term? Though liberals and #neverTrumers are cheering, the truth is the only major case that Robert Mueller has produced is a guilty plea that has nothing to do with President Trump or the reason the special counsel was commissioned.
The one count that Flynn pled to does not name collision. He pled guilty to making false statements to the FBI about his conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak before Trump’s inauguration.
But that hasn’t stopped the mainstream media from a premature celebration of what it wanted long before January – the destruction of Donald J. Trump.
CNN’s Van Jones lit up Steven Colbert’s audience on “The Late Show” when he said, “When your main homeboy turns snitch, a whole bunch of people about to go to jail,” Jones said. “That’s just how that works.” As expected his network and others ran 24/7 coverage of Flynn and virtually ignored the passage of the largest tax bill since Ronald Reagan.
One conservative commentator quipped, “The only thing missing was a Bronco chase on the L.A. Freeway.”
In truth, here is all anyone outside of their tight circle in Washington knows for certain:
1. Flynn was fired by the President after less than a month on the job when he admitted that he lied to Vice President Pence and then to the FBI about conversations he had with Russian ambassador Kislyak in December. Official court records show without a doubt that Flynn contacted Kislyak on Dec. 22 concerning the Trump administration’s opposition to a U.N. resolution against Israeli settlements. Another call was made on Dec. 29 to ask Russia not to escalate tensions over sanctions President Obama had imposed just the day before.
2. Flynn admitted he lied when asked by the FBI on Jan. 24 about those interactions — and that officials on the president’s transition team, including a “very senior member,” knew that he had talked to the Russian ambassador.
Beyond that, everything else is conjecture. What we and the media know for sure is that what Flynn pled guilty to happened after the election and could not possibly have had anything to with collusion to effect the 2016 election.
Charles Lipson of Real Clear Politics points out that only a few people know what or if Robert Mueller has found a smoking gun. In fact, only a select few even have first-hand knowledge if there is really anything for the special counsel to find.
Ah, but what dirt does the prosecutor have? Only Mueller, Trump and their inner circles know. Only they know whether senior Trump aides have committed underlying crimes or given false testimony. CNN doesn’t know. Fox doesn’t know. ABC doesn’t know and had to withdraw an incorrect report that the president himself was implicated. (The stock market was not amused.) Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) doesn’t know, even though he was smiling from ear to ear on TV and doing everything short of dancing and waving a “Mission Accomplished” banner.
While reporting portrays Flynn’s guilty plea as a major breakthrough in Mueller’s investigation of collusion between Trump’s team and the Russians, the opposite is true.
The plea most prosecutors would want is a guilty plea to being an accomplice to a major criminal scheme. The first goal is to prove a scheme actually existed. In this case, collusion to affect the election. Part of a plea deal normally involves naming names of co-conspirators. But none of that is present in Flynn’s supposed earth shaking plea.
What Flynn pled guilty to is a mere process crime. He did meet with the Russian ambassador and should not have never lied about that. But the meeting itself was exactly what the incoming national-security adviser should do. As part of the transition team, he wanted to give the President all he needed to negotiate with Russia about dealing with ISIS. Had Mueller had anything that spoke to collusion he would have hardly let Flynn off with a process crime.
The Trump campaign did seek information about Hillary Clinton from anybody who had it. As did the Clinton about Trump when it hired a former British intel agent, who paid Kremlin sources.
The only difference is that of those only one has any history of underhanded shenanigans with foreign powers and it’s not Donald Trump.
~ American Liberty Report
