In Like Flynn

The news cycle flies along at its typical breathtaking pace. Mannafort becomes Weinstein becomes Rob Porter becomes Kim Yo-jong becomes Bannon becomes .....

Can we take a moment to slow down the power point slide show and finish up on what used to be termed current news? Let's roll the tape back and bring Lieutenant General Michael Flynn into some focus.

Corruption at the highest levels of government, that is what we saw when our tax payer supported Super Lawyers, Robert Mueller, et al., our very own Special Prosecutors, obtained a plea deal on December 1, 2017. General Michael Flynn admitted he lied, which is not just a social faux pas or evidence of a character flaw, but a felony when done in an FBI interview. Although many who support Mr. Mueller would decry posting the 10 Commandments outside a Federal Courthouse, they have no problem with elevating within the Courthouse the 9th Commandment to a major crime.

Except, the corruption is not with poor Michael Flynn, but with the Special Prosecutors themselves. Let's take a look at some salient facts:

1. The 'lying' Michael Flynn did was not in any interaction he had with Mueller or his team. It was done way back in January of last year when the General voluntary sat down with the FBI to 'splain a few things.

2. At the time, what the FBI wanted to know was what Flynn had said to the Russian Ambassador. This was curious in that the FBI had FISA taps of the conversations and thus already knew exactly what Mr. Flynn had said. And they also knew that what he talked about was not criminal in any way, that in fact it was pursuant to his normal and necessary duties as the prospective head of Trump's NSA. The implication that rises here is that the FBI was hoping to catch him in a lie so they could enforce the 9th Commandment upon him with a God-like vengeance. This feels to me like unethical behavior by  the FBI bordering on abuse of power, but hey, I'm just a private citizen of this Republic, so what do I know?

3. In any case, what Mueller's indictment does not mention is that the FBI determined after the interview with Mr. Flynn that his account of his Russian conversations was substantially true, and that any errors or omissions did not rise to intentional dishonesty. Thus, Mr. Mueller brings his indictment based on his own determination of Mr. Flynn's responses, superseding the agents who were actually present at the interview. I ask: who is better situated to assess the credibility of a person, the one who is face to face with him or the one who is reviewing a transcript months later? A silly question, I know. Our very Special Prosecutors obviously possess super powers of detection of credibility, and it's not clear why we (me and you, dear reader) have any business questioning the matter.

So, to wrap this up, what we have is a decorated General who was performing his lawful duties as a civil servant of the government, who has become the target of large political - not criminal - forces swirling around Washington that for reasons of their own sought to entrap him in some sort of crime so that he would do ..... what?

They certainly haven't gone to all this trouble to get General Flynn; he's just a Washington player like thousands of others and he was fired from the Trump Administration about 30 seconds into his tenure. For me, there is only one obvious answer: they want leverage to force him to support their narrative that Trump and his campaign colluded with the Russians to subvert the American election. If so, then they will be forcing him to lie because Michael Flynn - and Mannafort and Jared Kushner and all the rest - have already voluntarily testified that there was no collusion with the Russians, and the FBI, CIA, NSA, numerous Congressional Committees, and our very Special Super Powerful Best in Class Prosecutors have to date found no evidence of collusion.

Would that our betters on the Federal Courts would allow us to post the Ten Commandments at the door of the Special Prosecutors offices - I think they could use some brushing up on that 9th Commandment right now.