Flynn's case only getting muddier

The case of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn now has the clarity of a mud bath.

First, his court case.

Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. Then, Attorney General William Barr, his ultimate prosecutor, decided to drop charges, even after Flynn had confessed to lying to both the FBI and to Vice President Michael Pence. Barr thought the investigation that led to Flynn’s charges was begun on faulty grounds.

Barr’s motion to dismiss the case was so unusual that the judge, Emmet Sullivan, followed with his own oddity. He called in a retired federal judge, John Gleeson, to review Barr’s motion.

And now, Sullivan’s call for a review has been appealed.

So. The judge’s judgment in summoning another judge is being judged because Sullivan questioned the judgment of the attorney general in challenging a case Sullivan had already judged.

Even muddier, Flynn was arrested as a result of the investigations cited in the Mueller report, which, contrary to Barr’s pronouncements, did not fully exonerate President Donald Trump.

In condemning Barr’s motion to exonerate Flynn, the New York Times’ official opinion states that the FBI “had sufficient evidence to investigate Mr. Flynn as part of its inquiry into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, even as the report was sharply critical of the F.B.I.’s broader handling of that investigation.”

This is true and cannot be ignored.

Conservative writers, even never-Trumpers, however, say the criticism was very well-deserved. Recent disclosures from early in the Flynn investigation call into question, again, the judgment of former FBI Director James Comey, of the Clinton email fiascos, and lead investigator Peter Strzok, who boasted in potentially public emails to a paramour about snaring Trump.

Under this pair’s direction, agents “would not inform Flynn that he was the subject of a criminal or counterintelligence investigation,” commentator Eli Lake wrote in Commentary magazine, a conservative, not usually pro-Trump, publication.

“And they would not remind him that it was a crime to lie to FBI agents. Strzok would later recall that Flynn saw his interrogators as allies.”

Entrapment? No, but if Flynn was being questioned as a suspect, he should have been informed and read his rights.

The FBI charged Flynn under the Logan Act, a never-used 18th Century law that says it’s a crime for unauthorized individuals to try to make national policy. Flynn tried in a call to a Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak to influence Russian policy, hinting that Trump might change an offending U.S. policy, an apparent crime even though Flynn was on Trump’s transition team a month away from Trump’s inauguration.

Bret Stephens, a never-Trump conservative commentator, pointed out that FBI agents who had questioned Flynn said he “did not give any indicators of deception.”

Stephens noted this quote from Lake’s Commentary article: “Perhaps it was Pence who lied, because he was asked a question he found difficult to answer on national television.”

Flynn might have confessed to save his son, who was involved with Flynn in another case, according to Lake.

The more I learn, the more reason I see to doubt everybody involved, but I really want to see how it turns out.

Steve Hansen writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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