Last night, many of us were digesting the highly disturbing documents released in the case of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. As I discussed this morning in a Hill column, the documents reveal an effort to entrap Flynn, including the use of a blatantly unconstitutional statute to achieve that “goal.” However, there appears far more than has not been released, according to various sources. The release of the Flynn documents highlight what Attorney General William Barr said on “The Ingraham Angle” on April 10th and stated that “far more troubling” material will be released as a result of the investigation of U.S. Attorney John Durham. I believe it is a mistake for Barr to give such foreshadowing interviews before the release of the Durham report. While I agree with Barr ordering these reviews (and his view of the evidence so far), these interviews only undermine the credibility and that of the eventual report. (For full disclosure, I testified in favor of Barr’s confirmation before the Senate Judiciary Committee). Putting that aside, the evidence strongly supports Barr’s effort to force the disclosure of material that has been buried despite the claims of full investigations by Congress and the Inspector General. Bizarrely, the media and many liberal commentators are struggling to ignore these troubling disclosures and the obvious abuses that they reflect within the Justice Department.
Barr stated that “My own view is that the evidence shows that we’re not dealing with just the mistakes or sloppiness.” He added “there was something far more troubling here. We’re going to get to the bottom of it. And if people broke the law and we can establish that with the evidence, they will be prosecuted.” Referring to the Russian investigation as “one of the greatest travesties in American history — without any basis,” he stated that the evidence shows “a whole pattern of events while he was president … to sabotage the presidency … or at least have the effect of sabotaging the presidency.”
Once again, I agree with Barr on the damning character of this evidence and what is emerging as the likely political purpose or bias behind decisions at the Justice Department at the start of the Trump Administration. Despite the rationalizations of media experts, this is one of the most thuggish records I have seen as a criminal defense attorney. This was not an effort to investigate a crime, it was an effort to create a crime. Flynn had not committed any crime in meeting with the Russian and the Logan Act is universally denounced as unenforceable and unconstitutional. So these top Justice officials were planning to create a crime for which Flynn might be prosecuted solely out of the desire to prosecute him or force him out of office.
The remarks do indicate that the Durham investigation is at an advanced stage. Many of us have heard that Durham was not satisfied with the Inspector General’s report and has found potentially criminal conduct.
As I stated today in the column, the Flynn material discloses additional evidence of a hostile intent to target key Trump aides, including the use of a law that is notoriously and presumptively unconstitutional. The material reflects a wild search for any ground upon which Flynn could be entrapped.
“Bizarrely, the media and many liberal commentators are struggling to ignore these troubling disclosures and the obvious abuses that they reflect within the Justice Department.”
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Not bizarrely. More like in keeping with their ideology the media and many liberal commentators are struggling. No one likes to see their gods fall. Bad karma. So if you don’t talk about it, maybe it’s not true! Very Freudian.
Today’s Rule of Living: Never ascribe good faith to those who habitually show bad faith.
Sydney Powell has said the documents not yet released reveal even more appalling behavior.
Are we training agents in Cuba or China these days?
If there is a scintilla of integrity in government there will be severe consequences for these criminals.
despicable scoundrels at FBI have fallen far below the bar set in the past. the “politicization” of the FBI is a very dangerous trend that needs to be “arrested” and rectified asap. The meek “investigations” undertaken so far by Barr are not strong enough of a remedy. Criminal charges must be filed for the abuse of process by the errant agents and their scheming supervisors
Famous But Incompetent indeed
Mr. K:
Obama politicized every department in the government — State, DOJ, IRS, DOE and on and on. The whole house needs fumigated!
On a happier note, our royal governor, Sir Blackface of the Northern Neck, has deigned to ease restrictions on his brother physicians/surgeons by allowing elective surgery come Friday. Can bellying up to the bar be far behind.
I wonder how many life years have and will be lost based on restrictions of elective surgery and avoidance of medical care during the crisis. Stents and cancer care come to mind. The clearest of thinkers have been targeted because they didn’t agree with the accepted political experts.
In the end the comparison of actual deaths over the years might not even show a blip due to Covid.
How was the FBI “politicized”? Do you imagine agents and administrators never previously followed politics and had political opinions? It can’t be actions because the IG found no politicalization in the investigation, save for a low level attorney who is being prosecuted. Don’t forget the FBI knee capped Hillary’s campaign, not Trump’s. One of the reasons was Comey’s fear of leaks from Guliani aligned agents in the NY office.
“How was the FBI “politicized”? ”
Amazing how slow some people are.
What statue in the harbor in New York? There’s none there. Prove it. What a maroon!
I am confused about your position on this issue, when the “other side” leaks illegally, and the MSM makes up stories, with the appearance of the truth, to ask or demand that AG Barr, or the DOJ release important information to reassure the general public about the exact same subjects that partisans and even the press have lied about for years is silly. Real Justice is slow, it is enemies of real justice who leak and make stuff up to either get political enemies to resign or lose elections.
Watch the tricksters switch opinions as fast as the discussion names the party. How about for every trickster such as the dirty cops in all these cases the court takes down five of the media clowns as well?
This man served his country longer than any of you. As for Russian influence Trump didn’t say he will more leverage after the election it was Obama. And we know who’s son is in bed with the Chinese.
Good response Bruce. Short and simple but ~ right to the point. Some reject it because it goes against the Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC narrative.
Cheyenne Bodie deals with dirty lawmen. The dirty lawmen are played by James Coburn & Lee Van Cleef. The dirty lawmen die at the end of the full episode.
We need to review past scandals. What was the Cointel Project? MkUltra Project?
Who killed MLK? Who killed RFK? JFK?
They all have the CIA in common (and John Dulles for many of them)
And: Allen Dulles
We also need to take a look at human experimentation by the U.S., beyond MKUltra. (Read “The Plutonium Files.”)
John Whitehead, in a recent piece:
Human Lab Rats: The U.S. Government’s Secret History of Grisly Experiments
By John W. Whitehead
April 21, 2020
https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/human_lab_rats_the_u.s._governments_secret_history_of_grisly_experiments
Wasn’t this brazenly obvious from the indictment itself? Flynn was charged with “lying” in answer to questions about perfectly legal statements in a perfectly legal phone conversation for which the FBI already had the tape. That always begged the question as to why one would bother asking him the questions at all.
The Logan Act is on the books, and recently Trump suggested Kerry should be prosecuted for violations. During an investigation showing over 100 contacts between campaign officials and Russians who we knew had involved them selves in our election to the advantage of that campaign, what would you suggest?
Good Grief. “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
Facts are stubborn things.
Yes they are Senator McCarthy. And they will continue to play out.
OK, be sure to let me know when you find one.
Just tell Mr. Welch the answer is no and be done with it.
No one outside of Wisconsin had heard of McCarthy prior to February 1950 bar members of Congress, congressional staff, and the Capitol Hill press corps. Hardly anyone heard hide or hare of him after September 1954. Pat Buchanan pointed out some years back that contemporary public opinion polling demonstrated that anxiety over McCarthy’s antics was a particular concern of a single-digit minority. The Foreign Service and the staff of the U.S. Information Agency cared about McCarthy, as did fragments of the Army. And, yet, an ocean of ink has been spilled about this man. History is written by the word-merchant class.
This is fair enough. But bythebook captures McCarthy’s spirit nonetheless.
Not seeing it. Gainesville has two or three modes of proceeding, all of them dishonest. Don’t see the old drunk from Wisconsin in any of them.
The left needed to deflect.
“Facts are stubborn things.”
They are and that is why you lack them.
Trump was correct, but the Logan law has never been used, and should be taken off the books or used on people like Kerry. As to your remark of contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russians, that is nonsensical and has been disproven. As far as the contact between Flynn and his Russian counterpart, that was after the election, and is done as part of the job.
Good try, but unfortunately, all wrong.
Steve — “why would one bother asking him questions at all”?
To frame him.
Specifically, to frame him for telling the Russian that the sanctions Obama had placed on them for interfering in our election – to help elect Trump – would be relaxed as soon as the benefactor took office. Logan Act threat a technicality of course to get at the true offense of being a traitorous dick.
bythebook…You should write a book about your theories…but, make sure it is clearly marked as “fictional.”
Justice:
“…Flynn has since pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators about his contacts with Kislyak, particularly by denying that the two discussed sanctions on Moscow imposed by the Obama administration in response to Russian interference in the election. The guilty plea was part of a deal to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation in December 2017.
The memo, a more restricted version of which was released in December, shows that Flynn repeatedly denied having any discussions with Kislyak about the sanctions on Russia when questioned by the agents.
The new version of the memo, known as an FD-302, also shows that Flynn told FBI agents that he met with Kislyak and Jared Kushner at Trump Tower in New York City following the 2016 election. The meeting has previously been subject to press reporting and is referenced in Mueller’s 448-page report, a redacted version of which was released in April following the conclusion of his investigation. The memo describes the meeting as “sensitive.”…”
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/447357-flynn-told-investigators-russia-asked-for-trump-putin-video-call-day
Your article was written before the intentionally lost FBI papers were found. Some people are ignorant of the facts and some people lie by omission or comission.
JFA:
Naw, it’s the comics.
The FBI needed to ask the question to get the ball rolling on this fraud.
The next thing that had to happen in this fraud was Trump fired Flynn for telling the lie he never told. And then next we are asked to believe that trump pressured Comey to “go easy” on Flynn even though both Trump and Comey knew Flynn had not lied (or even had any reason to lie). Then Comey is knocked out of the picture and the Trump administration hires Mueller to continue this bogus charade. Then almost a year late Mueller and Flynn agree in public that Flynn had lied and that was a crime for which they agreed Flynn was guilty. You would think that would be the end of it but no it goes on for another couple years (for no good reason) and then we are told it all never happened.
And now we are tasked to believe news media are the bad guys because they reported all of the nonsense as it was unfolding.
Perhaps it would be wise to actually learn what crimes were committed by the obama administration before pilling on Trump. Remember, all of this was instigated by people who hated the thought of Trump, just where is the motivation and where does it lead?
Why stop there Alma? You know there are reports GW’s cherry tree was planted by the FBI, right?
Perhaps it would be wise to actually learn what crimes were committed by the obama administration
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I don’t think the obama administration invented any phony crime like the Trump administration has with this phony Flynn lying story.
I’m pretty confident the obama administration’s crimes were real…
Somethings in life are serious and affect the annals of history, others are facetious flotsam.
Sydney Powell has turned over a big rock at the DOJ/FBI and found it crawling with cockroaches.
What possible explanation could there be for those sgencies to hide these documents for three years other than, as she says, “to protect the guilty”?
Are internal investigation strategy discussion notes typically released?
The whole Mueller investigation was a fraud run by the Trump administration.
The Flynn lied-to-the-FBI fraud is just more evidence of that fact,
We know that Trump, Mueller, Comey and Flynn all pretended that Flynn had lied to the FBI. They all knew it was a phony story and yet Trump pretended to fire Flynn because he lied. And Comey pretended to pursue prosecution of this fake crime. And Trump pretended to pressure Comey to not prosecute this fake crime. And then after Comey was Fired Trump had Mueller hired to continue to pursue this fake crime. Then Mueller pretended to charge Flynn and Flynn pretended to plead guilty but of course that is not the end of it. The farce drags through the courts for a couple years and then suddenly they tell us it never happened.
The question is why did Trump, Flynn, Comey and Mueller engage in this charade for
years? They all were working in concert to promote a story that they all knew never happened. Now we are asked to believe that the news media was the villain because they reported the charade that these clowns were acting out.
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/937007006526959618?lang=en
Professor– Good comment here and excellent article in The Hill, but it is not ‘bizarre’ how the media is handling this unless one clings to the antique notion that they care about the truth. Lying and distortion are the norm for them.
Young, both the NYTs and WaPO are covering the story.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/us/politics/michael-flynn-lawyers-fbi-documents.html?searchResultPosition=1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/michael-flynns-defense-claims-fbi-notes-show-agents-tried-to-entrap-the-former-national-security-adviser/2020/04/29/fbbe0f30-8a67-11ea-9dfd-990f9dcc71fc_story.html
How about linking the documents so we can form our own opinion. No offense JT, but I don’t usually share yours.
Or so you say. Who really knows what you believe? You are so busy shilling DNC talking points I am not really sure that there is a “you” anywhere on these threads.
Away from the public, Joseph Goebbels most certainly knew the war was lost in 1943. Anybody with any sense in Germany did. So whatever he said in public was for public consumption and endless shilling. Maybe you are the same way.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I apologize for not living up to the non-partisan musings of other posters like Sadie Mae Glutz.
Squeeky– Maybe should be “you all” instead of “you” when referring to some DNC posters.
You are right. I would not be a bit surprised if Peter Shill/Set and bytheDNCscript are paid shills, and not just the equivalent of those goobers selling flowers at stoplights for a guru cult leader.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I remember coming across one of those characters in Honolulu in 1978. She comes up to me, pins a flower on my sleeve, and says ‘Do you want to contribute to education’. I’d been told the Hare Krishna outfit had adopted this particular hard sell and my connection in Honolulu had been hit enough times that he had a counter-maneuver that included stepping on flower-girl’s instep. Didn’t have the presence of mind to bark and stomp, I’m sorry to say. She got 5c out of me.
I think the current incarnation of these (no pun intended) work for some Korean cult.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Just because we kick your lame a.. here everyday doesn’t mean we’re pros Sadie. We’re just smarter than you and rely on facts.
Facts? No, you rely on opinion pieces and fakenews from various pro-DNC websites.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky — BTB pretends to be a single person but refers to themselves as “we” rather than “I”.
Evidently a team of gender studies PhD holders who couldn’t hack it flipping burgers at McDonalds and relied on DNC affirmative action hiring to win jobs in basement cubicles.
Curious you would use “we are” rather than “I am” in referencing yourself.
My pet hamster Adlai is in my shirt pocket. Also, I was lumped with Seth, wasn’t I?
You sound exactly like Herr Goebels. Repeat a lie long enough, and the people will begin to believe it. Trying to promote an agenda, does not make you smart…just obedient to your lies.
Not bright enough to be “paid,” but definitely shills.
The only network that got this right from the beginning is what I call the Voldamort Network. I call it that because its name must never be mentioned in polite progressive society.
And ‘This is absurd’ is right. This situation has Weissmann’s fingerprints all over it. If some of you haven’t read Powell’s book, License to Lie, you should. It’s frightening. The only thing more frightening is Barack Obama’s comment that the problem with the constitution is that it tells the government what it CAN’T do.
This should be #1 story for the major news sites. The federal government used its full force to foster a lie. CNN thought closing beaches in CA was way, way more important. I mean come on now, we have our priorities, lets see more skin on the beach.
CNN, NYTs. and WaPo are all covering the story, as they are the Tara Reade story.
I do hope Judge Sulllvan dismisses the charges. And then Trump should rehire him.
I feel very bad for the good guys at the FBI
If there are any left.
If justice were done a lot of these vile characters would have their offices moved from the J. Edgar Hoover building to Alcatraz. Could be the new headquarters for a diseased agency. Quarantine.
1. Scarify the federal criminal code. There are about 30 discrete areas which are properly the subject of federal concern. Policing is properly left to the states outside of those areas.
2. Calibrate the penalties of the federal criminal code so they reflect the median judgment of the states on the severity of a crime.
3. Limit the toolbox of federal investigators and federal prosecutors to the median of what state governments possess.
4. End blanket immunity for federal prosecutors and federal judges. They need to face the music for their misconduct, and not toothless ‘peer review’ either. It’s time for people from other walks of life to sit in judgment of lawyers.
5. Reconstitute federal law enforcement and security services into about seven departments, four concerned with policing, three concerned with other matters which intersect with policing. Break up the FBI into a half-dozen components, fire the top three echelons, and let God sort them out.
6. Dissolve the CIA. We have ample personnel devoted to technical collection in the other intelligence agencies. The CIA’s book is supposed to be human intelligence. We have every reason to believe they’re just another ineffective public bureaucracy when they’re not engaged in abuses. The penalty for promoting John Brennan through the ranks should be institutional death.
From the Hill article:
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Flynn was a useful tool for everyone and everything but justice. Mueller ignored the view of the investigators and coerced Flynn to plead to a crime he did not commit — to gain damaging testimony against Trump and his associates that Flynn did not have. The media used Flynn to confirm the flawed theory of Russia collusion and to foster the view that a deep criminal conspiracy was being uncovered by Mueller. Even the judge used Flynn to rail against what he saw as a treasonous plot. What is left in the wake of the prosecution is an utter travesty of justice.
Justice now demands a dismissal of the Flynn prosecution. But, of course, whatever the “goal” may have been in setting up Flynn, justice was not one of them.
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Yet somehow, I suspect no Democrat is going to lose a minute’s sleep over this. They don’t care about justice. They don’t care about doing what is right. Democrats only care about getting elected.
I ask again, why does any sane, decent white person vote for a Democrat???
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Mueller was in his office eating sandwiches and watching The Guiding Light. This whole mess was Andrew Weissmann’s baby, run with the connivance of Rod Rosenstein.
BARR needs to put the full weight of the DOJ in going after everyone of the anti Trump crowd involved, from Comey, McCabe, Page, to inside the former White house staff, no matter who they are.
The Press needs to wake up and report the TRUTH, they have no issues in reporting FAKE NEWS.
Flynn has a strong case for lots of $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$