Flynn Intel Group Case Highlights Mueller’s Lack of ‘Collusion’ Evidence
When the final report of then-special counsel Robert Mueller stated that it couldn’t establish that anyone from the Trump campaign had conspired with Russia, many Americans may have failed to realize how revealing a statement that was.
The recent conviction of a former partner in the now-defunct consultancy firm of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, shows how easy it would have been for Mueller to bring charges even if he could piece together only a circumstantial case.
Yet he didn’t.
Conspiracy
Despite its ominous sound, the federal charge of conspiracy has a low bar to clear. If two people agree to commit any federal crime and if they undertake any, however trivial, “overt act” to further the plan, they can be charged and sent to prison for up to five years, even if they never actually committed the contemplated crime.
“It is a low bar,” said David Duncan, criminal defense lawyer from the Boston law firm Zalkind Duncan & Bernstein. The “overt act” in particular can be something “minor or innocuous-looking,” he said.
If two people discussed a plan to rob a bank, for instance, and one of them went to buy duct tape that, in the government’s eyes, was to be used to tie people’s hands during the robbery, that could be an “overt act.” At the purchase of the duct tape, a charge of conspiracy to rob a bank could be forthcoming.
The case of Flynn’s former partner, Bijan Rafiekian, seems a prime example.
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