Did Flynn Just Call Out Mueller on Under-the-Table Plea Deal?
EXCERPT
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn appears to have put the team of former special counsel Robert Mueller on the defensive, unraveling what had been suggested to be a possible unofficial deal with the prosecutors.
Flynn, former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty in 2017 to one count of lying to the FBI. The Mueller team recommended a light sentence for him, including no prison time, officially because of his contrition for the crime and extensive cooperation with multiple Justice Department investigations.
But it appears that another, unofficial, deal may have been in place.
Several weeks before Flynn signed his plea, NBC News reported, based on unnamed sources, that the Mueller team was trying to get Flynn’s cooperation by threatening to indict his son, Michael Flynn Jr.
“If the elder Flynn is willing to cooperate with investigators in order to help his son … it could also change his own fate, potentially limiting any legal consequences,” the article stated.
This isn’t how an official plea deal would work, according to former FBI agent and Epoch Times contributor Marc Ruskin.
“It would be done with a wink and a nod,” he said in a previous phone interview, later adding that “it wouldn’t be binding, but it would be like an understanding.”
It’s not clear whether any such deal was reached and if so, what specifically it entailed. But Flynn’s case involves a number of peculiarities that suggest something was going on behind the scenes.
‘Star Witness’ Strzok
Flynn’s statement of offense attached to his plea acknowledges that he lied to the FBI during a Jan. 24, 2017, interview.
However, the FBI agent that wrote the report from the interview was Peter Strzok, who was later kicked off the Mueller team after the revelation of his animus toward Trump in texts then-FBI lawyer Lisa Page, with whom he was having an extramarital affair. Strzok was later fired from the bureau, while Page left on her own.
“Michael Flynn … would have faced no legal jeopardy at all if he just wouldn’t have pleaded guilty because they would have never gotten a conviction with Peter Strzok as their star witness,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, told Fox News on Dec. 4.
https://www.apnews.com/6bef9ed6c48b4c2ea203cbbea3ccacad
Trump moves to end asylum protections for Central Americans
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Monday moved to end asylum protections for most Central American migrants in a major escalation of the president’s battle to tamp down the number of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
According to a new rule published in the Federal Register , asylum seekers who pass through another country first will be ineligible for asylum at the U.S. southern border. The rule, expected to go into effect Tuesday, also applies to children who have crossed the border alone.
The rule applies to anyone arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. Sometimes asylum seekers from Africa and other continents arrive there, but most migrants arriving there are Central Americans.
There are some exceptions: If someone has been trafficked, if the country the migrant passed through did not sign one of the major international treaties that govern how refugees are managed (though most Western countries have signed them) or if an asylum-seeker sought protection in a country but was denied, then a migrant could still apply for U.S. asylum.