Let's give a shout out to that tiny number of astute Freepers who identified this problem for Mike Flynn months ago.
In order for him to withdraw his guilty plea he had to admit that he stood up and lied to this judge's face at least twice.
The Judge asks Mr. Flynn,”Were you lying then, or are you are you lying now?” I am sure that he said,”Raise your right hand, Mr. Flynn.” recited or read the Oath of Affirmation, and asked, “Mr, Flynn, how do you plead”? Is your plea voluntarily?” “Do you plead guilty because are guilty?”
Nothing is as simple as it seems.
Murphy’s Law.
In my world, there are grave penalties for people like Sullivan who pretend not to know how things work.
ESPECIALLY after the Ted Stevens farce.
Pleading guilty when you are innocent is not lying to the judge. You are not under oath when you plead guilty or not guilty.
People withdraw their guilty pleas all the time. You can do it any time before you are sentenced.
You cannot commit perjury unless you lie while under oath. Flynn was never under oath. He was accused of lying to the FBI. That is only a crime if the FBI is working a legitimate investigation. There was no valid predicate for questioning Flynn in the first place. So even if he knowingly lied, he did not commit a crime. It was the FBI that committed all the crimes.
Nope. Not all lying to the FBI is a crime. It has to be material to an investigation. In this case, Flynn’s statements weren’t only not material to any investigation but weren’t even part of a legitimate FBI investigation. Flynn may have thought that he lied when he spoke to The FBI and pled guilty to the charge of lying to The FBI but his lying was not actually a crime. Of course, he would have had no way of knowing that when he addressed the court and when he agreed to plead guilty.
I bet there are a lot of cases out there where someone changed his plea from guilty to not guilty and were charged with perjury, especially after a change of legal teams. All you have to do is find one, just one.
Preposterous. Elsewhere I proposed that the Babylon Bee should run the following headline. “FBI recommends DOJ prosecutors charge Gen. Flynn with perjury for pleading guilty to crime he didn’t commit.” I never dreamed that such ridiculous satire would be seriously considered by either a Freeper or a federal judge.