That’s fine.
The question was asked why he was fired. I answered it.
Flynn displayed incredible arrogance speaking without counsel. He displayed incredible stupidity for pleading guilty to something he did not do.
I have children. I love them. But I am not going to admit to a felony to protect them from their own misdeeds. His children are adults. They did some shady stuff.
Aren’t we dealing with enough of this crap—just because its our side doesn’t make it right. What ever happened to politician kids doing their own thing? Why do they all want to go into the family business.
The guy made a series of mistakes that anyone who has ever dealt with investigations knows not to make.
I don’t want to see him go to jail and I think the Judge is just being difficult...but that does not make my opinion of this guy change a whole lot. He may have been good at what he did...but when you are taken out of your area of expertise—smart and humble people ask for help.
You and I see this quite differently.
I see it completely through the prism of an abuse of power by government entities that brought the entire apparatus of the federal government to bear on this man for political purposes.
The same could happen to you and I, and we would likely be utterly helpless.
As for his “speaking without counsel” he made the mistake that millions of Americans might make, by knowing he did nothing wrong, and speaking to the FBI because he was under the mistaken impression that they were on the same team.
Even more, he assumed (because he KNEW he did nothing wrong, and he didn’t) that he was dealing with peers against a common issue, not being subjected to a subversive and seditious campaign by people who should have been shaking his hand, not stabbing them in the back.
I forgive him for that, as surely as many millions of real Americans who have taken the time to look at the facts, I would be less likely to speak with the FBI on any other government entity without counsel.
And he made the decision to fall on his sword. He had people pleading for him to go speak to Trump who was weighing the matter, but he declined because he didn’t want to get in the way of the President making his own difficult decision. And he did it to protect his family.
You sound experienced in this-how do you think you would fare if the government decided to frame you (with the INTENT, written in official documentation of whether the point of an investigation is should be to get you to lie) and looked at you and all your relations with a microscope, using the FBI, DOJ, IRS, and every other agency under the sun. You think you would come out of that clean? Or your kids or wife, who may have done nothing serious, but are undergoing this because of YOU?
It is astonishing to me that people (especially people on this forum who have watched the way the DOJ and FBI have strong-armed people and gone after people simply as tools to get at President Trump) can look at these methods used against US Citizens in general and General Flynn in particular and feel anything but revulsion, root and branch revulsion.
Same with people who say conservatives protest against it because it is “our side” and say we would feel differently if the shoe were on the other foot.
You and I disagree on this. I am comfortable with what this says about my values. I imagine you will say the same thing, but it is clear my values are quite different from yours, and I fully embrace that reality.