Posted on 01/31/2020 5:42:34 PM PST by karpov
Here’s another black eye for the Justice Department’s Obama-era leadership: The case against Gen. Michael Flynn is in full collapse.
Federal prosecutors just backed down from their demand that Flynn — President Trump’s first, short-lived national security adviser — serve jail time for lying to FBI investigators, telling a court Wednesday that probation would be a “reasonable” sentence.
In fact, Justice had long wanted leniency, since Flynn cooperated fully with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigations. But last month it started seeking up to six months of confinement — mainly because he’s no longer taking responsibility for his crime.
“I am innocent,” he writes in a new filing, explaining that he pleaded guilty in 2017 to making false statements to the FBI because he felt helpless to fight the charges: He’d already had to sell his home to pay legal costs and was told his son could be indicted, too.
The “crime” came days after the inauguration, when FBI agents Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka questioned Flynn at the White House about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Yet the FBI had already reviewed transcripts of the calls and found nothing illicit. The visit was a fishing expedition: The agents even skipped the customary heads-up to the president’s Office of Legal Counsel — aiming to avoid having a lawyer present for the talk.
Even so, Strzok and Pientka wound up finding “no indication” that Flynn had lied to them. But then FBI lawyer Lisa Page (Strzok’s mistress at the time) instructed them to alter their official writeup of the conversation to say otherwise. And that’s the entire basis of the charges against him.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
The “crime” came days after the inauguration, when FBI agents Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka questioned Flynn at the White House about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Yet the FBI had already reviewed transcripts of the calls and found nothing illicit. The visit was a fishing expedition: The agents even skipped the customary heads-up to the president’s Office of Legal Counsel — aiming to avoid having a lawyer present for the talk.
Even so, Strzok and Pientka wound up finding “no indication” that Flynn had lied to them. But then FBI lawyer Lisa Page (Strzok’s mistress at the time) instructed them to alter their official writeup of the conversation to say otherwise. And that’s the entire basis of the charges against him.
Also see #19.
The real problem is that there are Obama hold overs at the CIA and at the NSA who work ceaselessly to plot against President Trump and his staff.
President Trump needs to clean house. Send lie detector teams to these cadres of syphilitic morons, and if they flunk, fire them or transfer them to some remote island in the Aleutians.
The FBI and the DOJ were the tips of the liberal fascist spear in the General Flynn case. That spear tip is now blunted. It’s time to roll up the rest of them.Kelly, now having resigned, was largely responsible for keeping these Obama sleveens on at NSA and sheltering them. GET THEM OUT.
The guys in the slick suits and black eyes .... should be able to pick them out of a crowd.
Amen.
The DOJ needs an enema, a big one.
The FBI though, I’m not convinced they have ever done much more than impede local police, shoot up innocent bystanders, wreck property and blackmail presidents. Gut it. Fold the useful remnant into another agency— say the US Marshall Service.
Flynn’s lawyer, Sidney Powell, was on the Larry O’Connor show on WMAL today. She thoroughly demolished the DOJ case and said they were still withholding exonerating evidence.
You can hear that interview here:
https://www.wmal.com/the-larry-oconnor-show/
So what was he thinking???
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
There’s a 3rd issue in addition to his son & and being bankrupted and that’s the issue of his lawyers having a conflict of interest that prevented them from providing Flynn effective legal counsel:
Covington Lawyers’ Conflict Of Interest May Land Michael Flynn In Jail - If there is to be a just result in Flynn’s case, the court must address the question about Covington’s conflict of interest. Flynn shouldn’t be punished for mistakes that are attributable to his counsel rather than to him.
Judge Orders Ethics Training For Michael Flynn’s Former Lawyers - Was there a conflict of interest between Michael Flynn and his Covington and Burling attorneys who used to represent him? New facts unfold.
https://thefederalist.com/2019/07/18/judge-orders-ethics-training-michael-flynns-former-lawyers/
I have also read that Lisa Page drafted the first FISA warrant.
Apparently, that was part of her job.
As to source...
I get almost all my information about FBI and DOJ corruption from Judicial Watch.
However, I do not have a specific recollection about where I read the FISA warrant claim.
Theyalso trid to rope in Trump with a “casual” conversation telling him he wasn’t under investigation when in fact, he was. Secondly, they changed paperwork regarding Carter page. And they also investigated Trump, an American citizen at the time even before he came down the escalator.
And?
Then?
K?
The entire weight of a corrupt FedGov bureaucracy was bearing down on him. What is anyone to think?
Why are the same Deep State actors still involved in this prosecution? Surely there are enough facts exposed to justify removing the potentially corrupt or at least incompetent prosecution members. AG Barr should ask for continuance while the prosecution team is reconstructed with a fresh team and all evidence/procedures evaluated. Given the appearance of malicious prosecution, the team should also release all communications between DOJ/FBI staff and the Mueller team. Transparency and all that. If evidence suggests their was bias or coordinated efforts to deny Flynn due process, the records should be handed over to the Flynn defense team for use in a civil suit. Barr has this authority and really needs to take the reins.
Barr can see where it’s headed - better to let it run its course than ‘show partisanship” at this time - I’d wager that is part of what Durham is looking into.
Would be sweet for trump to rehire him during his second term just to rub it in their faces.
The 302s, including the original hand written notes and all subsequent edits, have been available for over a year.
You can see them here.
There weren't any material changes made.
That's the problem. She's great at persuading a talk radio audience. Not as effective with a federal judge.
........K?.......
I was being sarcastic should have tagged it as such!!!!
Those are all arguments put forward by the prosecution, and they are all contested. Here is a rebuttal:
“Those changes added an unequivocal statement that ‘Flynn stated he did not’ — in response to whether Mr. Flynn had asked Kislyak to vote in a certain manner or slow down the UN vote [on sanctions],” Powell wrote. “This is a deceptive manipulation because, as the notes of the agents show, Mr. Flynn was not even sure he had spoken to Russia/Kislyak on the issue. He had talked to dozens of countries.”
“That question and answer does not appear in the notes, yet it was made into a criminal offense,” Powell argued in the motion. “The draft also shows that the agents moved a sentence to make it seem to be an answer to a question it was not.”
Earlier this week, Powell demanded in another court filing that the FBI search its internal “Sentinel Database” to uncover any drafts of the 302 which may show substantial changes, after the government argued that any edits to the document, which was filed over three weeks after the interview, were merely “grammatical and stylistic.”
Released text messages between Strzok and Page show that on February 10, the same day that news broke from “senior intelligence officials” that Flynn had discussed sanctions with Kislyak, Strozk told Page that he had updated the 302 form to reflect her edits.
“I made your edits, and sent them to Joe. I also emailed you an updated 302 . . . hopefully it doesn’t need much more editing. I will polish it this weekend, and have it ready for Monday. I really appreciate your times and edits,” Strzok said. 22
On Tuesday night, Powell told Fox News that the letter all but confirms her argument.
I’m guilty of the same...LOL
Watergate showed that to really break the law, it requires the scam to be run out of the White House.
To really clean up the US gubermint, the DemonRAT Party must be gutted and the main players imprisoned. The play here was to get Flynn as they paved the road to get Trump. Hussein Obama was leading this effort the whole time.
Just cleaning up the FBI/DOJ/State Dept would be nothing more than a band-aide.
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