Justice Department drops General Michael Flynn case.

General Michael Flynn. Via Twitter. 

The Justice Department has dropped the criminal case against General Michael Flynn. AP. Flynn was charged with lying to the FBI about meeting with the Russian Ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. Flynn plead guilty to the charge and resigned from his post as National Security Advisor. The prosecutors reneged on the deal and Flynn then put up a more spirited defense. Recently documents from the FBI were released that showed the FBI wanted to force Flynn to lie so he could be charged and were getting ready to drop the case before the interview happened. The Justice Department said today that the interview never should have happened as Flynn's contact with Ambassador Kislyak were entirely appropriate and therefore Flynn lying to the FBI about it was moot as it was not material to anything.  President Trump and his supporters celebrated the outcome of the case as Flynn's situation has always been held up as evidence of bias and duplicity from the FBI. 

My Comment:

This was the right outcome for this case. The prosecution of General Flynn was always politically motivated and made almost zero sense. He was put into a position where he couldn't possibly win and the FBI behaved horribly. 

The investigation into Flynn was based on the Logan Act, an obscure law made in 1799 that had never once been enforced successfully that said private citizens couldn't negotiate with foreign governments. Going after Flynn for this was insane as he clearly wasn't a private citizen as he was the incoming National Security Advisor and part of his job was meeting with diplomats from foreign countries. This is why he was exonerated as lying to the FBI is only a crime if it is material to the case at hand. Since there was no case in the first place it's not a crime to lie. 

That was the fig leaf into investigating Flynn. Everything that followed was fruit of the poisonous tree. Since the investigation into Flynn was bogus from the start it doesn't matter if he lied to the FBI or not. The FBI never should have been investigating him in the first place. 

And I personally don't think it should be a crime to lie to the FBI. The FBI, of course, like any other law enforcement agency, can lie to suspects but if a suspect returns the favor they go to prison? And this case shows why having that be a crime is such a problem. The FBI basically used this law to railroad a man who hadn't done anything else wrong. They just sent some agents in to talk to him and waited for him to slip up, which is inevitable, it's impossible to be 100% accurate about all things at all times. Indeed, Flynn's supporters say he didn't lie at all and was just failed to have perfect memory of how things happened. 

So why did Flynn plead guilty in the first place? Michael Flynn's son, also named Michael Flynn was also put under investigation. It is widely believed that Flynn plead guilty as prosecutors said they would not charge the son with crimes. That is legal but what isn't legal is failing to disclose that to the judge in the case and wasn't explicitly put into the plea agreement. 

To recap, Michael Flynn, in his role as incoming National Security Advisor spoke with the Russian Ambassador, like he was supposed to as part of his job. The FBI, who was biased against Flynn and his boss, President Elect Trump, opened up an investigation into Flynn for Logan Act violations, a law that had never been successfully prosecuted. The Mueller investigation, looking for a scalp, trapped Flynn into a meeting where he wasn't read his rights or informed that there was an investigation against him. Furthermore they went into the meeting with the specific goal to get him to lie, even though he hadn't at this point done anything wrong. Once they catch him in a lie/misstatement they tell him if he doesn't plead guilty his son will be thrown into jail. 

This was all horrible and it was pretty clear that it destroyed Michael Flynn's life. He lost a very prestigious and influential job, got smeared as a traitor and spent all of his money defending himself. Even now there are people that just assume he is guilty and deserved what was coming at him.

Worst of all is that the FBI crippled what could have been one of the better National Security Advisors. Flynn's replacements, H.R. McMaster and John Bolton were pretty terrible at their jobs and weren't onboard with President Trump's agenda. The current one, Robert O'Brian is better but still not as good as Flynn would have been. 

With Flynn we probably would have had a better relationship with Russia, a quicker end to the ISIS situation, a withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq and more "America First" foreign policy, in contrast to what we had under McMaster and Bolton. The FBI took that away from us and I personally will never forgive them for that.