While the early arrests into the trump-Russia scandal were nice, they weren't direct links to trump himself. Mike Flynn is a bigger deal: He has ties to trump going back years, was picked to serve as his National Security Adviser, and had so many illegal acts linked to him - including an insane plan to kidnap a Turkish national off American soil, an act of espionage that defies any legal excuse - that getting him to flip wasn't a question of if but when.
What's interesting to note is that Flynn is pleading out to one charge - lying to federal investigators - while there were so many greater charges facing him. Any amateur who's watched every season of Law & Order can tell you, the ones who get the early plea deals tend to get the better lighter deals because the prosecutors want the higher-ups in any criminal conspiracy. You have to consider that for every major tidbit Flynn turned over to Mueller, that Mueller took a more serious charge off the table in exchange.
Whatever got Flynn off on that kidnapping charge had to be a doozy involving trump. HAS to be.
Thing is, Mueller doesn't have to go straight at trump with the next arrest. He's likely to go after the rest of the outer circle of trump handlers - Chris Christie, Jeff Sessions, and VP Pence (!) are on that list - and then go after members of the inner circle - there's already reports that Flynn can give up Kushner on Russian collusion - to where trump has nowhere to run, noone else to blame when Mueller finally lines up to charge him.
It's all a question of how trump reacts to this. When everyone else tried to warn him about Flynn - like Sally Yates - they got fired. When Comey got canned it was because trump worried Flynn was in danger of the investigation under Comey's direction. Trump knows how Flynn is tied to the people closest to him (Kushner can't take a piss without an okay from his father-in-law) and like all mob boss wannabes trump isn't going to figure a subtler way out of this mess.
This isn't over. But it's getting close. And it's a beautiful thing to know this Shitgibbon is quaking in fear of the oncoming storm.
1 comment:
Flippity flippity flippity Flynn
Felonious Fergus fails again
The signatures at the bottom of Flynn's charging documents are Zainab Ahmad and Brandon Van Grack.
Which means there is a pile of other charges he failed to receive.
He, and the other indictees, are all formally charged with lying, which is a prosecutorial tactic to squeeze credibility out of witnesses who have a history of lying, by making them admit to and take responsibility for their previous lies.
We'll see whether or not it works with them, but it's worth noting that the team using the tactic has a long and storied history of putting criminals away with it.
-Doug in Oakland
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