Flynn Walks

[_EAllusion]

Flynn was, in violation of the law, an unregistered foreign agent who was plotting to kidnap an American citizen to hand him over to a murderous dictator who was paying him off to do so.

Ajax - He did nothing wrong.

When Mike Pence was saying that Flynn lied to him to distance himself from the Washington Post story about Flynn's lies regarding his Russian contacts, was Mike Pence lying? Who is the liar here?

Hey, Ajax, since you are totally consistent here, you'll be calling for the federal prisons to release anyone else who is in prison on charges related to lying to the FBI, correct? Since this isn't a one-time exception to the law being made for a made-man, right?

[_ajax18]

Flynn was, in violation of the law, an unregistered foreign agent who was plotting to kidnap an American citizen to hand him over to a murderous dictator who was paying him off to do so.

Do you think that's what the FBI was concerned about? Or were they just fishing for leverage on someone who could help them incriminate the president for an unrelated matter?

[_EAllusion]

[quote=EAllusion post_id=1223958 time=1588946282 user_id=1078]
Trump went on Fox and Friends and was much more explicit, post Flynn jail-break, about going after Obama show-trial style. That's an escalation in rhetoric.

If Trump is reelected, or "reelected," there's a non-trivial chance Obama's going to prison.
[/quote]

After this, Trump took to Twitter and vaguely alluded to it as well.

There's also noticeable change in messaging on this already:

https://Twitter.com/atrupar/status/1258795931098476546

The thirst for going after Obama is palpable. I'd bet whether it happens is probably gonna come down to political calculation. 

When Trump was first elected there were a number of thinkpieces written about authoritarian collapse from people with expertise on other nations (Russia, Turkey...) meant to serve as both a warning and advise on how to combat it. Things have played out almost exactly as pessimistic predictions said they would.

[_subgenius]

...Things have played out almost exactly as pessimistic predictions said they would.

CFR

[_ajax18]

If Trump is reelected, or "reelected," there's a non-trivial chance Obama's going to prison.

Welcome to the age of criminalizing political opinion. What goes around comes back around. Whoever the next Democrat president may be will be impeached as well.

[_EAllusion]

That did not happen in Trump's case. It's a fiction invented by propaganda specifically meant to justify exonerating accomplices and punishing political opposition. It's exactly what happens in despotic countries.

[_EAllusion]

Here's a leaked (maybe intentionally leaked?) call between Obama and his inner circle discussing, in his cautious, highfalutin way, his fear that rule of law is dying in America possibly leading to a rapid fall of its governmental system. 

https://news.yahoo.com/obama-irule-of-l ... 21045.html

That Obama, who is one of the more brilliant orators in the country when he sets his mind to it, can't communicate this clearly to the public using the vast media platform he'd have if he wanted it because he thinks that's beyond his role is such a perfect distillation of who he is and Democratic failures.

[_honorentheos]

I thought David Brooks hit the right sense of the issue, from all angles:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/shiel ... c-response

David Brooks:

Yes, there are a couple things true here.

The first is that Flynn confessed, so he pleaded guilty, so I take him at his word that he lied.

The second thing is that the Justice Department has become a hyperpartisan institution, and we can't have faith in its judgments.

The third thing, though, is that the FBI might have screwed up here. The journalist Eli Lake of Bloomberg, who is a good journalist, has been making this argument for several months now.

And the documents that have come out seem to clear with Lake's longtime argument, which was that the original investigation into Flynn by the FBI did not reveal anything, and they kept the investigation open. They at least considered the possibility they were keeping the investigation open not to convict him of something, but to induce him to lie.

And so I don't know how to balance these two facts. I don't, myself, have the expertise to say whether the FBI really screwed up the investigation, whether they were really trying to hound him out of the job, but it's at least a possibility.

And it's — the problem — the core problem is here we don't have a set of authorities who we could completely trust on this. And, frankly, I have been trying to find news organizations who really give an expert opinion on the FBI's behavior. And I have — I have had trouble getting to the bottom of that, just as a journalistic outsider.

[_Icarus]

People seem to be forgetting that Flynn not only admitted to lying to the FBI (the crime for which he pled guilty and DOJ is now undoing), but he also admitted to making false statements in his FARA filings about work for Turkey. He escaped charges for that as part of his plea.

[_ajax18]

People seem to be forgetting that Flynn not only admitted to lying to the FBI

Only after the FBI threatened to incarcerate his family and Flynn no longer had the funds to fight them legally.

The second thing is that the Justice Department has become a hyperpartisan institution, and we can't have faith in its judgments.

Democrats will start to understand this when they see Obama in a striped jump suit, a chainlink belt, laceless shower slippers, and handcuffs. Until then, they will continue to unapologetically use the liberal appointees from the deep state to attempt to reverse the results of the 2016 election by any means necessary.