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Michael Flynn charged

Ken White of Popehat, a former federal prosecutor turned defense attorney, offered some advice a while back: If the FBI is asking you questions about something specific, they probably already know the answer and are seeing if you will lie. Then they've got you.
 
theprestige said:
Actually I assume that he did cut a deal. I just question your premise that it must have been a yuuuge deal.
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LTC8K6 said:
Sounds weak to me, he was the incoming NSA and would be expected to be contacting foreign governments.
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https://twitter.com/OrinKerr/status/936646085543694337
Judge Napolitano on @FoxNews right now about the Flynn charges: "This is probably the tip of a prosecutorial iceberg. This is a nightmare for Donald Trump."

The consensus, even on fox news, is this is yuuuge.
 
LTC8K6 said:
Contacting Russia about the sanctions during the transition seems normal to me.
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Flynn apparently didn't think so, or else he wouldn't have felt the need to lie to the FBI about it. That could mean the contact was either not normal or not about the sanctions.
 
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LTC8K6 said:
Someone might correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the U.S. has laws against non-government people negotiating with foreign governments on its behalf. Since Trump hadn't been sworn in yet, he had no legal authority to initiate any contacts with Russia about sanctions, military cooperation, or any sort of economic or diplomatic matters.
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Sounds weak to me, he was the incoming NSA and would be expected to be contacting foreign governments.
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If you think the law is bad, then write your congress-critter to ask them to change it.

Until then, Flynn probably broke the law. (I'm saying "probably" because even if he did, it would have to be proven in the courts.)
I doubt the Logan Act ever even came up...
Why the doubt?

Looks like the plan is for Flynn to plead guilty. Often such deals are based on dropping some charges in exchange for a guilty plea. Flynn may have broken the Logan act. Makes sense that it would be one of the charges that would be dropped to obtain a guilty plea.
 
They had already listened to and investigated Flynn's calls a while ago with respect to "collusion", and found none. Presumably they found Flynn lying to the FBI about those calls around the time this article came out, late January. They did not charge Flynn with a Logan Act violation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...83879a-e1ae-11e6-a547-5fb9411d332c_story.html

FBI reviewed Flynn’s calls with Russian ambassador but found nothing illicit
 
LTC8K6 said:
I just don't see this being yuuuge or going anywhere.

I think Flynn is the end of this tunnel.
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OK. And I see you have backed up your opinion with ... ??

IOW - why should I give your opinion a second glance over all the legal professionals claiming this is yuuuge ?
 
LTC8K6 said:
I just don't see this being yuuuge or going anywhere.
I think Flynn is the end of this tunnel.
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Did you think that when Mueller started his investigation?

How about after Manafort and company were charged?

Will this be a case of the ever-expanding tunnel, where after every charge, you claim "Ok, NOW that's the end"?

We still have Trump Jr. and his "We met with Russians about adoptions but I still thought we'd get dirt on Hillary". And we still have Kushner and his invitation to Wikileaks. So looks like there's still plenty of fertile ground for investigation.
 
LTC8K6 said:
They had already listened to and investigated Flynn's calls a while ago with respect to "collusion", and found none. Presumably they found Flynn lying to the FBI about those calls around the time this article came out, late January. They did not charge Flynn with a Logan Act violation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...83879a-e1ae-11e6-a547-5fb9411d332c_story.html

FBI reviewed Flynn’s calls with Russian ambassador but found nothing illicit
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You're missing the point. This isn't necessarily about what Flynn did, but what Flynn knows.

Remember, this is all taking place within a much larger investigation. If the FBI could charge Flynn with lying to them all the way back in January, and that was all they had, we probably wouldn't be hearing about the official charge over 10 months later. They likely used that time to get more out of him than we're currently aware of.
 
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Segnosaur said:
If you think the law is bad, then write your congress-critter to ask them to change it.

Until then, Flynn probably broke the law. (I'm saying "probably" because even if he did, it would have to be proven in the courts.)
I doubt the Logan Act ever even came up...
Why the doubt?

Looks like the plan is for Flynn to plead guilty. Often such deals are based on dropping some charges in exchange for a guilty plea. Flynn may have broken the Logan act. Makes sense that it would be one of the charges that would be dropped to obtain a guilty plea.
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It's a very gray area because Flynn can say that he believed he had governmental authorization to make the contacts, since an incoming admin official directed him. The Act is specifically about contacts without authorization.

It's not clear at all and would be a very shaky prosecution, imo.
 
theprestige said:
It's kind of like poker, though, isn't it? Everybody has incomplete information. You know what cards you hold. You know what cards are on the table. You may have some idea of the cards the other guy holds, but without knowing for sure, you have to weigh risk and reward.
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It's a lot like poker. Except he knows more about what the other side could have than the average poker player.

If he is completely innocent, that would be like knowing that the other player can't have any face cards or aces. And yet he is playing like a guy with a bad hand.

Folding his pair of eights is a pretty good tell that he knows there are higher cards in the deck, and the other player likely has a few of them.
 
Cl1mh4224rd said:
You're missing the point. This isn't necessarily about what Flynn did, but what Flynn knows.

If the FBI could charge Flynn with lying to them all the way back in January, we probably wouldn't be hearing about the official charge over 10 months later. They likely used that time to get way more out of him than we're currently aware of.
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Mueller was appointed in May.

The FBI interviews in question were in January regarding Flynn's calls and election collusion. Long before Mueller was appointed. This was a separate FBI investigation of collusion that did not result in any collusion or Logan Act charges.
 
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theprestige said:
Actually I assume that he did cut a deal. I just question your premise that it must have been a yuuuge deal.
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Not just me:

Napolitano said the potential penalty on a charge of lying to the FBI is minimal compared to the 60 or so years Flynn could have faced on other allegations.

"With his guilty plea, he's reduced that to somewhere between six and 12 months. That is an enormous, gargantuan, monumental reduction. That doesn't come easily and it doesn't come for free
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