The legal rationale was excellent. The FBI had no investigative basis for the interview with Flynn in which he allegedly lied. Moreover, there was significant prosecutorial misconduct.
The FBI had enough investigative basis for two judges to determine that the lies that Flynn told were material and that his guilty plea should be accepted.
The law that Flynn was charged under,
18 USC 1001, only requires that the matter be under the FBI's jurisdiction.
That was from the official FBI investigation files on Flynn which were made public a little more than a week ago. If you haven't read them, you should. The FBI documents unequivocally state that neither they nor other US intelligence agencies had any derogatory (they use that word throughout) information concerning Flynn, nor did they even have any leads going forward. The case was slated to be closed, before Strzok intervened.
I read them, and they don't support the arguments that Flynn's attorneys are trying to make.
The broader "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation was slated to be closed, but not the counterintelligence investigation of Flynn. Normally the White House counsel would have intervened when a senior staff member is being interviewed, but Strzok pointed out that the Trump White House was already a shit show at that point, so they just walked right into a conference room and interviewed Flynn. Again, this isn't anything improper, just incompetence by an administration that has made a name in that arena.
Exactly. The prosecutor withheld key evidence from the defense in defiance of the judge's orders. Clearly any defense would require both the transcript of the call and the original 302 so compairson could be made. The original 302 has also never been made available.
No, I'm talking about transcripts of the call with Kislyak. Judge Sullivan already ruled on Powell's previous motions regarding withholding of evidence. You can guess how that went.
You mentioned earlier that others have already been sent to jail. We don't have the same amount of documentation publicly available in these cases, but I am not alleging misconduct in say, the Manafort trial. Neither is the DoJ. They singled out the Flynn case, because in his case there is evidence of FBI overreach and prosecutorial misconduct.
There is misconduct alright, but it's Barr hand-picking a team of replacement prosecutors to get Flynn's case dismissed. Straight up public corruption, which is why thousands of prosecutors have indicated their dismay in the political interference with this case. It's almost certain that Sullivan would have continued with sentencing under the current facts.
The DOJ's motion to dismiss was so shitty that no career prosecutors would even sign it, so Timothy Shea, an interim US Attorney for District of Colombia signed it instead.
The idea that the DoJ is only getting involved because Flynn is Trump's buddy doesn't hold up well. Trump fired Flynn. The DoJ also hasn't moved to revisit the convictions of Stone or Manafort, nor does it seem like any kind of pardon is coming for them. So there isn't a pattern of the DoJ giving special treatment to Trump associates.
Flynn hires an insider Republican lawyer who wages a massive PR campaign, and then Trump starts tweeting about him positively again. Magically, the winds of change shift through the DOJ, changing out all the people who actually worked the case for political cronies. You don't think that's the least bit suspicious?
And the prosecutors for the Roger Stone case literally resigned due to political interference a few months ago after Barr overrode their sentencing guidelines.
All four Roger Stone prosecutors resign from case after DOJ backpedals on sentencing recommendation
Oof. You really struck out on that attempt.
