Anyone remember Michael Flynn? Come on – shake the fumes of Corona-panic out of your head; you remember: lieutenant general, president-elect Trump’s National Security Advisor for about 15 minutes before the FBI went after him for perjury. Awaiting sentencing since 2017.
Ring any bells? It should, because it seems now that his verdict may be set aside due to prosecutorial misconduct.
Yep, you heard that right. The outgoing Obama Administration FBI, who under James Comey and Andrew McCabe went after candidate, then president-elect, and finally, President Donald Trump on a number of fronts has been caught conspiring to frame a member of the Trump transition team. Again.
The latest shower of sewage to hit the public comes courtesy of the yeoman work done by Sidney Powell, general Flynn’s lawyer for the past two years. Through dogged work and judicious use of case filings, she has now forced into the light memos, text messages and handwritten notes that show how thoroughly rotten the leadership of America’s premier law enforcement agency had become by the time Donald Trump was inaugurated – and how corrupt it remained thereafter.
Taken in bulk these documents and their predecessors make hideous and blood-curdling reading. The nation’s highest law enforcement officials including FBI Director Comey, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Chief of Counterespionage Peter Strzok and others conspired to entrap general Flynn in a bogus perjury charge, and thereafter sought to force him to commit more perjury for them, against others in the Trump administration. These high officials and Federal prosecutors in the case threatened prosecution of Flynn’s son to coerce a confession; they made a corrupt bargain in secret with his attorneys at the time, and concealed all of this from the judge in the case. Prosecutors working on Flynn’s case also lied to the court in this and other cases, and FBI leadership, including Comey and McCabe perjured themselves before the Foreign Intelligence Service Act court, which is ex parte and therefore without the usual protections of law and procedure for the accused.
By now, you should be chewing on the screen. Doing what they did, Comey, McCabe, Strzok and others we might be able to name if given time to think struck directly at the heart of our country. The United States is founded in large part on the principle that the law applies equally to all, and that we are, to use John Adams’ elegant phrase, “A nation of laws, not men.” By their actions these odious officials and others who served the same cause turned that phrase on its head; the jury remains out on whether we can put things right again.
The worst and most chilling realization about this whole foul business is that they, and many others throughout the Federal bureaucracy, collaborated in these illegal and in the end anti-American actions out of hatred for one man: Donald Trump. They found him personally offensive, so they used the entire apparatus of the Federal government to attack him and to smash those who worked with him.
Make no mistake: the people who framed general Flynn committed serious crimes. They need to spend some time in prison, considering how badly they foreswore their oaths of office and betrayed their country. They should have known better and probably did, making their offenses all the worse. Slammer time for one and all.
As if. After Hillary, we all know that we no longer live in a nation of laws.
And if you are one of the many who are thinking something along the lines of, “Well, so what? Trump’s a boor and a clown. And the people who are on his side are… oh, yeah, ‘irredeemable,’” I’d suggest thinking again.
How would you like to be surveilled in all your communications and activities, 24/7, for months – thanks to secret warrants issued by a secret court? Or be tried by Federal prosecutors who put a figurative gun to the head of your child and tell you that either your confession or their brains will be on the table in thirty seconds? Who tell you that you must commit perjury if you want to see the light of day again? Who lie to the judge repeatedly, conceal exculpatory evidence from the court and connive with those defending you? All because someone with a little power somewhere doesn’t like the way you conduct yourself.
Me, I wouldn’t much like it, but I do find it quite familiar. It’s the stuff of every show trial in every totalitarian state we’ve ever seen. And now it’s here, riding on the bat wings of hate. If you think it’ll be reserved for a selected few, sorry. Human malice is as ubiquitous as its cousins greed and envy; it’ll get around to you eventually. It always does.
Sweet dreams, America.
