Michael Flynn Was Right Before He Was Wrong
The press has completely overlooked the key question in the Michael Flynn story enmeshed as the media is in the “Fog of Law.” Trump’s first National Security Advisor did nothing wrong until he lied about what he did right. That has now been obscured by a miasma of legal mumbo jumbo concerning Flynn’s unobjectionable and even understandable pre-inauguration call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak where Flynn, according to a May 19, 2020 Washington Post editorial, told the Russian “we’ll review everything.”
Flynn then lied about that conversation to the FBI when not under oath and then lied to Vice President Mike Pence. The lies were unconscionable. Flynn should be penalized for lying.
But why did he lie? He didn’t do anything wrong.
First of all, an incoming national security advisor to a brand-new U.S. administration SHOULD be talking to top officials of foreign powers prior to formally taking office. It is called “getting a head start.” And in the area of national defense, it made perfectly good sense for Flynn to understand what issues he and Trump would be dealing with in just a few days. Moreover, that the Trump administration would “review” what the Obama administration had done, whether specifically mentioning Obama’s kicking out of Russian officials implicated in Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election or anything else, was a foregone conclusion in any case. Any new administration reviews what the predecessor administration has done. Duh!
Lastly, Flynn told the Russian ambassador not to retaliate against Obama’s action. That was a pro-U.S. message. Had Flynn instead told Kislyak to tell his boss Vladimir Putin to kick out U.S. officials stationed in Russian in order to embarrass Obama, that would have been a near treasonous thing to do.
So why did Flynn lie? We don’t know. He hasn’t spoken publicly since…well, forever. The transcript of his conversation with Kislyak has not been released to the public by the National Security Agency. He has not been interviewed by any newspaper or TV news channel. His lawyer has been all over TV but has not answered that question, although other Flynn supporters have hinted that the FBI somehow pressured him to lie, or entrapped him.
Flynn’s argument that he was “entrapped” by the FBI and that the FBI shouldn’t have even questioned him, well, still, that is no excuse for lying. Buck up, man. Just tell the truth. He shouldn’t get off scot free but as is always the case — at least I think it is the case since I am not a legal scholar — any penalty should be cushioned by extenuating circumstances.
Rather than examine the reason for Flynn’s lie, which is the key element in this whole story, the press instead has descended into a legal and political post-lie morass that even a Harvard law school graduate would have trouble understanding. Was Attorney General Bill Barr justified in asking the court for dismissal of the charges? Did the FBI have a good reason to question Flynn, and were his misstatements “material” in a legal sense? You need a weed whacker to get through the legal mumbo jumbo. All this talk of “unmasking” makes me long for the simpler days of the Lone Ranger. No legal hair has been left unsplit.
The Fog of Law obscures the key question in the Flynn saga. We need a good, clean gust of air to dissipate the fog, as long as it is not more hot air.
