Commentary
President Donald Trump surprised everyone on March 15 by suddenly tweeting about a potential “full pardon” for his former national security adviser, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.The country is currently in the midst of a serious national emergency caused by the CCP virus, so plenty of voices have been yelling that Trump needs to be focusing on that instead of on Flynn’s case. One such example was a tweet by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).
The chief reason for the commotion is this, however: For more than three years, Flynn’s scalp hanging from the belt of Robert Mueller’s special counsel team has been considered a huge trophy in both the Democrats’ and the mainstream media’s war against the current president.
The sudden introduction of the idea that Flynn might not be “scalped” after all would be a most bitter pill for the “The Trump Resistance” to swallow.
But the “official story” of how Flynn’s scalp came to be taken has raised many serious questions since he entered his guilty plea in the courtroom of Judge Rudolph Contreras on Dec. 1, 2017. Very serious accusations of official misconduct by key Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI people involved in his case have been leveled, based on publicly available evidence.
We knew very little about Spygate on Dec. 1, 2017, the day Flynn entered that guilty plea in Contreras’s courtroom. That is no longer the case in March of 2020.
We’ve since learned much about the FBI’s use of media contacts to sow strategic leaks in the national news targeting Flynn as a key part of the Russiagate hoax. This forced the general’s resignation as Trump’s NSA.
These same strategic leaks were used to instigate a perjury investigation against Flynn, which culminated in the FBI handing off its case to Mueller’s special counsel’s office. The prosecutors moved so quickly to secure a plea bargain with Flynn’s former lawyers that no official indictment was ever made in this case.
The next development that is being awaited in this long-running fiasco of a case is for Judge Emmet Sullivan to decide if the general can withdraw his plea of guilty.
One of two things is going to happen:
- Sullivan doesn’t allow Flynn to withdraw his guilty plea and proceeds to sentence him, meaning Flynn will then be a convicted felon, instantly eligible for the full presidential pardon that Trump is considering.
- Or Sullivan allows Flynn to withdraw the plea, and then it would be up to lead prosecutor Brandon Van Grack to make a decision as to whether proceed.
But Van Grack is well aware of what happens if this case goes to trial: Flynn’s lead defense counsel, Sidney Powell, would make him put James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Stzrok, and Lisa Page on the witness stand.
And Powell wouldn’t stop there. She would also insist on calling to the stand the second agent who was present for the Jan. 24, 2017, interview with Flynn at the White House.
Van Grack would have to produce FBI Special Agent Joseph Pientka.
That would represent a massive problem for Van Grack, because the main players who built the perjury case against Flynn are currently themselves key targets in a federal criminal investigation being run out of the DOJ by U.S. Attorney John Durham.
Many of the same former FBI personnel weren’t just involved in the creation of the perjury case against Flynn, but also in the FISA Court abuses related to the Carter Page warrant and its renewals.
My current take is that if Sullivan allows the withdrawal of the guilty plea, Van Grack is going to immediately move to dismiss the case rather than to attempt to get a conviction.
That’s why the Mueller prosecutors are seeking to delay everything until after they see what Durham and his investigative team has found and collected during their investigation into Russiagate’s origins.
The more we find out about these dirty cops, the worse they look and the better Flynn looks. And it’s not just Flynn; it’s the same for all the other people targeted during this ever-growing Spygate scandal.
That’s not an accident or a lucky coincidence. It’s a very revealing trend.
Brian Cates is a writer based in South Texas and the author of “Nobody Asked For My Opinion … But Here It Is Anyway!” He can be reached on Twitter @drawandstrike.
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