The case of Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s short-lived first national security adviser, appeared to have finally resolved itself legally with the dismissal by the Justice Department of charges that he lied to the FBI during the bogus “Russian collusion” investigation.
Realizing that a coerced confession (Flynn pleaded guilty after the feds threatened to go after his son as well) couldn’t hold up in court, and provided with fresh evidence that Flynn had been illicitly targeted by rogue elements in the FBI as a political act, Attorney General William Barr threw the case out.
And then federal district court Judge Emmet Sullivan dropped the other shoe.
Since Flynn had pleaded guilty and was awaiting sentencing, the law requires that the presiding judge must grant the “leave of the court” to accept the Department of Justice’s decision to drop the case and thus end Flynn’s nightmare. But Sullivan, a Clinton appointee to the federal bench, has chosen to prolong the process by signaling that he will allow amicus briefs from interested parties (read: Democrats) “at the appropriate time.”
Normally, the judge grants his leave as a pro forma step—after all, the dispute is between government prosecutors and the defendant; judges are supposed to be impartial. But the Flynn case has once again laid bare the fault lines in the American political system, with the left clamoring (as usual) for judicial intervention into all aspects of our lives.
From the moment Trump won the election, the “resistance”—Democrats, turncoat Republicans, and the overwhelming majority of journalists—has fought a house-to-house battle against him on every front, the political equivalent of Stalingrad or Berlin. In the teeth of the panic of the CCP virus, the president needed a moral victory, and he got one.
But the Flynn case isn’t just another skirmish in the never-ending war for the soul of America. It is, in fact, the “fons et origo” of the attempted coup by elements of the Obama administration (likely including the former president himself), senior Democrat officeholders, the FBI, and the broader intelligence community, especially the CIA.
Sore Losers
Coups are nothing new to Democrats, the original sore losers — what was the Civil War but the rejection by Southern Democrats of the first Republican president in the election of 1860? Four years later, the “peace Democrats” ran one of Lincoln’s sacked generals, George McClellan, against Honest Abe. A month after his second inauguration, Lincoln was assassinated by a Maryland Democrat, which led to the installation of Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, as the nation’s chief executive—and delayed Reconstruction for four long years.Democrat chicanery in 1960 was the margin of victory for John F. Kennedy, thanks to his corrupt father’s cozy relationship with the gangsters and machine pols of Mayor Daley’s Chicago. Nixon’s 49–1 state landslide victory in 1972 was erased two years later when he was forced to resign during the media-driven hullabaloo over the Watergate burglary. With Nixon’s combative (but crooked) Vice President Spiro Agnew already gone, the man the Democrats had dubbed “Tricky Dick” was replaced by the bumbling Gerald Ford, a Michigan congressman who had never stood in a national election, and who lost to Jimmy Carter in 1976.
More recently, the Al Gore Democrats refused to concede the tight 2000 election and fought a rear-guard “recount” action for months until the Supreme Court put a stop to it, cementing George W. Bush’s narrow but certified victory. Following in Gore’s dog-in-the-manger footsteps, Hillary Clinton similarly refused to concede after her shocking loss to Trump in 2016; just as the Democrats and their media buddies are now pressuring Sullivan to refuse Barr’s request to drop the case, four years ago they leaned on the members of the Electoral College to try to throw the election to Hillary.
Dysfunctional Intelligence Community
And this is where Flynn comes back in. As Obama’s choice to head the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2012, Flynn was a burr under Obama’s saddle, refusing to understate the Islamic threat as Team Obama worked on the Iran nuclear giveaway “deal.” Flynn was fired in 2014, having earned Obama’s undying hostility, so much so that the former president specifically counseled his successor not to hire Flynn just two days after the November election.But Trump hired Flynn anyway, thus putting the former Army lieutenant general squarely in the crosshairs of the outgoing administration and its allies in the spy agencies. Remember when Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in Obama’s waning days, “Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community—they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” Now we know what he meant.
To date, most of the focus has been on the activities of the erratic James Comey and his nasty henchmen at the FBI. Flynn, however, posed no danger to them. His real enemies were CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (one of Flynn’s predecessors at the Defense Intelligence Agency). What transpired among them we may never know, but we do know this:
Between 2009 and 2013, the CIA saw whole networks of spies rolled up around the world when its secret international communications system was penetrated, first in or by Iran (with whom the Obamanauts were starting to parlay) and then in China, forcing the agency to scramble to contain the damage. During that period, there were no less than five CIA directors, either confirmed or acting, starting with Leon Panetta, passing through David Petraeus, and ending with Brennan. And the media calls the Trump administration “chaotic.”
Then again, it was an easy lift, since the CIA has mishandled or outright missed everything from the Bay of Pigs to the toppling of the Shah to the fall of the Berlin Wall to the collapse of the Soviet Union. So why should we have expected it could keep tabs on China as well?
Flynn no doubt was sounding the alarm on the dysfunctional nature of our IC when he was canned by Obama. Comey, Clapper, Brennan, et al. couldn’t countenance his return as the White House’s eyes and ears in the “wilderness of mirrors.” So he had to go.
Whether and in which capacity Trump brings him back into the fold remains to be seen. The current national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, is highly regarded in Washington, while the jury is still out on CIA Director Gina Haspel, an agency lifer. Firing swamp creature Christopher Wray at the FBI and replacing him with Flynn would be poetic justice. The bureau needs a cop, not a lawyer, but a decorated Army general with a strong intelligence background might be even better.
The country needs to know that “our democracy” (as the Democrats like to say, even though we are a republic) is safe from shenanigans like this. The sanctimonious scoundrels who launched this mess—not just “Russian collusion” but the ridiculous Ukrainian impeachment hoax, need to be identified, publicly shamed, stripped of rank and retirement, and sent to prison. Only then can we be assured that not only do elections mean something, they have consequences, too.
For Sullivan to follow protocol and close out the Flynn case without further delay would be a good start.
