I obviously don’t know if it’s true that Michael Flynn has flipped on Donald Trump, nor do I really know what evidence he could provide if he decided to spill the beans. But I have noticed that he’s gone completely quiet. I still see people like Roger Stone and Carter Page mouthing off on a regular basis, but Flynn seems to have vanished.
He faces the prospect of being charged with many of the same crimes that have been leveled against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, but he hasn’t been charged with anything so far unless those charges are under seal and we simply don’t know about them yet. That’s what happened with George Papadopoulos who was arrested at Washington-Dulles International Airport on July 27 and pled guilty on October 5th. We didn’t learn about any of that until the day before Halloween.
One thing to keep in mind is that Flynn was much more of a direct cause of the Russia investigation and the Special Counsel than Manafort. The FBI went to Trump almost as soon as he was inaugurated and told him that his National Security Adviser was a national security risk who was subject to Russian blackmail. He’s probably been the highest priority subject of the counterespionage and counterintelligence investigation from the beginning, both because of his former position as the Director of Defense Intelligence and because he was known to be buddying up to Vladimir Putin and communicating with the Russian ambassador. When Trump put him in charge of our national security, that was a bridge too far for the Intelligence Community, and they’d like to prove that their fears were justified.
So, for all these reasons, it was a little surprising to see Manafort charged before Flynn. And the explanation could be as simple as the fact that Manafort wouldn’t cooperate but Flynn did.
I don’t expect it to take to much longer before we get some news on this front.
