There’s a real sense in which it is a crime to obstruct justice even if no underlining crime is ever proven, but it’s certainly a more serious thing to deliberately undermine an investigation if the crime that is the prime focus is discovered and prosecutable. For this reason, it matters a lot whether or not Michael Flynn is charged with criminal offenses because the president of the United States asked the director of the FBI to drop his inquiry into Flynn and then fired the director when he would not.
Were Michael Flynn to be cleared of all wrongdoing, we might not consider Trump’s interference a high crime or misdemeanor even if it is a crime of some sort. On the other hand, if it looks like Trump tried to prevent justice from being obtained for actual crimes, that’s obstruction however you want to define it.
Therefore, the worse things are for Flynn, the worse they will be for Trump. If he can say that he was right all along that Flynn is innocent and shouldn’t be harassed, that will benefit him politically and in the eyes of Congress. But if Flynn is slapped with a long list of indictments, it’s going to make Trump look like a coconspirator. His best defense at that point will be that he is actually a dope and a fool rather than a witting participant in a series of criminal acts. And that’s not a great look for a president.
But, of course, there’s a third possibility that’s even worse for the president, and that seems to be what we’re about to see unfold.
Lawyers for Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, notified the president’s legal team in recent days that they could no longer discuss the special counsel’s investigation, according to four people involved in the case — an indication that Mr. Flynn is cooperating with prosecutors or negotiating a deal.
Mr. Flynn’s lawyers had been sharing information with Mr. Trump’s lawyers about the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is examining whether anyone around Mr. Trump was involved in Russian efforts to undermine Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
That agreement has been terminated, the four people said. Defense lawyers frequently share information during investigations, but they must stop when doing so would pose a conflict of interest. It is unethical for lawyers to work together when one client is cooperating with prosecutors and another is still under investigation.
The notification alone does not prove that Mr. Flynn is cooperating with Mr. Mueller. Some lawyers withdraw from information-sharing arrangements as soon as they begin negotiating with prosecutors. And such negotiations sometimes fall apart.
Still, the notification led Mr. Trump’s lawyers to believe that Mr. Flynn — who, along with his son, is seen as having significant criminal exposure — has, at the least, begun discussions with Mr. Mueller about cooperating.
Michael Flynn has so much criminal exposure it’s almost ridiculous, including things as potentially serious as conspiracy to kidnap, perjury, and obstruction of justice. He has to worry about those charges, plus a long list of problems with disclosure forms involving his lobbying work, background checks, and compliance with military rules and regulations. And he’s reportedly worried that his son will wind up with a lengthy jail term, as well. To significantly reduce all that exposure, he’s going to have to tell a pretty compelling story to Robert Mueller’s prosecutors.
It’s true that plea negotiations could still break down, but they’ve almost certainly begun. The chances are now very high that Flynn will be testifying against the president of the United States and that his testimony will be the basis for a criminal referral of some sort to Congress from the office of the special counsel.
This also has to be of concern to Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, because they’re missing the chance to be the first cooperating witnesses, and are therefore losing the opportunity to reduce the amount of time they’ll be spending in prison.
The floodgates could now open, but even if they don’t it’s beginning to look like a worst-case scenario for Trump. It would be hard enough to try to explain why he fired an FBI director for refusing to drop an investigation of a man now facing a dozen or more indictments. But if that man becomes the star witness against Trump, it will be impossible to defend against the central obstruction of justice charge.
Impeachment is by design a political process with a political definition of what constitutes a removable offense. For that reason, Trump can survive some pretty serious charges, just as Bill Clinton did in the late 1990s. But there are still limits, and a guilty Flynn presents a serious problem. A guilty testifying Flynn could be fatal.
Lulz.
It’s not really so funny for Ukraine. One might even think Manafort is not much liked around there anymore. I don’t know if all his profit making moves are legal but he sure seems to be around when the Russians made their move on Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Nice excuse too – Russian ethnics there needed protection sorta like Hitler and Sudetenland. Plus there was that Russian port that needed protection as well. Amirite?
I still don’t see how you get to impeachment, with a House dominated by a sizeable Republican majority that has by all evidence made the calculation — on the ACA vote, on the tax reform vote — that their best chance for a stable and prosperous future lies in continued support of Trump. Something would have to change that calculation. Some kind of a mass public uprising against Trump? Something like the Jan. 2017 Women’s March? Where would it come from? Who would organize it? Why would the Republicans care? (Not to disrespect the Women’s March, it was impressive by any standard, but it was once-and-done and everybody went home).
If you want to believe, in the face of all previous evidence to the contrary, that the Democrats could actually get themselves together to flip control of the House in Nov. 2018, fine. Let’s go with that for a moment, although it in turn assumes that Mueller has presented enough of his case, gotten enough convictions, as to have an effect in the election. That one doesn’t seem too unreasonable. But then you still need to get 2/3 of the Senate to convict and there’s no way that the Senate will be 2/3 Democratic. Once again, you’re faced with the fact that the Republicans have zero fucks to give.
Your whole impeachment/conviction scenario rests on the premise that there is some body of evidence out there, that only Mueller can discern and expose, that once tried in court will cause everyone’s (specifically a lot of Republican “everyones”) moral compass to finally start pointing in the right direction. But all of that evidence is lying around in plain sight. It increases daily. You and others write and write and write about it and still it changes nothing. You really think that these people will start caring so much more, once Mueller is finally done? You think that they are motivated by truth? By patriotism? By honor? There might be some who are, and they are easy to spot: they’re the ones who are resigning. They see where things are headed and they’re cashing out. They don’t want to vote against Trump. You’re pinning your hopes on the remainder.
The only way you get to impeachment is if the GOP decides it is politically cheaper to dump Trump than to defend him. That actually happened with Nixon, who was a LOT more popular than Trump ever dreamed of being. Nixon won re-election with 60.7% of the vote to 37.5%. Trump actually lost the popular vote by 3%.
But, there wasn’t a Fox News in 1972. That’s the difference. If Fox News was a normal functioning conservative news organization, like CNN or MSNBC or CBS then there would be no crisis. Trump would never have been elected, and a Trump could easily be removed from office. Today, that’s impossible because you can’t break through the bubble of alternative reality the right wing has erected to protect itself.
Right now, the entire rest of the country would have to come together against Trump and force a break in the ranks of the GOP. In short it would require a total GOP split.
That will happen as soon as enough Republican voters conclude that they can be conservatives without Trump. I’m not terribly optimistic that can happen in 1 year, but we’ll certainly see a lot of pressure on the GOP to crack. Whether they can withstand that pressure is an open question.
I don’t understand how you think there is not a real movement in the country right now and that the women’s march was just a blip in history. The women (and men) who attended that march went home enraged, engaged, and got involved in their local politics. Did you not see the election results from earlier this month? Not only in VA and NJ, but across the country was a clear sign that people, especially Democrats, are fed-up and are coming-out to vote. Even at the local level there were major flips all over the place. In the Philadelphia suburbs where I live, Collegeville Borough and Upper Providence Townships, two Republican strongholds, both flipped to give Democrats control. This happened everywhere, in a very off-year election, when Dems typically underperform.
Ironically, the GOP has a greater likelihood of impeaching Trump than the Dems do and more to gain.
Dems will use “the resistance” with the promise of impeaching Trump to their advantage in the 2018 election, possibly re-gaining the house and potentially the senate – still not enough to fully impeach but they can drag the Trump team through countless Benghazi-style hearings for everything from emoluments through Russia to the point where his reputation will be so tainted that he’ll wish he had resigned. The GOP will see this is a fair quid pro quo since 1) they don’t like Trump anyway, 2) will suddenly become deficit hawks and make the Dems cut entitlements to pay for their stupid tax cuts, and 3) the tax cuts they pass will likely cause another recession with Dems left holding the bag again. Just in time or the GOP to win the elections in 2020 and control redistricting for another 10 years.
The GOP will only impeach if they realize that Trump is preventing them from getting their agenda accomplished and/or if they keep losing seats. A win for Doug Jones in Alabama would not only send a clear message to the GOP but also make the margin of error that much smaller for McConnell and Ryan. If they cannot get their tax cuts through, then they have failed their donors and will be truly fucked as they get cut-off from funding and likely primaried. So, they will turn on Trump and blame him for their ineptitude.
Now, if Mueller has clear evidence to the American public that Trump is a traitor and committed treason by conspiring against the United States’ election with Russia, then you’ll likely see Trump claim to have dementia and will resign before the facts come out. If he digs his heels in and Mueller proceeds, then I think you’ll see massive marches that dwarf the Women’s march and both sides will come together in an act of Patriotism that we haven’t seen since 9/11.
I like your optimism. But for now I can’t see it. I think a lot depends on the tax cuts and Obamacare repeal. Failing that, Trump will lose support, but that failure is a heavy lift. This thing seems locked and loaded. It may not happen next week as some see it, but I think it will happen. Maybe a Jones victory will change it, but there are Blue Dog democrats who could vote for it, although I don’t think so without more changes.
Even if the House flips and Trump is impeached, he won’t be convicted short of treason. It is possible he will give it up or the party elders will have a heart to heart with him.
Trump and friends will likely come after SSMM after the tax cuts to reduce the deficit. If successful in that or other substantial cuts we will see a recession.
Unless Trump just decides “Screw it! This is ridiculous! I’m pardoning EVERYBODY! Starting with Flynn, Manafort, Ivanka, and my idiot sons. Let’s just clear the decks and fight this thing out!”
What if he does that? What is your special prosecutor going to do now? Nobody will cooperate, because they’ve all been pardoned. The mainstream media, and the Democrats will howl about another Constitutional crisis, but if Republicans just close down all avenues of inquiry, what can Democrats do?
There’s only one thing at that point. Vow that if they seize control over Congress they will re-open all the machinery to investigate Trump.
But, then nothing happens until January 2019, and in the meantime everything becomes political. The GOP gets to rally their idiot base into a white hot frenzy for 1 year, and everybody else gets sick and disgusted with an impacted political process that can’t even remove an openly corrupt and evil Administration.
The only thing that will sink Trump is playing by the rules. If he just goes open Putin, and defies everybody and turns it into a black and white referendum on right-versus-left, men versus women, white versus black, and rural versus “them” he might just win.
Even if he loses, at what cost to democracy in America that he just destroys every norm that used to govern official conduct? We’ve seen what happens in other countries when the political system cannot encompass the level of class/regional/ideological conflict. Things break down in society and you wind up with something like Lebanon.
The response to pardons has already been telegraphed. They file state charges, to which Presidential pardons do not apply. I’m not sure how much this applies to Flynn, though, as a lot of his violations seem specifically federal.
Mueller needs to be careful because there are double jeopardy laws in some states including New York that would prevent prosecution on charges that have been pardoned at the Federal level.
I expect that a lot of stuff that can be prosecuted in New York will not be charged by Mueller. The Mueller investigation appears to be sharing information with the NY AG, though.
Good point, although I assume Trump would want a preemptive pardon, Gerald Ford style. I can’t see how double jeopardy could apply before an indictment, and I’m skeptical it could be triggered by a case that was never concluded. If that’s true, Trump would have to wait for convictions and then pardon to be protected by double jeopardy. That requires patience and toleration of the humiliation of what the conviction reveals, and Trump is very short on both patience and humility, so we’ll see.
At this point in time a pardon is not the way forward for the Flynns. What ever Mueller knows and the Flynns have told him will appear in the indictment. The Flynns will look like liars, fools, or maybe a pair of Benedict
Arnolds and a pardon would leave them no way to defend themselves. A pardon could lead to a leak of the stupid illegal stuff the Flynns did and again no way to defend. Their best bet is to make a deal which will limit what charges are make public and keeps them out of court having to testify. Flynn wants a life after the donald.
While I am sure Flynn wants a life, but no matter the result, pardon, deal, or conviction,….or even acquittal, his reputation is done. He may have a ‘life’, in that he (maybe) and his son are walking free, and his son can Twitter away, but the ‘life’ he really wants, of wealth and respect, is gone forever. He has a military reputation that is in tatters, and it will be worse a year from now.
No reputable company or person will touch him.
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Got that right. He is a piece of trash from what already has been revealed. He is a man without honor and for a military man that really hurts. Lots of fishing in his future or maybe bars.
No way he walks completely free. Mueller has leverage…the son. The son walks, the father does time.
That’s why the negotiations. If both walked free, it would be a done deal. They’re negotiating how much time.
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I’m worried that this could be fire Mueller time. Yeah, New York could pick up the ball, but some of these offenses – being a foreign agent, etc. – seem specifically federal.
I’m thinking that Flynn is actually under six investigations, several that are outside Mueller’s and Congress. If Sr & Jr shared lawyers, which seems stupid but can’t rule out stupid, then this could be a double whammy where Jr has also flipped and he may have stories to tell of lower Trump minions as well.
Sure love to see one of Mueller’s murder boards.
Ya, those boards must be amazing.
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