Gregg Jarrett: FBI coerced Flynn to cop a plea, covered it up in a perjury trap
Gregg Jarrett weighs in on new unsealed court documents that show FBI officials and Mueller prosecutors hid exculpatory evidence
If there was ever any question about the dishonesty and corruption that poisoned the case against Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, newly released documents erase all doubt.
For more than three years, the FBI and federal prosecutors concealed exculpatory evidence proving that the retired Army lieutenant general and former National Security Adviser committed no crimes. James Comey’s FBI knew it, and special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors knew it. They didn’t care. An innocent man could be sacrificed.
In their zeal to damage President Trump, Comey and his confederates devised a devious scheme in January of 2017 to target and frame Flynn. After secretly recording his perfectly legal and appropriate telephone conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, it was leaked to the media. This gave FBI assistant director Andrew McCabe an excuse to contact Flynn to discuss what the press was reporting. It was a clever artifice.
GREGG JARRETT: NEW EVIDENCE ON MICHAEL FLYNN — DROP ALL CHARGES AND LET HIM SUE HIS PERSECUTORS
It is well established that McCabe deceived Flynn about the true purpose of the call, convincing him to allow two FBI agents to drop by the White House for an innocuous chat. The perjury trap was set.
The documents made public on Wednesday exposed the underlying "goal" behind the visit with Flynn: "to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired."
Let’s think about that for a moment. Since when is it the business of the FBI to get a person fired? Is it the job of the bureau to get people to lie so that they can be charged with the crime of lying? Can officials simply invent or create a crime extemporaneously?
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The answer to all these questions is a resounding "no!"
The unsealed smoking gun notes demonstrate how the FBI covertly weaponized their power for political reasons. It is obvious that they didn’t care about the Flynn-Kislyak discussion itself. They saw it as a golden opportunity — a vehicle to wound Trump a mere four days into his presidency. Comey later bragged to a televised audience about how they’d snookered the incoming administration and violated protocols when they set the trap.
The new documents also expose how FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page plotted a way to circumvent agency policy designed to protect Flynn’s constitutional rights. Shockingly, emails show that neither Strzok nor Page even understood the policy they were determined to break.
Despite all of their scheming and calculating, the perjury trap failed miserably. Flynn told the truth. As noted in my last column, the subsequent FBI report stated that Flynn gave no indication of deception It concluded that "Strzok and (redacted FBI agent) both had the impression at the time that Flynn was not lying or did not think he was lying."
Flynn’s only crime was going to work for President Trump. He became an unwitting pawn in the FBI’s quest to find evidence of a nonexistent "collusion" conspiracy with Russia to steal the 2016 election.
But truth and honesty were alien concepts to special counsel Robert Mueller’s team of ruthless prosecutors. Utilizing the full force of the federal government and its unlimited resources, they intimidated and bullied Flynn into pleading guilty to a crime they knew he did not commit.
All of the exculpatory evidence of his innocence was suppressed and concealed. The Mueller team, according to Flynn, threatened to prosecute his son unless the father capitulated to their demands. That aspect of his coerced plea was also hidden from the court when Flynn finally threw in the towel. Destroyed financially, he was forced to sell his home.
Flynn’s only crime was going to work for President Trump. He became an unwitting pawn in the FBI’s quest to find evidence of a nonexistent "collusion" conspiracy with Russia to steal the 2016 election. It turned out to be the greatest mass delusion in American political history.
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More documents are expected to be unsealed in the Flynn matter. But enough is known already that the federal judge presiding over the case should, in the interest of justice, vacate the forced guilty plea. It will then be incumbent on the Department of Justice to dismiss the case entirely.
All of this exculpatory evidence would have remained buried were it not for the intrepid work of Flynn’s new attorney, Sidney Powell, as well as the decision by Attorney General William Barr to appoint U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Jensen to review the case. Only then did the material surface. Under the law, prosecutors were required to provide it to the defense.
The DOJ should now consider whether crimes were committed by those who obscured the truth. Anyone who corruptly impedes the due administration of law and justice could face potential obstruction of justice charges. Obstruction is a crime against justice itself.
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Current FBI Director Christopher Wray must also face scrutiny. He likely knew about the exculpatory evidence for the last two and a half years yet appears to have done nothing. This is consistent with his other actions dedicated to protecting, at all costs, the FBI’s reputation, which was sullied beyond repair by his predecessor, Comey. Wray should have been fired long ago,
The treatment of Gen. Michael Flynn is a cautionary tale of the danger to all Americans. If the people we entrust to enforce and uphold the law are capable of persecuting an innocent three-star general while covering up their mendacious acts, imagine what they can do to any of us.