1. Welcome! Please take a few seconds to create your free account to post threads, make some friends, remove a few ads while surfing and much more. ClutchFans has been bringing fans together to talk Houston Sports since 1996. Join us!

Mike Flynn...what's the deal?

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by B@ffled, Apr 30, 2020.

  1. Invisible Fan

    Invisible Fan Member

    Joined:
    Dec 5, 2001
    Messages:
    45,954
    Likes Received:
    28,046
    The main issue is that the government marks everything Classified or a State Secret which makes it easier to deny or delay into matters of hearsay. The media can't do much unless there's another Snowden level leak because the courts are deliberately made to be secretive and known by selected members of Congress.

    Trusting the media with what they know in this matter is like buying a puzzle set from Goodwill and putting together half the pieces from different sets. That's how it is and how it's designed to be without transparency. The fact that networks pay former spooks and shills as "Experts" only makes matters worse because they were head spooks by their willingness and ruthlessness to tell a credible lie.

    Obama campaigned for more transparency only to drop it and do a 180. He was so bad about jailing whistleblowers and using Bush era powers to the point where Cheney gloated about it.

    It should be more about reining in the system rather than pointing fingers at the party in power for using powers the people unwittingly granted them. We've been doing the latter for almost 20 years and it only gets worse.
     
  2. NewRoxFan

    NewRoxFan Member

    Joined:
    Feb 22, 2002
    Messages:
    55,794
    Likes Received:
    55,868
  3. jcf

    jcf Member

    Joined:
    Jul 21, 2012
    Messages:
    2,190
    Likes Received:
    2,272
    I’m trying to wrap my head around why someone would lie to the FBI about a phone call if that person believed the FBI likely had a tape of the call. Seems like a profoundly stupid act.

    on the other hand, it doesn’t seem likely that someone would forget discussing sanctions with the Russian ambassador.

    I would love to know exactly what Flynn said to the FBI and whether the discussion of sanctions appears to be the purpose of the communications with the Russian ambassador or something that the ambassador raised.

    judge Sullivan ordered the transcript of the call released publicly a year ago and we still haven’t seen it.
     
    fchowd0311 likes this.
  4. rocketsjudoka

    rocketsjudoka Member

    Joined:
    Jul 24, 2007
    Messages:
    58,166
    Likes Received:
    48,318
    Good post and I agree this is a problem not just for Republicans but for Democrats and this country as a whole. This is one of the areas where I give Trump and Kushner credit for getting Criminal Justice reform passed. It was something that Obama discussed but never was able to get done.

    That said I will repeat again. This is not about justice. I can agree that the FBI were very aggressive in their treatment of Flynn. I can agree they didn't act with the highest standards. Law enforcement at all levels do this yet we see little from those defending Flynn addressing the problem of coerced pleas at other levels. Personally for me I'm less concerned about Flynn because he is someone with resources and connections that the vast majority of suspects have. As we see with the DOJ dropping charges how often does that happen for a low level drug offender? If anything this case rather than upholding justice as many would have you believe just shows how much of a travesty of justice our system is and that the well connected get off.

    I'm also going to point out that if the concern was about out of control aggressive LE going after American citizens consider that many of those same politicians who are thundering about how the FBI went out and spyed on an American citizen just yesterday passed legislation to make it easier for the FBI and NSA to spy on American citizens by seizing search histories without a warrant.
     
    glynch likes this.
  5. glynch

    glynch Member

    Joined:
    Dec 1, 2000
    Messages:
    18,050
    Likes Received:
    3,578
    A great in depth discussion of the whole Flynn affair. Including Obama and Flynn disliking each other intensely from the days Flynn worked in the Obama Administraton and correctly strongly opposed Obama's drone program as overall not helping to prevent terrorism; the whole perjury Flynn entrapment issue over what Glen Greenwald argues what was not not a crime; a discussion of how legal scholars and Judges like RBG and the other liberals on the S. Ct, have argued against lying to FBI per se being a felony and it as just another example of prosecutorial misconduct leading to the innocent pleading guilty; that how a person should be able to say a "disculpatory "no" without commiting a felony perjury see the fearless and incorruptible Glenn Greenwald.
     
    jcf likes this.
  6. dobro1229

    dobro1229 Member

    Joined:
    Feb 16, 2010
    Messages:
    25,669
    Likes Received:
    22,375
    I think the crime "lying to the FBI" needs to be filed as obstruction of justice in the way that collusion is not a crime, but conspiracy to commit a crime is.

    IMO, pleading the 5th is pretty much the same thing as lying by avoiding answering truthfully or at all. However, when you lie in a way that disrupts the justice system or a way that leads to crime being able to be further committed, there's where your problem is where lying can be part of an obstruction case.

    That being said the case with Michael Flynn is much much more detailed than just lying. They picked the lowest offense for him to plead to so he could be motivated to cooperate so the FBI and Mueller's team could have the whole truth to provide resolution to the matter which was a huge issue that needed to be addressed to protect the single most important aspect of our Democracy.... our elections, and potential interference. The context around the lies are what makes it pretty egregious to the justice system (not to mention stupid when they literally were reading him the transcript of the call) not to mention the important work of Mueller to find out what the hell happened to give Congress and the American people truth so we can protect our elections and give guidance to future campaigns on what is or is not allowed behavior during a campaign in regards to collusion with foreign powers.

    And the fact is lying to the FBI is a crime. We can argue all day whether it should be a crime, but the fact is... it is one.
     
  7. jiggyfly

    jiggyfly Member

    Joined:
    Jul 2, 2015
    Messages:
    21,011
    Likes Received:
    16,856
    No he did not.

    Michael Flynn, the former Trump national security adviser who is seeking to withdraw his guilty plea.
     
  8. jiggyfly

    jiggyfly Member

    Joined:
    Jul 2, 2015
    Messages:
    21,011
    Likes Received:
    16,856
    They were surveilling Kislyak not Flynn if you don't even know that you should stop from commenting on the topic.

    So no a criminal warrant was not the only other option, get your facts straight.
     
  9. dobro1229

    dobro1229 Member

    Joined:
    Feb 16, 2010
    Messages:
    25,669
    Likes Received:
    22,375
    Also worth noting that even though the NSA & CIA should always be surveying the Russians pretty much all the time, there was also reasons for them to be doing so which was testified to, and is backed up in the declassified reports. It's clear that the surveillance was designed to anticipate the retaliation that Russia was going to take in response to the sanctions being put on Russia by Obama. It's INCREDIBLY important that the NSA and CIA have the ability to get in front of attacks we know are likely to be coming from a hostile foreign power.

    The Russians could have been plotting a cyber attack such as hacking into the treasury, the IRS, or worse with an assassination attempt which they aren't strangers to plotting obviously. This was incredibly important surveillance given the situation of understanding that the Russians would retaliate to the sanctions.

    What made this strange was that they found out that Russia wasn't going to retaliate which led to discovering why was because there was someone in the US that was strategizing with Kislyak.

    There are far things more important at that time than having intelligence to understand what the Russians were going to do, and understand who the hell is working with them on the retaliation strategy.
     
  10. Commodore

    Commodore Member

    Joined:
    Dec 15, 2007
    Messages:
    33,543
    Likes Received:
    17,505
    Surveillance of Kislyak would require redacting the name of US persons, including Flynn. To protect 4th amendment rights.

    But there were no unmasking requests during the the time period between the Flynn/Kisyak phone call and the WH meeting where Flynn was discussed.

    If Flynn's identity was not revealed through unmasking, how was it determined? IG Horowitz already said there was no FISA warrent for Flynn.

    The scariest thing is not just that Flynn's identity was uncovered without a warrant, but that it was then leaked to the Washington Post. That is an awesome abuse of an awesome power.

    There was a pervasive culture of spying on political enemies (journalists, members of Congress, rival campaigns) in the Obama administration.

     
    cml750 and B@ffled like this.
  11. adoo

    adoo Member

    Joined:
    Mar 1, 2003
    Messages:
    11,785
    Likes Received:
    7,924
    consider the source

    he, like Trump, also propagated the lie that Obama was not born in the USA
     
  12. jiggyfly

    jiggyfly Member

    Joined:
    Jul 2, 2015
    Messages:
    21,011
    Likes Received:
    16,856
    None of this has anything to do with what I said, you are just throwing **** against the wall.
     
    dmoneybangbang likes this.
  13. Commodore

    Commodore Member

    Joined:
    Dec 15, 2007
    Messages:
    33,543
    Likes Received:
    17,505
    Simple question, if names of US citizens must be redacted when conducting surveillance on foreigners like Kislyak, how was Flynn's name revealed?
     
  14. jiggyfly

    jiggyfly Member

    Joined:
    Jul 2, 2015
    Messages:
    21,011
    Likes Received:
    16,856
    It was revealed by unmasking you know something that happens all the time and is currently being done at a much greater level under Trump than Obama.

    What's your point?
     
  15. Commodore

    Commodore Member

    Joined:
    Dec 15, 2007
    Messages:
    33,543
    Likes Received:
    17,505
  16. FranchiseBlade

    Supporting Member

    Joined:
    Jan 14, 2002
    Messages:
    51,779
    Likes Received:
    20,435
    Sounds like rock solid aggressive tactics. So?

    I will say the ABC story has nothing to do with Mueller. Mueller's team didn't leak, select or suggest using that image.
     
  17. Commodore

    Commodore Member

    Joined:
    Dec 15, 2007
    Messages:
    33,543
    Likes Received:
    17,505
    bankrupting defendants and threatening family members are certainly rock-solid tactics for getting a guilty plea, regardless of actual guilt

    getting justice is another matter
     
    cml750 likes this.
  18. larsv8

    larsv8 Member

    Joined:
    Nov 11, 2007
    Messages:
    21,663
    Likes Received:
    13,916
    Only guilty people would need expensive lawyers. If he was innocent, a public defender, which is free, would be sufficient.
     
    dobro1229 and FranchiseBlade like this.
  19. glynch

    glynch Member

    Joined:
    Dec 1, 2000
    Messages:
    18,050
    Likes Received:
    3,578
    The crime was so serious that Flynn was not sentenced to one day in jail for his lie. Greenwald in the podcast which is indeed long says studies have shown as high as 10% of Federal pleas are from the innocent using tactics like the perjury entrapment that was employed here. This should not be just another Tara Read type moment when those who oppose Trump could care less if Flynn was guilty of a crime.

    Hey Flynn is a right wing warmonger who is a supporter of torture. It reflects poorly on Obama for hiring him, but of course we would expect just about anything out of Trump. Can we still agree that if nothing else "guilty till proven " applies to Flynn, too.

    This is the end of my thinking or reading on this issue. One can spend their whole life on side issues like this when other issues like Covid, Climate Extinction, Healthcare for All, the decimation of the middle classes in the USA and throughout the world etc. are worthy of more brain power.
     
    #319 glynch, May 16, 2020
    Last edited: May 16, 2020
  20. dmoneybangbang

    Joined:
    May 5, 2012
    Messages:
    22,530
    Likes Received:
    14,261
    I saw that and Greenwald clearly lets his biases against the Obama administration come through.

    Flynn plead guilty in a plea deal to avoid higher charges of bank fraud. Flynn was a lobbyist of the Turkish government, not a good look for a patriotic general.
     

Share This Page

  • About ClutchFans

    Since 1996, ClutchFans has been loud and proud covering the Houston Rockets, helping set an industry standard for team fan sites. The forums have been a home for Houston sports fans as well as basketball fanatics around the globe.

  • Support ClutchFans!

    If you find that ClutchFans is a valuable resource for you, please consider becoming a Supporting Member. Supporting Members can upload photos and attachments directly to their posts, customize their user title and more. Gold Supporters see zero ads!


    Upgrade Now