Investigators into Russian attempts to subvert American democracy grievously mistreated Gen. Michael Flynn, now convicted of perjury related to the investigation. Some of the prosecutors should themselves face professional punishment for their misbehavior.
As this site’s resident defender of special counsel Robert Mueller, I am obligated to insist that the investigators themselves uphold the same standards they would apply to others. Without excusing Flynn’s lies to investigators, a fair-minded observer can call foul on an obviously unfair, and perhaps unlawful, perjury trap.
Federal district judge Emmet Sullivan likewise seems quite perturbed by the latest information about the Flynn case. With Flynn’s sentencing imminent, Sullivan suddenly ordered prosecutors to produce any existent memoranda regarding their conduct of the interview in which Flynn lied.
And for good reason. The investigators’ treatment of Flynn, as described in a memo filed with the court by Flynn’s lawyers, looks like a textbook case of unethical entrapment.
The interview was set up directly via a phone call to Flynn from Andrew McCabe, who then was deputy director of the FBI. McCabe, by his own account, made it sound like an ordinary national-security-related briefing of the sort Flynn was accustomed to giving the FBI. Even though McCabe clearly knew that Flynn was a potential subject of investigation, he deliberately dissuaded Flynn from having attorneys present.
Moreover, when the agents arrived, they and Flynn both treated the meeting as rather informal, even “jocular,” and “the agents did not provide General Flynn with a warning of the penalties for making a false statement … before, during, or after the interview.” The agents’ decision not to so inform Flynn was made at the direct behest of McCabe because “they wanted Flynn to be relaxed.”- READ MORE