US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2856

On November 26 2020 09:23 HelpMeGetBetter wrote:
So if Trump tries to pardon himself, doesn't he have to admit to a crime first?

On November 26 2020 10:28 StasisField wrote:
Can you be pardoned for something you haven't been charged with yet?

On November 26 2020 11:33 Introvert wrote:
Took a thread break, but just have to express my happiness that Flynn was pardoned. Besides Trump himself, he may have been the first and most wronged individual coming out of the Russian Collusion nonsense. At the very least that injustice will not be allowed to stand.

On November 26 2020 11:50 KwarK wrote:

He was literally an agent of a foreign government and advancing their interests over American interests as national security advisor? What reality are you from? He’s guilty of a capital offence. They should have hanged him.

On November 26 2020 12:38 BerserkSword wrote:


Jfc

Says who?

He was coerced into a guilty plea. It's what the Feds do, unfortunately.

The DoJ has dropped all charges against him.

On November 26 2020 11:50 KwarK wrote:

He was literally an agent of a foreign government and advancing their interests over American interests as national security advisor? What reality are you from? He’s guilty of a capital offence. They should have hanged him.

On November 26 2020 13:37 Introvert wrote:

And even if that story is 100% accurate that has what to do with the farce of trying to first get him on the Logan Act (good idea, Joe Biden!). They were clearly out to get him from the very start.

Another reason I don't want to hear complaints about "peaceful transitions of power." The last one hobbled the current from before he was even sworn in. This is a good day.

On November 26 2020 13:38 KwarK wrote:

When you say "even if it's accurate" are you saying that you don't believe Flynn registered himself as a foreign agent after the news broke? Which part of this are you skeptical about? Flynn literally filed paperwork to declare that he was getting paid by Turkey while working as NSA. Do you think he lied on that paperwork?

The reason that Flynn put his name to something he knew was not true was that Mueller’s investigators were squeezing him on an unrelated matter.
In August 2016, Flynn took a contract to represent a Dutch firm known as Inovo BV on a project aimed at investigating and defaming Fetullah Gulen, a charismatic Turkish cleric who had become a mortal enemy of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and was living in exile in Pennsylvania. In 2016, Erdogan survived a military coup he blamed on Gulen’s followers. Erdogan’s regime sought Gulen’s extradition back to Turkey, where he would almost certainly have faced the death penalty.
Taking that contract showed horrendous judgment on Flynn’s part. He was the Trump campaign’s national-security adviser and had no business getting himself in the middle of this. That said, it was a potential political problem for Trump, not the national-security threat that many in the resistance now say it was. It’s fair game for journalists and Democrats to make a stink about the Inovo contract. But it was highly unusual for Flynn’s missteps in this case to be the basis for a criminal prosecution on the grounds that Flynn had violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
Before Mueller was appointed special prosecutor, FARA violations were treated for the most part the way you’d treat a speeding violation. A 2016 Justice Department inspector general report found only seven criminal prosecutions for FARA violations in the half-century from 1965 to 2015. Most of the time, violators were told to amend their forms and at worst pay a fine.
Mueller decided to use FARA as a useful cudgel to nail people he wanted to flip to get them to spill the beans on Trump. He brought a FARA charge against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who was also convicted on more serious charges of money laundering and other crimes. Mueller’s team decided they could use the threat of a FARA prosecution to squeeze Flynn as well.
Flynn had initially registered the Inovo contract in August 2016 through a less stringent law known as the Lobbying Disclosure Act. He did so on the advice of his counsel at the time. And when Flynn took the contract, that advice was sound. The legal environment for FARA registrations was quite permissive at the time. But at the end of 2017, and with Mueller in hot pursuit and with unlimited resources, Flynn—and his son, Michael Jr.—could have found themselves facing years in prison. So Flynn, in financial ruin and wishing to get his son out of Mueller’s crosshairs, agreed to cooperate.
And cooperate he did. Before his first sentencing hearing at the end of 2018, Mueller’s team initially recommended no jail time for Flynn, in part because he was a good cooperative witness. Over time, though, Flynn began to regret his decision. Some of this was because of the failure of Mueller’s investigation to bring a single charge against any American for coordinating with Russia’s influence operation in 2016. Some of it was also because details about the government’s own misconduct in the investigation began to leak out. So in 2019, Flynn ended his relationship with his lawyers from Covington and Burling, the ones who had filed his initial FARA registration forms on the Inovo matter and who had also represented his partner Bijan Rafiekian, who had also been indicted on FARA violations.

Flynn also began to back out of his cooperation with the government’s case against Rafiekian. In July 2019, prosecutors decided they would not call Flynn as a witness and threatened to prosecute Flynn as a co-conspirator. At first Flynn’s lack of cooperation didn’t matter because that same month, a jury found Rafiekian guilty of being an unregistered agent for the government of Turkey. But the judge in the case overturned the jury verdict in a blistering judgment on the prosecution. “The government has failed to offer substantial evidence from which any rational juror could find beyond a reasonable doubt” that Rafiekian was an agent of Turkey
The judge’s ruling was significant for Flynn in one important respect. In 2017, during the run-up to Flynn’s plea agreement, the Wall Street Journal reported that Flynn and his son had been approached by Turkish government officials to try to kidnap Gulen and bring him back to Turkey in exchange for $15 million. A November 10 story in the Journal said that Mueller’s team was investigating the matter. Flynn’s lawyers have categorically said this episode never happened. There is no mention of the episode in the prosecution of Rafiekian. The one on-the-record source for this allegation was former CIA Director James Woolsey, who himself sought a contract with Turkey to defame Gulen.

On November 26 2020 13:43 Introvert wrote:


What Flynn did would earn almost anyone else a slap on the wrist. Turkey isn't even the main story here

On November 26 2020 13:47 KwarK wrote:

What Flynn did was treasonous. He cancelled a planned US/Kurdish attack on the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa because it would have given a victory to the Kurdish YPG which was contrary to Turkish interests. He literally prevented an attack on ISIS because Turkey asked him to.

At a certain point Introvert even you have to stop defending the guy who is on the side of ISIS over the United States.

On November 26 2020 13:47 KwarK wrote:

What Flynn did was treasonous. He cancelled a planned US/Kurdish attack on the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa because it would have given a victory to the Kurdish YPG which was contrary to Turkish interests. He literally prevented an attack on ISIS because Turkey asked him to.

At a certain point Introvert even you have to stop defending the guy who is on the side of ISIS over the United States.

At a certain point Introvert even you have to stop defending the guy who is on the side of ISIS over the United States.

On November 26 2020 13:55 ChristianS wrote:

I think we’re kinda glossing over “prosecuting Flynn means Democrats can’t complain about Trump trying to steal an election he lost.” That’s easily the more embarrassing take imo

On November 26 2020 13:55 ChristianS wrote:

I think we’re kinda glossing over “prosecuting Flynn means Democrats can’t complain about Trump trying to steal an election he lost.” That’s easily the more embarrassing take imo

On November 26 2020 13:59 Introvert wrote:

And this is why "even if..." is one of my favorite openings. Because then we fairly dismiss all other claims and even accept the typically un-balanced KwarK take from, you know, what we were actually talking about.

Was he railroaded for his Turkish lobbying job? No? Alrighty then! The FBI was looking for anything and the best they came back with was lying to the FBI about a phone call with the Russian ambassador.



As for this line, I'm half-tempted to quote it somewhere. It's simple, but a masterpiece.