The lies the Democrats told about Mike Flynn

Eli Lake:

Remember when Michael Flynn was a traitor? It was early 2017. Democrats were still stinging from their defeat at the hands of Donald Trump. Every day, it seemed, brought news of another contact between Trumpworld and Russia.

Flynn, a retired three-star general, was forced to resign after serving less than a month as Trump’s national security adviser. He was said to have colluded with Russians during the presidential transition. For this he was defamed as a Russian agent and mocked as a bumbling Benedict Arnold. Former officials of Barack Obama’s administration hinted that Flynn had been compromised.

As it turns out, none of this was true. On Tuesday Flynn will receive a sentence for the one count to which he has pleaded guilty, lying to the FBI. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has recommended no jail time. Flynn will have a chance to get on with his life.
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The evidence that Flynn was acting on behalf of Russia, however, is lacking. Yes, he attended a gala for Russia’s propaganda network, RT, in 2015 before joining the Trump campaign. But during the transition, as incoming national security adviser, Flynn would have been expected to have contacts with Russia. It was Flynn’s concealment of his communications that attracted the FBI’s interest.

All of which is to say: Two years ago, outside observers could be excused for being suspicious of Michael Flynn’s ties to Russia. The same, however, cannot be said of the FBI.

According to the House Intelligence Committee’s report on the bureau’s investigation into the Trump campaign, former FBI Director James Comey himself authorized ending the bureau’s counterintelligence investigation into Flynn by the end of December 2016. That investigation remained open after the bureau learned that Flynn had misled Vice President Mike Pence and others in the Trump orbit about a phone call between himself and the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak. U.S. intelligence monitored the conversation.

That conversation proved to be Flynn’s undoing. As I wrote at the time of his resignation, it is highly unusual for the contents of these monitored conversations to become public. But those leaks revealed that Flynn had misled the incoming Trump White House about the phone call.

It remains a mystery why Flynn, a man with a reputation for integrity and valor as both an officer and government official, would lie. Perhaps it was untoward, but there is nothing unusual about an incoming national security adviser contacting foreign diplomats during the presidential transition. Trump himself was doing this openly from Trump Tower. According to the House Intelligence Committee report, Flynn “requested that Russia not escalate the situation and only respond to the U.S. sanctions in a reciprocal manner.”

In no other era would these be grounds for treating a national security adviser like a member of a crime family. And yet that is exactly what the FBI did. On Jan. 24, 2017, then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe sent agents to discuss the phone call with Flynn without letting him know that he was being investigated. McCabe himself urged Flynn not to have a lawyer present, according to recent court filings. The agents interviewing Flynn knew exactly what he had said to Kislyak — they had a transcript of the call. The purpose of the interview was to try to catch Flynn in a lie.
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The truth would have served Mike Flynn better.  As Lake points out, there was nothing illegal about the conversations with the Russians and they were in fact, normal for a new administration.  The same could be said for the alleged lie told by George Papadopoulos to the FBI.  And while some of those allegedly responsible for pursuing these cases have lost their jobs for lying they have yet to be prosecuted.

The cases do fit a pattern with the Mueller probe.  Micheal Cohen plead guilty to none crimes to avoid being tried for more serious allegations.  But one thing is clear at this point.  Mueller has failed to bring a case against any American for "colluding" with the Russians on the election.

While liberals in the media pretend that the world is closing in around Trump what is actually happening is that their conspiracy theories are crumbling.