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OPINIONPublished December 14, 2018 Last Update 10 hrs ago
Gregg Jarrett: Michael Flynn is innocent, wrongly prosecuted by Mueller to hurt Trump
Gregg Jarrett By Gregg Jarrett | Fox News
If you want a textbook example of wrongful prosecution of a man who should never have been charged with a crime, just look at the case of retired Army Lt. Gen. and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
New documents released Friday by Special Counsel Robert Mueller make it clear that Flynn is a victim of an overzealous team of prosecutors absolutely desperate to show that President Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election.
The new court filings provide yet more proof that Mueller will stop at almost nothing and run over anyone who gets in his way as he tries to build a case against the president after 19 months of his anti-Trump crusade.
Mueller doesn’t really care about Flynn. He wants to use Flynn to destroy Donald Trump.
Plain and simple, the information made public Friday shows that the FBI lied to Flynn to ensnare him in the crime of making a false statement, even though Flynn did not lie.
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The new documents show without a doubt that Flynn never should have been prosecuted. They show that even the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn about his contacts with Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak concluded Flynn was telling the truth. But Flynn’s statements about those contacts later became the basis of the charge against him of lying to the FBI.
Plain and simple, the information made public Friday shows that the FBI lied to Flynn to ensnare him in the crime of making a false statement, even though Flynn did not lie.
During the transition as President-elect Trump prepared to take office, Flynn was the designated national security adviser for the incoming president. As a legitimate part of his job, he had conversations with Ambassador Kislyak. These discussions were perfectly legal.
The Obama administration secretly recorded the phone calls, illegally unmasked Flynn’s name, and then illegally leaked the information to the media. This gave Director James Comey’s FBI a vacuous excuse to contact Flynn to set a trap.
Comey and his top deputy, Andrew McCabe, put the scheme in motion on January 24, 2017, just after Trump became president. Comey admitted in an interview this week that he violated FBI protocols by deliberately taking advantage of a presidential administration that was only four days old and not fully organized.
McCabe telephoned Flynn at the White House and lied to the Trump adviser, telling Flynn he wanted to talk about the “significant media coverage” of the leaked story.
McCabe pushed Flynn not to have a lawyer present and lulled Flynn into believing the meeting would be just an informal discussion of no legal consequence. McCabe and the agents agreed in advance not to tell Flynn the truth – that they had in their hands a transcript of the secretly recorded Kislyak conversation.
Flynn’s recollection of the conversation did not perfectly match the transcript. But that, by itself, is not enough under the law to charge someone with “knowingly and willfully” falsifying a material fact. Besides, the interviewing agents determined that Flynn was not being deceptive and did not lie. That should have been the end of it. But it wasn’t.
Although Acting Attorney General Sally Yates “was not happy” about Comey’s scheme, she didn’t stop it. Instead, she joined in and marched over to the White House and engineered the firing of Flynn as national security adviser.
The plain truth is that if Mueller had been forced to prove his case in court against Flynn on a charge of lying to FBI, Mueller would have lost.
The new court filings make clear that Mueller’s mission has gone from prosecution to persecution – and Flynn has become “collateral damage” in what amounts to an out-of-control effort to overturn the decision of the American people to elect Donald Trump as our president.
Why did Flynn plead guilty if he didn’t commit a crime?
As I wrote in my book, “The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump,” Flynn pleaded guilty not because he lied, but because Mueller crushed him financially and threatened to take legal action against the retired Army general’s son. Flynn had to spend so much on defense attorneys that he was forced to sell his home, and Mueller’s prosecution made it impossible for Flynn to find employment.
Flynn has devoted his adult life to serving the United States, spending 33 years in the Army before taking the position of national security adviser for President Trump. He played a key role in developing our nation’s counterterrorism strategy and dismantling terrorist networks in Iraq and Afghanistan and rose to become director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Flynn’s reward for his decades of dedicated service? Being caught in the equivalent of a perjury trap set by the FBI, pressured to plead guilty to a felony charge of making false statements to the FBI when he was actually an innocent man, and now facing sentencing Tuesday. This is an enormous miscarriage of justice.
Even Mueller recognizes that Flynn does not deserve a long prison term. A sentencing memo Mueller filed in U.S. District Court in Washington earlier this month for Flynn recommends little or no prison time for the retired general.
And as I wrote in a column for Fox News published Dec. 5, the sentencing memo “isn’t a ‘smoking gun’ showing President Trump colluded with Russians to win the 2016 presidential election or did anything else illegal. In fact, the memo isn’t even a squirt gun. In terms of President Trump’s conduct, it amounts to nothing of any significance.”
The documents released Friday – some heavily redacted – were made public because U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered prosecutors to turn over the government’s files dealing with the FBI’s questioning of Flynn that led to the charge against him of lying to the FBI.
The judge ordered the files to be submitted to his court after attorneys for Flynn said the FBI discouraged Flynn from bringing a lawyer to the interview and said the FBI failed to advise him that he could be charged with a crime for making false statements. Those claims by Flynn’s lawyers are true, the new documents show.
The new material included notes taken by then-FBI Deputy Director McCabe after talking with Flynn to arrange for Flynn to be interview by the FBI.
Now that he has the new information, will Judge Sullivan want to know why Mueller charged Flynn with lying if the only witnesses (the FBI agents) determined he was not?
The judge may also want to ask Flynn if he pleaded guilty to a crime he did not commit. Was he coerced? Did the feds threaten to prosecute his son? Were there financial reasons that caused him to plead?
In addition, Judge Sullivan could ask Mueller’s team if they gave Flynn’s lawyers what is known as “exculpatory” evidence showing that the FBI concluded Flynn was telling the truth. Under law, they are required to do so.
The bottom line is that the only wrongful or illegal conduct involving Michael Flynn was the conduct of the FBI and the anti-Trump zealots that make up Robert Mueller’s team of prosecutors.
An innocent man and a patriot who spent his life defending our country has seen his reputation ruined, has been destroyed financially, and now faces sentencing for a crime he didn’t commit.
This is the kind of thing that happens in corrupt Third World dictatorships. It is not what should happen in the United States of America. Michael Flynn is the victim of a grave injustice and Robert Mueller, James Comey and everyone else involved in framing Flynn should be ashamed of themselves for their actions against him.
Gregg Jarrett joined FOX News Channel (FNC) in 2002 and is based in New York.
Now this is equally believable, as far as it goes to put a counterweight reason to those who are politically inclined to want to believe in this explanation.Some would argue that this is nothing but politics as usual, however this is different in that key concepts are being undermined revolving around Constitutional foundations, as the very basis for the intended formation of the country are being challenged, on an open court, that is itself is under challenge.
Democratic institutions are beginning to besubmerged between their causa suit, their utility and and functional expediency, brought into being by the coming of the new programmed artificial intelligence.
Particularly, conservative values are at stake here, in defining the brave new world nationally and internationally, where there does not appear to be a difference in the intended outcome, but only the means and ways of getting there, because of what is becoming appearent by now: the significant modus operans .
The world as it should be, to preserve past ideals stretching backwards with
a reactionary force , which does offer preset designs, of accumulated political wisdom, even within the idea that the frailty and misguidance of the player(s) is diminished in importance by the magnitude of the accruing of emphasis of what basic values should consist of, as a counterbalance to the idea that the ages of historical necessity are over.
This could arguably lead to a phase, where reverse arguably, the necessity of what now, has famously coined as collusion could be described and destined.
On the flip side:
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His worst nightmare: Trump’s life under a legal microscope
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Updated 11:47 AM EST, Sat December 15, 2018
Washington (CNN) Weeks of devastating legal revelations have left Donald Trump’s political career clouded by criminality and his life, presidency and business empire under assault by relentless prosecutors on multiple fronts.
Days of court filings, flipped witnesses, damaging disclosures and sentencing hearings over the last month have delivered blows that appear to expose Trump and key associates to deep legal and political jeopardy.
But the head-spinning volume of material being churned out by special counsel Robert Mueller and other jurisdictions often also blurs the bigger picture of a presidency beset by a span of scandal that is staggering in its breadth.
Simply put, Trump’s campaign, transition, inaugural committee and presidency are now under active criminal investigation. His business – the Trump Organization – and his defunct charity – The Trump Foundation are also under investigation (the charity investigation is a civil one). His college – Trump University – has already been deemed a fraud.
The President himself has been indirectly fingered by New York prosecutors overseen by his own Justice Department of directing criminal attempts to subvert campaign finance laws.
Then there is a civil lawsuit brought by Democratic-led states rooted in claims that Trump’s refusal to fully disengage from his businesses means he is using his position to profit from deals in his hotel chain that contravene the Constitution.
The many layers of investigation are about to get even more comprehensive, with multiple committees in the new Democratic House launching oversight into Trump’s personal finances, political operation and White House next year.
Many of those who chose to align themselves with Trump have meanwhile fallen foul of the law, sometimes for offenses unrelated to the President but which have offered prosecutors a window into his own conduct.
His former campaign chairman Paul Manafort is in jail. His former attorney and “fixer” Michael Cohen is headed behind bars next year. His deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates is now a confessed felon. George Papadopoulos, a former member of his foreign policy advisory board, just got out of jail after flipping. His former national security adviser Michael Flynn may only avoid prison after turning on his former boss.
Questions continue to swirl around Trump’s longtime political adviser Roger Stone among other things about what he knew when about Wikileaks email dumps. And people even closer to Trump, such as his son Don Jr. and son-in-law Jared Kushner, cannot be sure they are in the clear although all, including the President, profess innocence and downplay Mueller’s investigation.
Yet Mueller’s success in securing plea deals from the likes of Flynn, Gates and Cohen is adding to the President’s apparent legal peril.
In one of the more surreal twists of the Trump presidency, there is a conversation going in Washington about how Trump might have to win re-election to outrun a statute of limitations on campaign finance allegations.
This trail of dishonesty and deceit is evident even before Mueller has delivered what could ultimately be his most explosive findings – whether he has found evidence that the President’s campaign cooperated with Russia and whether he obstructed justice in the firing of former FBI chief James Comey and a bid to thwart Mueller.
A scandal-ridden presidency
Michael Cohen sentenced to three years in prison after admitting he covered up Trump’s ‘dirty deeds’
A full assessment of the depth of Trump’s political and legal predicament may only become clear next year. But the President has already expressed concern, according to CNN reporting, that he could be impeached.
But even if all the investigations stopped now and he was cleared of all wrongdoing, Trump would still be remembered for presiding over one of the most scandal-ridden presidencies of modern history.
Trump and his supporters maintain that there is no smoking gun and that the President’s problems all stem from rogue prosecutors from the “deep state” that has always hated Trump. The President’s cheerleaders on conservative channels meanwhile take up his cry that the democratic will of voters is at risk of being besmirched by a “fake news” media that is hostile towards him.
“Nobody but for me would be looked at like this. Nobody,” Trump said in a Fox News interview this week, referring to claims he told Cohen to pay off women who claimed affairs with him to avoid hurting his campaign.
Trump’s counselor Kellyanne Conway insisted to CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Thursday that Trump’s presumed foes in the media were willfully ignoring his arguments that he did not break the law.
“It’s important and credible to the rest of the country, except for the people so blinded by their hatred toward him or their wishful thinking that he won’t be President if they just close their eyes and click their heels three times,” she said. “Get over it.”
Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani is offering the defense that Cohen should not be believed because he is a convicted liar.
Yet, the growing pile of evidence from Mueller and other prosecutors is rendering the denials of culpability from Trump and his supporters less credible.
As more damaging details emerge, Trump is indulging in his habitual practice of abandoning a position that has become untenable and constructing a new reality that better suits him.
Once for instance, Trump denied that he knew about hush payments worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now, he says he didn’t tell Cohen to break the law.
“As a lawyer, Michael has great liability to me!” Trump tweeted on Thursday.
But the narrative that Cohen is a liar so Trump is in the clear ignores crucial details of Mueller’s filings.
Corroboration
The special counsel has made clear in court documents that he has corroboration for claims by his cooperating witness Cohen. The President’s fixer also said as much on Friday.
“There is a substantial amount of information that they possessed that corroborates the fact that I am telling the truth,” Cohen said in an interview with ABC News.
Trump’s repeated mantra of “no collusion” with the Russians is also looking increasingly threadbare. There were multiple contacts between Trump’s associates and Russians during the campaign and transition – at least 16 according to CNN’s reporting.
And many of those associates have since lied about the interactions, giving the impression that they are trying to cover something up.
The President’s claims that he had nothing to do with Russia have been undermined by revelations in the Cohen case that he was pursuing a potentially lucrative deal to build a luxury tower in Moscow until deep into a campaign that was simultaneously the target of a meddling effort by the Kremlin’s spies.
And Mueller is clearly probing whether there is a nexus between Trump’s business ventures and Russia’s election interference.
In a sentencing memo earlier this month, he wrote that the Trump Tower project “occurred at a time of sustained efforts by the Russian government to interfere with the US presidential election.”
It is, of course, possible that all of these Trump associates were operating outside the knowledge of the President. Statements in documents filed by Mueller and other jurisdictions are prosecutorial in nature and may not reveal mitigating circumstances that Trump could use in his defense
It is unclear at this point whether the US attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York would be able to prove that Trump knowingly asked Cohen to break campaign finance laws.
But the idea that Trump knew nothing – about Russia attempts to infiltrate his campaign, about hush payments or other key aspects of cases in which is involved – appears unlikely, given his omnipotent role in his inner circle.
And he has already proven to have lied, if Mueller is to be believed, about key aspects of the Russia investigation and his interaction with Cohen.
Still, many legal experts believe that if wrongdoing is found, the President is immune from prosecution owing to his unique constitutional position.
If his only transgression does turn out to be on campaign finance, it seems unlikely that Democrats in the House will risk an impeachment process based on charges that may fall short of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
So far, Trump’s firewall of Republican support in the Senate, where any subsequent impeachment trial would take place is standing firm.
Whether that would start crumbling should Mueller produce a damning report that causes a fracturing of Trump’s political power base as an election approaches in 2020 remains untested.
While much has been learned about the President’s legal exposure in recent days, the true extent of his liability remains to be seen.
For now, however, it’s clear: the President’s legal and political position is far more perilous than it was weeks ago and he has reason to be worried about a flurry of investigations that are digging deep into his private, personal, business and political life.
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The Trump Impeachment
Business ConflictsUncategorized
Jacking up rents illegally and pocketing the profits: yet another scam by a sleaze named Trump
By Dartagnan / Daily Kos (12/15/2018) - December 15, 2018279
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CBC News / YouTube Trump on Kavanaugh vote delay for…
CBC News / YouTube
Donald Trump should never have been allowed to view the White House lawn from any vantage point except a television set hooked up for the inmates in the common room of a state penitentiary. According to the New York Times, before he engaged in defrauding investors through his Trump University scam, before his habitual, pre-Declaration of Bankruptcy stiffing of his employees and contractors , even before his off-camera antics harassing or sleeping with various women and paying them for their silence, the current Occupant of the Oval Office was engaged in ripping off the tenants of properties owned by his father, and pocketing the profits.
They were collateral damage as Donald J. Trump and his siblings dodged inheritance taxes and gained control of their father’s fortune: thousands of renters in an empire of unassuming red-brick buildings scattered across Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island.
The Times investigation of the latest in Trump’s seemingly bottomless history of perpetrating frauds and scams to bilk people out of their money details Trump’s jacking up the rents of thousands of middle-class residents who had the misfortune to live in one of the Trump-family owned apartment residences during the 1990s. Many of these properties had been financed by Fred Trump through low-cost government loans and were therefore subject to rent regulation.
But the residents of these thousands of apartments, many of whom were retirees living on a fixed income, suddenly began to see inexplicable rises in their regulated rents.
As it turned out, a hidden scam lurked behind the mysterious increases. In October, a New York Times investigation into the origins of Mr. Trump’s wealth revealed, among its findings, that the future president and his siblings set up a phony business to pad the cost of nearly everything their father, the legendary builder Fred C. Trump, purchased for his buildings. The Trump children split that extra money.
The “padded costs” translated into higher rents imposed on these tenants, as the younger Donald and his partners could point to the increased costs of maintaining them. Except the costs were phony—Trump and his family continued to negotiate for “everything from roofs to window cleaner,” according to the Times report. The costs were inflated through a sham organization ostensibly created (on paper alone) as a “purchasing agent” for Fred Trump’s properties, and it was owned by Donald Trump, his siblings, and a cousin. The “purchasing agent,” called “All County Building Supply and Maintenance,” (or “All County BS,” for short?), would issue checks to vendors servicing Trump’s buildings but would receive reimbursement from Fred Trump’s apartments with a 20-50% markup. The “markup,” which actually represented a tax-free “gift” to Trump and his cohorts, was then used to justify gouging apartment dwellers in Trump’s buildings with higher rents.
These fraudulently jacked up rents amounted to an increase of 30-60$ per month on a yearly basis, which many renters could doubtless afford. But as the Times points out, the “padded invoices still affect the rent, as the increase has compounded over the years:”
The padded invoices have been baked into the base rent used to calculate the annual percentage increase approved by the city. The sum total of the rent overcharges cannot be calculated from available records. As a way to appreciate the scope of the impact, a onetime $10 increase in 1995 on all the 8,000 apartments involved would put the total overpaid by tenants at more than $33 million to date, an analysis of approved rent increases shows.
All of these profits inured to Donald Trump and his family. The renters who were overcharged, like all victims of Trump’s schemes, were left holding the bag. Some are suing, but their rights are limited by both the statute of limitations and limitations on damages, as well as the fact that many of the properties have since been sold, with the Trump family moving on to bigger and better scams.
Michael Grinthal, supervising lawyer with the Community Development Project at the Urban Justice Center, a nonprofit legal services and advocacy group, said that the current owners would be held responsible for any damages, but that those owners could have a claim against the president and his siblings.
“If I was talking to those tenants right now, I’d say: ‘Do it. Go,’” Mr. Grinthal said. “This case should be fought.”
Meanwhile Donald Trump is heading out on his 16 day vacation to Mar-a-Lago, where he can spend some quiet time figuring out other ways to rip people off.