The Flynn leak
by digby
I found it interesting that the Trump camp leaked that they were ready to rip Michael Flynn as a liar if necessary since it signals that they are worried. It seems bit weird to send this message since Flynn has already agreed to cooperate. Of course they’re going to call him a liar if he says something to harm their man? They’re defense attorneys.
This article in VF lays out the possibility that Trump and Flynn really are pals and that the legal team was talking out of school with this leak. Maybe Flynn really doesn’t have anything damning to say and maybe Mueller just wanted to get his case off the table. But that seems unlikely. They then lay out a possibility I haven’t heard before:
[Y]esterday’s leak is equally interesting as political strategy. It signals to Trump’s conservative media allies—who have already tried to paint Flynn as an Obama plant—that they are free to turn up the attacks on Flynn, to trash him as one more enemy of the president, which in turn embellishes Trump’s outsider image with his hard-core voters. Perhaps more significantly, the leak signals to Flynn that if he follows through on his plea deal and testifies damningly against Trump, the general can forget about a presidential pardon. On the other hand, if Flynn were to buck Mueller—to re-flip, so to speak—a pardon would still be possible.
Mueller, however, seems to have wisely anticipated such a chess move: by crafting a plea deal that basically guarantees Flynn won’t serve any time in jail, the special counsel reduced the temptation to not cooperate and be rewarded by a pardon.
All of which might help explain the recent weird tweet by Flynn’s brother, who told Trump it is “about time you pardoned General Flynn.” It was understandable as sibling sympathy—but it also came across as strangely anxious. “Flynn has a great deal—I know he’s going to be a felon, but he’s going to get probation, and all he has to do is testify about something that’s not so important,” Wisenberg says. “So why is his brother worried?”
Perhaps, Wisenberg speculates, there is a second, secret plea agreement between Flynn and Mueller, one that contains more explosive evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. A separate, hidden plea would be highly unusual, but it would explain the apparent thinness of the public plea agreement.
“Mueller would have thoroughly de-briefed Flynn before making the plea deal, and this was a sweetheart deal,” says Peter Zeidenberg, who was part of the prosecution team in the Scooter Libby leak case and is now a defense attorney. “They know what Flynn is going to be saying.” Maybe it will be underwhelming. Trump’s team doesn’t seem willing to count on that.
Nobody knows anything about anything, of course. This is all just idle speculation. But I was reminded of this from Flynn’s lawyer back in the spring:
“General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit.”
Call me crazy, but it’s doubtful that the “story” was about how he made a phone call during the transition that he totally thought was fine and then lied about it for no good reason at all.
Obviously, this could all be nothing and Flynn is just a sideshow. We’ll find out soon enough.
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