1) As the incoming National Security Advisor he was not only allowed to speak to foreign ambassadors during the transition, it is specifically his job to do so. He would have been shirking his duties if he didn't. The new administration should not be coming into the inauguration cold.
2) The Logon Act was written in the 1700's and not a single person has ever been convicted of it. Only two people have ever even been indicted under it and both were in the 1800's. And under modern court standards it is unconstitutional. More importantly, it was intended on preventing individuals with no authority to do so to negotiate with foreign governments. And for Flynn that fails on two counts. First, Flynn wasn't negotiating anything. All he asked of the Russians was not to overreact to the sanctions. He offered nothing in return. He didn't promise to end the sanctions or anything else. Second, Flynn as the incoming National Security Advisor was fully authorized to speak on behalf of the incoming Trump Administration. The Logon Act simply doesn't apply. And Mueller's crew knew this because they didn't even try prosecuting him for this. Every incoming administration reaches out to foreign ambassadors during the transition to convey their future plans in the same manner.
3) There was no predicate for his FBI interview. He had already been cleared by the FBI and the other intelligence services in their investigation into Russian interference. No derogatory information was uncovered and the case was actively being dropped. Then the Obama administration stepped in and asked them to hold off dropping the case based on the perfectly legal phone call with the Russian Ambassador over the Logan Act.
4) The interview was an ambush. Standard FBI policy is to negotiate an interview with the administration, have administration lawyers present, be upfront with their concerns, give standard warnings about it being illegal to lie to the FBI, etc. Instead, by the admission of the FBI themselves through their notes and Comey's public statements, they purposely bypassed the administration, actively discouraged the use of lawyers, hid their concerns and outright omitted the standard warnings. In fact, handwritten notes show that their plan was to purposely get him to lie so that they could get him fired/prosecuted or at least force his resignation. All over a phone call that was perfectly legal. This was a straight up attempt by the Obama administration to take someone out that they didn't want to see serving in the next administration. And why would they do that? Because as the National Security Advisor the FBI would have legally been required to inform Flynn of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation and they knew Flynn would have raised holy hell over that when he found out.
5) Flynn did not lie. The FBI agents who interviewed Flynn came away from their interview stating in their notes that Flynn did not lie to them. Comey admitted this in his testimony to congress. It was only months later that any claim that Flynn lied to the FBI was made. And that was in the 302 that Stzork filed. In the last year we found out in the Stzork/Page e-mails that Page, who was not part of that interview, highly rewrote Stzork's 302 to be highly damaging to Flynn. And magically the original 302's written at the time of the interview have gone missing.
6) So why did Flynn plead guilty to lying to the FBI? Mueller and his team worked Flynn over for a long time, made it impossible for him to work and make an income and drove his lawyer bills so high that he had to sell his house. Even with that Flynn still claimed that he didn't lie. It was only after the FBI threatened to prosecute his son and similarly ruin his life that Flynn finally decided to plead guilty. Who here wouldn't do so to save their son? And to show how shady the FBI was acting, in the last couple of weeks we found out that the FBI illegally hid their promise not to prosecute Flynn's son in return for Flynn's guilty plea in other cases related to this. The FBI also hid thousands of pages of Brady material from Flynn's original lawyers, who happened to have Eric Holder being a senior partner in that firm that had many conflicts of interest in representing Flynn. And the FBI tried claiming that they didn't have to turn that information over to Flynn's new lawyers because it would blow up their case if they did. Which is exactly what happened.
In short, the Obama administration already hated Flynn due to his opposition to the Iran Deal, the Libya overthrow and more. And when they realized that Flynn would have to, by law, be briefed on Crossfire Hurricane after he was officially confirmed as the National Security Advisor, they setup Flynn and took him down. This was malfeasance of the highest order by Obama and his people and heads need to roll.
2) The Logon Act was written in the 1700's and not a single person has ever been convicted of it. Only two people have ever even been indicted under it and both were in the 1800's. And under modern court standards it is unconstitutional. More importantly, it was intended on preventing individuals with no authority to do so to negotiate with foreign governments. And for Flynn that fails on two counts. First, Flynn wasn't negotiating anything. All he asked of the Russians was not to overreact to the sanctions. He offered nothing in return. He didn't promise to end the sanctions or anything else. Second, Flynn as the incoming National Security Advisor was fully authorized to speak on behalf of the incoming Trump Administration. The Logon Act simply doesn't apply. And Mueller's crew knew this because they didn't even try prosecuting him for this. Every incoming administration reaches out to foreign ambassadors during the transition to convey their future plans in the same manner.
3) There was no predicate for his FBI interview. He had already been cleared by the FBI and the other intelligence services in their investigation into Russian interference. No derogatory information was uncovered and the case was actively being dropped. Then the Obama administration stepped in and asked them to hold off dropping the case based on the perfectly legal phone call with the Russian Ambassador over the Logan Act.
4) The interview was an ambush. Standard FBI policy is to negotiate an interview with the administration, have administration lawyers present, be upfront with their concerns, give standard warnings about it being illegal to lie to the FBI, etc. Instead, by the admission of the FBI themselves through their notes and Comey's public statements, they purposely bypassed the administration, actively discouraged the use of lawyers, hid their concerns and outright omitted the standard warnings. In fact, handwritten notes show that their plan was to purposely get him to lie so that they could get him fired/prosecuted or at least force his resignation. All over a phone call that was perfectly legal. This was a straight up attempt by the Obama administration to take someone out that they didn't want to see serving in the next administration. And why would they do that? Because as the National Security Advisor the FBI would have legally been required to inform Flynn of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation and they knew Flynn would have raised holy hell over that when he found out.
5) Flynn did not lie. The FBI agents who interviewed Flynn came away from their interview stating in their notes that Flynn did not lie to them. Comey admitted this in his testimony to congress. It was only months later that any claim that Flynn lied to the FBI was made. And that was in the 302 that Stzork filed. In the last year we found out in the Stzork/Page e-mails that Page, who was not part of that interview, highly rewrote Stzork's 302 to be highly damaging to Flynn. And magically the original 302's written at the time of the interview have gone missing.
6) So why did Flynn plead guilty to lying to the FBI? Mueller and his team worked Flynn over for a long time, made it impossible for him to work and make an income and drove his lawyer bills so high that he had to sell his house. Even with that Flynn still claimed that he didn't lie. It was only after the FBI threatened to prosecute his son and similarly ruin his life that Flynn finally decided to plead guilty. Who here wouldn't do so to save their son? And to show how shady the FBI was acting, in the last couple of weeks we found out that the FBI illegally hid their promise not to prosecute Flynn's son in return for Flynn's guilty plea in other cases related to this. The FBI also hid thousands of pages of Brady material from Flynn's original lawyers, who happened to have Eric Holder being a senior partner in that firm that had many conflicts of interest in representing Flynn. And the FBI tried claiming that they didn't have to turn that information over to Flynn's new lawyers because it would blow up their case if they did. Which is exactly what happened.
In short, the Obama administration already hated Flynn due to his opposition to the Iran Deal, the Libya overthrow and more. And when they realized that Flynn would have to, by law, be briefed on Crossfire Hurricane after he was officially confirmed as the National Security Advisor, they setup Flynn and took him down. This was malfeasance of the highest order by Obama and his people and heads need to roll.
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