Tuesday was a bad day for Michael Flynn and maybe a good day for Trump



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J Udge The extraordinary reprimand of Michael Flyn by Emmet Sullivan indicates that the former National Security Advisor has painful days ahead of him. But by suggesting to Flynn's legal team to request a delay of conviction, and then accepting it, Sullivan's remarks could also indicate that Flynn gave the special advocate, Robert Mueller, little incriminating elements on President Trump.

After all, if Flynn's testimony had provided a prosecution link to Trump or his close entourage, we would have expected Sullivan to treat the previous national security more favorably.

This was certainly not the case on Tuesday. Before accepting Flynn's application regarding a sentencing period, Sullivan asked prosecutors where they had planned to charge Flynn with treason. They said that they did not have it. But the judge did not stop there. Flynn's behavior, Sullivan said, disgusted him. He added, "You were an unregistered agent from a foreign country while acting as a National Security Advisor to the President, and it can be said that it undermines everything this flag represents here. to say that you sold your country. "

Wow. As Sullivan then reverted to his remarks, the judge knows the publicity of this case and its political importance. So I have little doubt that he had legal motives to motivate his rhetoric.

Again, though, if Flynn had brought a lot of value to Mueller, would Sullivan have been so hard? Maybe he would have done it, but I doubt it. With respect to advocacy contracts such as Flynn, US federal prosecutions rely on a system designed to balance leniency in exchange for the evidence presented. In the present case, the evidence presented by Flynn is supposed to be only indirectly linked to the indictment of two of its trading partners lobbying in Turkey. Although the conviction of Flynn was postponed until March to offer greater value of testimony to the government, this is not why Mueller suggested to Flynn not to jail. Again, lobbying for Turkey is part of Mueller's investigation mandate: possibility of collusion during Trump's campaign with Russia and possible obstruction of justice by Trump himself.

This brings us to the many redactions in Mueller's sentencing report on Flynn. They now suggest that there is a lot more damaging material regarding Flynn waiting to be discovered here. I strongly suspect that this will involve documenting Flynn's efforts to subvert US national interests and federal law in order to serve the interests of the aggressive Turkish government: in particular, Turkey's interest in extracting from the clerical Turkish exile, Fethullah Gulen, United States. ] an erratic behavior indicates that his Turkish antics arose from arrogance and greed rather than an intent to betrayal.

Still, for Trump, Tuesday at least was not a bad day. Simply put, Sullivan strongly suggested that all that Mueller had gotten from Flynn was not enough to justify Flynn receiving a lenient sentence. He delayed sentencing to give Flynn more time to help the government help himself.

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