Mueller Charges Against Flynn Exonerate Trump of Russian Collusion by Publius Tacitus

The news of Mike Flynn's plea agreement with special prosecutor Robert Mueller was trumpeted on the media as if Flynn had admitted to killing Kennedy or had unprotected sex with Vladimir Putin. But once I took time to read the actual agreement I realized, not surprisingly, the the media lynch mob was blinded by hatred and unwilling to think objectively or fairly about the matter. The evidence exonerates Donald Trump of  having colluded with the Russians but does expose Michael Flynn as a man of terrible judgment when it comes to talking to the FBI. There was nothing that Flynn did with the Russians that was wrong or improper. 

Here are the key details for you to judge for yourself:

STATEMENT OF THE OFFENSE (link)

Pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11, the United States of America and the defendant, MICHAEL T. FLYNN, stipulate and agree that the following facts are true and accurate. These facts do not constitute all of the facts known to the parties concerning the charged offense; they are being submitted to demonstrate that sufficient facts exist that the defendant committed the offense to which he is pleading guilty.

1.    The defendant, MICHAEL T. FLYNN, who served as a surrogate and national security advisor for the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump ("Campaign"), as a senior member of President-Elect Trump's Transition Team ("Presidential Transition Team"), and as the National Security Advisor to President Trump, made materially false statements and omissions during an interview with the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI") on January 24, 2017, in Washington, D.C. At the time of the interview, the FBI had an open investigation into the Government of Russia's ("Russia") efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, including the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Campaign and Russia, and whether there was any coordination between the Campaign and Russia's efforts.

2.    FLYNN's false statements and omissions impeded and otherwise had a material impact on the FBI's ongoing investigation into the existence of any links or coordination between individuals associated with the Campaign and Russia's efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.

False Statements Regarding FLYNN's Request to the Russian Ambassador that Russia Refrain from Escalating the Situation in Response to U.S. Sanctions against Russia

 

3.    On or about January 24, 2017, FLYNN agreed to be interviewed by agents from the FBI ("January 24 voluntary interview"). During the interview, FLYNN falsely stated that he did not ask Russia's  Ambassador to the United States ("Russian Ambassador") to refrain from escalating the situation in response to sanctions that the United States had imposed against Russia. FLYNN also falsely  stated that he did not remember a follow-up conversation in which the Russian Ambassador stated that Russia had chosen to moderate its response to those sanctions as a result of FLYNN's  request. In truth and in fact, however, FLYNN then and there knew that the following had occurred:

a.    On or about December 28, 2016, then-President Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13757, which was to take effect the following day. The executive order announced sanctions against Russia in response to that government's actions intended to interfere with the 2016 presidential election ("U.S. Sanctions").

b.    On or about December 28, 2016, the Russian Ambassador contacted FLYNN,

c.    On or about December 29, 2016, FLYNN called a senior official of the Presidential Transition Team ("PTT official"), who was with other senior members of the Presidential Transition Team at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, to discuss what, if anything, to communicate to the Russian Ambassador about the U.S. Sanctions. On that call, FLYNN and the PTT official discussed the U.S. Sanctions, including the potential impact of those sanctions on the incoming administration's foreign policy goals. The PTT official and FLYNN also discussed that the members of the Presidential Transition Team at Mar-a-Lago did not want Russia to escalate the situation.

d.    Immediately after his phone call with the PTT official, FLYNN called the Russian Ambassador and requested that Russia not escalate the situation and only respond to the U.S. Sanctions in a reciprocal manner.

e.    Shortly after his phone call with the Russian Ambassador, FLYNN spoke with the PTT official to report on the substance of his call with the Russian Ambassador, including their discussion of the U.S. Sanctions.

f.   On or about December 30, 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin released a statement indicating that Russia would not take retaliatory measures in response to the U.S. Sanctions at that time.

g.    On or about December 31, 2016, the Russian Ambassador called FLYNN  and informed him that Russia had chosen not to retaliate in response to FLYNN's request.

h.    After his phone call with the Russian Ambassador, FLYNN spoke with senior members of the Presidential Transition Team about FLYNN's conversations with the Russian Ambassador regarding the U.S. Sanctions and Russia's decision not to escalate the situation.

False Statements Regarding FLYNN's Request that Foreign Officials Vote Against or Delay a United Nations Security Council Resolution

4.    During the January 24 voluntary interview, FLYNN made additional false statements about calls he made to Russia and several other countries regarding a resolution submitted by Egypt to the United Nations Security Council on December 21, 2016. Specifically FLYNN falsely stated that he only asked the countries' positions on the vote, and that he did not request that any of the countries take any particular action on the resolution. FLYNN also falsely stated that the Russian Ambassador never described to him Russia's response to FLYNN's request regarding the resolution. In truth and in fact, however, FLYNN then and there knew that the following had occurred:

a.    On or about December 21, 2016, Egypt submitted a resolution to the United Nations Security Council on the issue of Israeli settlements ("resolution"). The United Nations Security Council was scheduled to vote on the resolution the following day.

b.    On or about December 22, 2016, a very senior member of the Presidential Transition Team directed FLYNN to contact officials from foreign governments, including Russia, to learn where each government stood on the resolution and to influence those governments to delay the vote or defeat the resolution.

c.    On or about December 22, 2016, FLYNN contacted the Russian Ambassador about the pending vote. FLYNN informed the Russian Ambassador about the incoming administration's opposition to the resolution, and requested that Russia vote against or delay the resolution

d.    On or about December 23, 2016, FLYNN again spoke with the Russian Ambassador, who informed FLYNN that if it came to a vote Russia would not vote against the resolution.

Other False Statements Regarding FLYNN's Contacts with Foreign Governments

5.    On March 7, 2017, FLYNN filed multiple documents with the Department of  Justice pursuant to the Foreign Agents Registration Act ("FARA") pertaining to a project performed by him and his company, the Flynn Intel Group, Inc. ("FIG"), for the principal benefit of the Republic of Turkey ("Turkey project"). In the FARA filings, FLYNN made materially false statements and omissions, including by falsely staling that (a) FIG did not know whether or the extent to which the Republic of Turkey was involved in the Turkey project, (b) the Turkey project was focused on improving U.S. business organizations' confidence regarding doing business in Turkey, and (c) an op-ed by FLYNN published in The Hill on November 8, 2016, was written at his own initiative; and by omitting that officials from the Republic of Turkey provided supervision and direction over the Turkey project.

Robert S. Mueller III
Special Counsel

Now, let's sort out what actually happened with respect to Russia (you can only figure this out after reading the entire charge). Let's re-write the Mueller "charge" chronologically and look at how the meaning changes:

December 21, 2016--Egypt submitted a resolution to the United Nations Security Council on the issue of Israeli settlements ("resolution").

December 22, 2016--a very senior member of the Presidential Transition Team (reportedly Jared Kushner) directed FLYNN to contact officials from foreign governments, including Russia, to learn where each government stood on the resolution and to influence those governments to delay the vote or defeat the resolution.

December 23, 2016--FLYNN again spoke with the Russian Ambassador, who informed FLYNN that if it came to a vote Russia would not vote against the resolution.

On this same day, President-elect Trump spoke with Egyptian leader Sisi, who agreed to withdraw the resolution (link).

[I would note that there is nothing illegal or wrong about any of this. Quite an appropriate action, in fact, for an incoming President. Moreover, if Trump and the Russians had been conspiring before the November election, why would Trump and team even need to persuade the Russian Ambassador to do the biding of Trump on this issue?]

December 28, 2016--President Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13757, which was to take effect the following day, imposing sanctions on Russia. Russian Ambassador Kislyak called General Flynn (who was vacationing in the Caribbean).

December 29, 2016, FLYNN called a senior official of the Presidential Transition Team ("PTT official"), who was with other senior members of the Presidential Transition Team at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, to discuss what, if anything, to communicate to the Russian Ambassador about the U.S. Sanctions. On that call, FLYNN and the PTT official discussed the U.S. Sanctions, including the potential impact of those sanctions on the incoming administration's foreign policy goals. The PTT official and FLYNN also discussed that the members of the Presidential Transition Team at Mar-a-Lago did not want Russia to escalate the situation.

• FLYNN called the Russian Ambassador and requested that Russia not escalate the situation and only respond to the U.S. Sanctions in a reciprocal manner.
• Shortly after his phone call with the Russian Ambassador, FLYNN spoke with the PTT official to report on the substance of his call with the Russian Ambassador, including their discussion of the U.S. Sanctions.

December 31, 2016--the Russian Ambassador called FLYNN  and informed him that Russia had chosen not to retaliate in response to FLYNN's request.

After his phone call with the Russian Ambassador, FLYNN spoke with senior members of the Presidential Transition Team about FLYNN's conversations with the Russian Ambassador regarding the U.S. Sanctions and Russia's decision not to escalate the situation.

The real crime of Michael Flynn was his lies about his work with Turkey under the auspices of the Flynn Intel Group. That was flat out wrong. Yet, that is ignored by the media. They want the Russia silver bullet.

Guess what? There ain't one.

Not one of the things outlined in the Mueller complaint was illegal nor immoral with respect to contacts with Russia. In fact, the sequence of events and Flynn's role provides direct evidence that the senior Trump team had no established contacts with Russia. If they did, why the hell did they rely on Flynn to persuade the Russian government to do or not do things if Trump and his family were already on the Kremlin hook? Makes no sense whatsoever.

I do not know why Flynn lied to the FBI. Shame on him for that. He has dishonored himself and the uniform he once wore. 

We will find out in the coming days if Jared Kushner is as big a fool as Flynn. If JK told the FBI the truth about the events that unfolded between 21 and 31 December then he is off the hook. If he lied, he could be facing charges. One big difference, though. He can afford big time lawyers and beat the Mueller team to shit in the courtroom.

 

Comments

[turcopolier]

achaean

I think so, since the offense would be erased. Retired service members do not receive "pensions." They receive "retired pay." This is pay at a reduced rate (based on grade and length of service) in acknowledgement of their continued membership in the armed forces "club." Civilians seem to have a hard time understanding the difference between "former" and "retired" with regard to military people. TTG, J and I are "retired." We are still serving. We never got a gold watch. Some years ago i lectured at the Navy post-grad school at Monterey, California. My host , a civilian contract professor, told me how hard it would be to get me on the facility based on his experience. In the event, I drove up to the gate, showed the USMC sentry my ID Card. He came to attention, saluted me with "Good morning, Colonel" and waved us through the gate. My host shook his head and said "just like that?" Yes, just like that. pl

[fanto]

rat poison is so "yesterday"... Po210 is the modern way, and not available to first-best street urchin.

[kooshy]

yes, as long as there is no collaboration,collusion case, there can't be an obstruction of justice for firing Comey, Could Comey be in trouble if they can prove he was witch hunting to obstruct US elections and elected president?

[LeaNder]

Publius, is this the email on your mind? Why fit this flimsy piece of evidence in? Surely easy to imagine how this snippet could be fitted into whatever chain of dot-connection. ...

********

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/25651

Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin, but not go too far betting on Putin re Syria. Brent

********

That said, it's obvious the "Assad must go" message is firmly ingrained on the their minds. Had to be? Apparently 'The real Donald' threatened to moderate that narrative in early Dec. 2015. Nothing more, nothing less.

Another snippet:I suspect her negative trust ratings are locked in through election day. If there is a Trump ISIS video the campaign release it. If not, her untrustworthy numbers will remain further locked at high levels. These trust problems are self-induced and keep occurring.

Context, quite possibly one of her more stupid statements. No doubt:
http://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2015/12/21/clinton-trump-isis-video-lies-debate-newday.cnn

[LeaNder]

There is no SIGINT on this. I've spoken with people who know.

Tacitus, I can understand your objections to the more speculative parts of Bobo's post.

But if that was the case, wouldn't that suggest that the whole partisan uproar about unmasking American names in US domestic SIGINT was only political thunder? Don't forget the real or rumored copy-activities by the outgoing admin around the same time. ;)

I may be as misguided as Bobo, but it feels, whatever authorities were involved in the Flynn case, it might make sense it was the FBI and they indeed had whatever SIGINT. Triggered the whole unmasking debate, didn't it?

******

Another innocent question: Would SIGINT be termed SIGINT in Cybersecurity, Cyberwarfare, Cyberdefense?

Needing the same necessary knowledge to interpret/read it?

[TonyL]

English Outsider,

No, that's not what we were talking about. We were talking about the tax cut, not "Trump's reforms" in general.

VV's point: "The Middle Class gets a piece of coal (for Christmas)", and I agreed. That's is so obvious and unrefutable.

The Republicans in House and Senate could not defend this bill in an open debate..

[blowback]

Apologies for that but Putin responding to a request from Flynn just didn't seem right to me and it now turns out that the Kremlin is denying that Flynn influenced the decision on retaliation in any way.

https://www.rt.com/news/411858-flynn-request-putin-russia/

So was Kislyak serving Prime BS to Flynn or has someone doctored the transcript of the call?

[blowback]

After all, he's only been at it for a couple of months.

Something wrong there. Ah, now I remember, he started May 17, 2017.

After all, he's only been at it for several months.

That's better.

[Publius Tacitus]

You call it "flimsy." That's your opinion. Knowing Budowsky, as I do, this was what in poker is called a "tell." It shows the mindset.
Trump's policy pronouncements during the campaign on issues like Syria and Russia did threaten the Washington status quo. I don't know specifically who came up with the idea of manufacturing the charge that Trump and Russia were in cahoots, but the thought was there when Budowsky and Podesta were exchanging emails.

[Publius Tacitus]

Heavens no. The unmasking was real. What I'm telling you is that there is no SIGINT showing Russia going direction to anyone (including its operatives) to say and/or do things on behalf of boosting Trump's campaign. The unmasking provides further evidence of the corruption of the NSA and the CIA in interfering in the US election.

[Amir]

A very concise summary of the case by Sidney Blumenthal: Flynn Plea Shows Collusion With... Israel?
http://therealnews.com/t2/story:20622:Flynn-Plea-Shows-Collusion-With...-Israel%3F
Michael Flynn's guilty plea to lying to the FBI falls short on Russia "collusion" but points to the Trump administration acting on Israel's behalf, says author and journalist Max Blumenthal

[Joe100]

I found this legal blog post interesting as it suggests Manafort may have a good case that his indictment is beyond the legal scope of Mueller's investigation:

lawandcrime.com/high-profile/mueller-teams-apparent-mistake-could-really-really-hurt-their-case-against-manafort/

Presumably Manafort will be able to afford then quality lawyering needed to support such a case?

[LeaNder]

Heavens no. The unmasking was real.

PT, I do not in the least doubt that. Quite the opposite it was central to my argument.

To go back to what drew my attention initially: UN events. Should I assume that the outgoing admin was/could/should-have-been aware of activities by the outgoing admin? And how standard a procedure would that attempt at postponement and interference be?

It simply feels that in our general context whatever was "unmasked" was SIGINT. And, yes as always, I babble from a nitwit perspective.

[David Habakkuk]

Colonel Lang,

An enormous strength of what was originally the Soviet Army Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, and became the Foreign Army Studies Office, has been the long historical view. So your fellow VMI alumnus Colonel David Glantz was a critical figure in emancipating the historiography of the Eastern Front from overdependence on German sources. Among much else, Bruce Menning and Jacob W. Kipp produced invaluable material on the history of ‘operational art’.

To my lasting regret, when not long after the organisation was founded in 1986 I began to realise that the consensus that radical change in the Soviet Union was unlikely was questionable, I had not heard of it. But I had not come across the remarkable group which the late John Steinbruner assembled at Brookings – a different place then from now – when he was in charge of their foreign policy programme.

Among others, Ambassador Raymond Garthoff had pioneered the academic study of Soviet military strategy at RAND in the ‘Fifties, before being recruited into the Office of National Estimates which William Langer and Sherman Kent created at the CIA when Walter Bedell Smith ran the organisation. Meanwhile, Michael MccGwire had been the Royal Navy’s leading expert on its Soviet counterpart.

A particular bugbear of MccGwire’s was the maxim ‘judge capabilities not intentions.’ The problem was not that it was simply false, but rather that it was what is often that most dangerous of things – a half truth. In his view, there was a propensity in the West to conflate two different kinds of analysis, both necessary, but distinct.

Confronted by a powerful adversary with clearly offensively-oriented military planning, there really is no need to make specific assumptions about intentions to think that prudent contingency planning for war is appropriate. At this level of analysis, it is commonly perfectly proper to treat intentions as a secondary variable, and focus on capabilities.

However, there is no way one can duck out of the attempt to get the best estimate one can of intentions, unless one is happy to be ‘blindsided’ by unexpected actions from other powers, and in particular, unexpected responses to one’s own actions.

In both MccGwire’s case and that of Garthoff their views had evolved over time, partly because they had realised that early estimates of Soviet capabilities had had been inflated, with knock-on implications for assessments of intentions. So, by 1960, Garthoff had established that, of the 175 Soviet divisions, one third were at full strength, one third partial strength, and one third cadre.

By 1959, meanwhile, MccGwire had realised that the armament and deployment characteristics of the major part of the vast fleet of submarines the Soviets had started building at the start of the decade were suited not to attacking NATO’s transatlantic lines of communication but to countering possible D-Day style operations in the Baltic or Black Sea.

As a 17-year-old midshipman on the battleship HMS Rodney, fresh out of the Darmouth naval college, MccGwire had, like your uncle, been present at the North African landings in November 1942. So it was not so difficult for him to contemplate the possibility that what might be in the mind of a Soviet planner was the fact it took less than a year from Pearl Harbour for Americans to be engaged in major amphibious operations in Africa, having meanwhile essentially defanged the Japanese naval challenge at Midway.

So, critical parts of the truth turned out to lie on the surface. In the Marxist-Leninist worldview, the risk of war in the international system came from ‘imperialist’ powers attempting to resist the ineluctable dynamics of history, by resorting to military action.

A critical case where MccGwire thought that misunderstandings of Soviet intentions had led to unintended and understood consequences was the introduction of ‘flexible response.’ Intended to boost the ‘credibility’ of ‘deterrence’, its actual effect had been – after a delay – to precipitate a change in Soviet planning assumptions, from the belief that escalation to nuclear war was inevitable, to the belief that it might be possible to avoid it.

Ironically, however, the initial effect was to increase the perceived need for capabilities for a conventional ‘blitzkrieg’ into Western Europe, and for naval forces. On top of this, in the course of the late ‘Sixties and ‘Seventies Soviet planners were concluding that they could not give any operational meaning to the notion of ‘victory’ in a nuclear war.

So when in 1977 Richard Pipes produced his famous article explaining ‘Why the Soviet Union Thinks It Could Fight & Win a Nuclear War’ he was simply wrong.

And because the conventional and naval build-ups were, incorrectly, interpreted as a complement to a nuclear war-fighting strategy, rather than a replacement for it, the effect was to consolidate a long-standing mistaken view of Soviet military strategy as in large measure political, aimed at ‘escalation dominance.’

Moreover, Soviet professions of interest in nuclear arms limitation, and the whole of Gorbachev’s ‘new thinking’, were interpreted as attempts at ‘reflexive control.’ By contrast, from the summer of 1987 onwards, both Garthoff and MccGwire were arguing that changes in Soviet negotiating positions on conventional arms control very strongly suggested that a radical revision of the whole Soviet security posture was likely.

Had I been aware of the Soviet Army Studies Office at the time, I might have had a better understanding of what we were being told when in February 1989 we interviewed General-Mayor Valentin Larionov, then about to retire as a Professor at the General Staff Academy in Moscow for a couple of BBC Radio documentaries.

He was a scholarly man with steel teeth – a vivid reminder of how poor the country was – and an almost exact contemporary of MccGwire’s, having as I learnt later also gone to war in 1942, and seen action at Kursk, Warsaw, Prague and Berlin. It was clear that his secretary – a very beautiful Russian girl – disapproved of us. He himself was evidently slightly bemused at the unaccustomed experience of being interviewed by the BBC, but, if people wanted to ask him to explain, he would do his best to do so.

To understand the roots of the ‘new thinking’, he told us, one had to go back to the realisation of Soviet planners back in the ‘Seventies that it was not possible to win a nuclear war. He then talked about a Soviet strategist of the ‘Twenties, Aleksandr Svechin, who he said had been ‘repressed’ under Stalin. And he discussed the 1986 study ‘Game Plan’ by Brzezinski, whom he described as ‘nash drug (our friend) a Pole.’

What I learnt later after I discovered Kipp’s work was that Larionov had compiled and co-authored the classic Soviet statement of the strategy of winning a nuclear war by pre-emption, the initial 1962 edition of the study of ‘Military Strategy’ published under the name of Marshal Sokolovskiy.

As to Svechin, I discovered that he had been at heart of arguments that had played a crucial role both in the histories of Germany and Russia. In the former country, the decisive victory against France in 1870-1 had reinforced the tendency of the General Staff to focus on the ‘Napoleonic’ side of Clausewitz.

The most incisive sceptic was a veteran of that war who had become a great (civilian) pioneer of military history, Hans Delbrück. In his analyses of past wars, he insisted on the importance of grasping both the ‘Napoleonic’ side in Clausewitz and the insistence on the strengths of the defence, distinguishing between wars of ‘destruction’ and ‘attrition’, and emphasising the importance of grasping what was appropriate when and where.

Quite rightly, Delbrück thought that the General Staff’s determination to go for ‘destruction’ alike in East and West in 1914 and subsequently was a hideous gamble, condemning Germany to a fight to the finish with Russia and Britain at the same time.

Rather than 1870-71, Svechin had started out reflecting on the lessons of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5, which had brutally exposed his country’s backwardness. It was this which led to the focus on the ‘operational’ level of war, between tactics and strategy. Following and building on Delbrück, Svechin was consistently sceptical of those in Russia who thought that successful ‘Napoleonic’ strategies of ‘destruction’ could avoid the need for a war of ‘attrition.’ However, in the arguments of the ‘Twenties, he lost out to Tukhachevsky.

As Kipp brought out, this was part of the background to Stalin’s determination to transform a backward peasant society overnight into one capable of producing the weaponry required to fight modern industrial war. In 1941 rival ‘Napoleonic’ conceptions clashed. What resulted were quite unnecessarily catastrophic initial defeats at the ‘operational’ level for the Red Army, but in the end it was Hitler and Germany who came most decisively unstuck as a result of the failure to see that if the capabilities for ‘operational’ success can force victory at the strategic level then confidence in them can be a snare and a delusion.

One then however comes to several ironies. Actually, it is precisely nuclear weapons which, at the outset of the Cold War, made it natural to see a hot war as likely to involve strategies of ‘destruction.’ Absent such weapons, the best the Soviets could hope for would be that such strategies might achieve ‘operational’ successes which could eliminate the bridgeheads on which the vastly superior American military-industrial potential, once remobilised, could be deployed. This was not a gamble which had worked out well for the Germans and Japanese.

Another is that, with Soviet leaders after 1945, as with German after 1871, dramatic success lead to ‘hubris.’ In particular, by attempting to realise what were in essence the agendas of radical Pan-Slavs of the pre-1914, and also pushing towards Turkey and Iran, Stalin scored a catastrophic ‘own goal.’ Doing so was inherently likely to do precisely what he had not anticipated – produce a united front of the ‘imperialist’ powers preparing for possible war against him.

It also – as Larionov’s remark implied – trapped Russia into trying to control populations it could not realistically expect to subordinate in the long term, in a situation were retreat was liable to trigger destabilisation within the Soviet Union itself (as it did.) Last but hardly least, it mean that refugees from these states would, very naturally, attempt to enlist the power of the United States against the Soviet Union.

It is hardly surprising that those who have been its victims are inclined to see Soviet and Russian power in the worst light. But it not infrequently made for dubious judgements in the Cold War, and at the moment old traumas are intensifying the propensity to interpret the Putin ‘sistema’ as some kind of ‘return of Karla’, which in turn has facilitated the ludicrous attempts of Western élites to escape facing up to their own follies by scapegoating the Russians.

[Keith Harbaugh]

Not sure if this is the best place for this comment,
but it is not unreasonable to attach it here.

Byron York, "sundance", and Andrew McCarthy
analyze Flynn's actions and the (over)reaction to them
in the following (which includes some excerpts).
York gives a very detailed review of the Flynn situation,
while McCarthy emphasizes the role of Peter Strzok played.

"Comey told Congress
FBI agents didn't think Michael Flynn lied"
by Byron York, Washington Examiner, 2018-02-12
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-comey-told-congress-fbi-agents-didnt-think-michael-flynn-lied/article/2648896

In March 2017, then-FBI Director James Comey briefed a number of Capitol Hill lawmakers on the Trump-Russia investigation. ... According to two sources familiar with the meetings, Comey told lawmakers that the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn did not believe that Flynn had lied to them, or that any inaccuracies in his answers were intentional. As a result, some of those in attendance came away with the impression that Flynn would not be charged with a crime pertaining to the Jan. 24 interview.

Nine months later, with Comey gone and special counsel Robert Mueller in charge of the Trump-Russia investigation,
Flynn pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements to the FBI in that Jan. 24 questioning.

"Byron York Ponders The Flynn Puzzle Question…"
by "sundance", 2018-02-12
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/02/12/byron-york-ponders-the-flynn-puzzle-question/

"The Curious Michael Flynn Guilty Plea"
New developments in Flynn's case
raise questions about the circumstances under which he pled guilty to lying to the FBI.
by Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 2018-02-13
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/456379/michael-flynn-guilty-plea-questions-raised-about-fbi-robert-mueller-investigation

Strzok did not decide on his own to interview Flynn.
We know the matter was being monitored at the highest level of the Justice Department,
by then–acting attorney general Sally Yates and then–FBI director James Comey.
Strzok and a colleague were assigned to interview Flynn.
More importantly, Strzok apparently reported that he believed Flynn had been truthful.
Shortly after the interview occurred, it was reported that the FBI had decided no action would be taken against Flynn.
On March 2, Comey testified to a closed session of the House Intelligence Committee that, while Flynn may have had some honest failures of recollection during the interview, the agents who questioned him concluded that he did not lie.

Far from setting Flynn up, it seems that Strzok would exculpate him.
Flynn was prosecuted not because Strzok is an anti-Trump zealot,
but apparently because Strzok’s finding that Flynn was truthful was negated by Mueller’s very aggressive prosecutors.
Did they decide they knew better than the experienced investigators who were in the room observing Flynn’s demeanor as he answered their questions?

Of course, the point is moot now because Flynn has admitted his guilt.
Still, I wonder whether Mueller’s team informed Flynn and his counsel,
prior to Flynn’s guilty plea to lying to the FBI,
that the interviewing agents believed he had not lied to the FBI.
...

There are a few other oddities about the case.

After Flynn pled guilty,
I argued that this showed Mueller did not have a collusion case.
If he did, he would have forced Flynn to plead guilty to some kind of criminal conspiracy involving the Trump campaign and Russia,
and had Flynn implicate his Trump World coconspirators in the course of allocuting in court.
Instead, Flynn pled out to a mere process crime,
giving Mueller a scalp but not much else.

The judge who accepted Flynn’s guilty plea was Rudolph Contreras.
Mysteriously, just days after taking Flynn’s plea, Judge Contreras recused himself from the case.
The press has been remarkably uncurious about this development.
No rationale for the recusal has been offered,
no explanation for why, if Judge Contreras had some sort of conflict,
the recusal came after the guilty plea, not before.