Goodbye, Michael Flynn

| 8:40 pm EST December 16, 2019
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Michael Flynn was this close to getting a super-lenient plea deal sentence that included no prison time. All he had to do was not go a million miles out of his way to screw it up. But for reasons that are still somewhat confounding, Flynn has indeed decided to go a million miles out of his way to screw it up. Now it’s official: he’s toast.

Rather than simply allowing himself to be sentenced to the zero months of prison time that federal prosecutors recommended, Michael Flynn decided to hire a new lawyer who was best known for selling anti-Mueller t-shirts. Then Flynn made a point of sabotaging the trial of his former business partner Bijan Kian, causing the verdict against him to be thrown out. Then Flynn asked that he not be sentenced until after the Department of Justice Inspector General report came out, under the mistaken belief that it would somehow prove Flynn was framed for the crimes he’s already confessed to.

That didn’t work, so Flynn’s next trick was to demand that prosecutors turn over new evidence against him. But the judge shut that down today, meaning it’s over for Flynn. Now he gets sentenced – and because he caused real harm to another criminal case with his antics, he’s just about guaranteed to be sentenced to prison time.

Donald Trump has tweeted praise for Michael Flynn’s new legal strategy, which suggested that Trump and Flynn were in on it together. But even if Flynn was following Trump’s orders by blowing up his plea deal, Flynn’s antics resulted in absolutely nothing that can help Trump in any way. Trump doesn’t believe in loyalty, so we don’t see him pardoning Flynn, which would run the risk of triggering a court battle over pardoning co-conspirators that could end up preventing Trump from being able to pardon himself and his family on his way out the door.

In other words, goodbye Michael Flynn. The disgraced General will do prison time for his antics in the Trump-Russia scandal. This will serve as a timely reminder to Donald Trump’s current underlings that if they get caught committing crimes in Trump’s name, they’re not going to get pardoned either.