Donald Trump suddenly has a HUGE Michael Flynn problem
The full bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals issued an 8-2 ruling today that the criminal case against Michael Flynn can proceed, and that Judge Sullivan is free to handle it however he wants. This is the latest reminder that the majority of Bill Barr’s corrupt schemes end up failing, and Barr isn’t very good at this. It also means Donald Trump is stuck in a no-win situation.
Based on everything that has transpired in Judge Sullivan’s handling of this case up to this point, it’s likely that he’ll keep Michael Flynn’s original plea deal intact, and sentence Flynn to prison. The original deal called for zero to six months, but because Flynn has so throughly sabotaged the deal from his end, Sullivan could end up giving him a lot more than six months. That’s where it becomes a problem for Trump.
Yes, Donald Trump can try pardoning Michael Flynn. But if Trump does it at this time, under these circumstances, under this spotlight, it could end up causing some voters in the middle to turn against him. And if Trump decides to let Flynn rot, Flynn could end up spilling his guts about the Trump-Russia plot they carried out together.
We’ll see how Donald Trump decides to play it, but either way this is a huge problem for him. The whole reason Trump had Bill Barr try to sabotage the Flynn case from within was that Trump didn’t want to be backed into a corner where he had to make a no-win decision about pardoning Flynn. This is a day that Trump was very much hoping wouldn’t come.
Another thing to keep in mind is that because Michael Flynn sabotaged his plea deal, the DOJ is free to hit him with the additional criminal charges that he avoided by cutting the deal in the first place. So if even if Trump pardons Flynn, and Trump loses the election, there’s a good chance the next iteration of the DOJ will put Flynn in prison anyway – and it could be a lot longer than six months. If Flynn were smart, he’d go quietly serve his sentence now, and hope everyone has forgotten about him by the time Trump is defeated.
