Michael Flynn suddenly has a problem – and so does his son
Yesterday the Trump-Russia investigation reached a milestone when Special Counsel Robert Mueller made his first plea deal sentencing recommendation for a member of Donald Trump’s team. Mueller called for the maximum six month prison sentence available under the guidelines for Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, citing several complaints about how Papadopoulos handled himself during his cooperation period. One of those complaints may mean bad news for another Trump adviser who famously cut a plea deal.
This month we saw Trump deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates testify against Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, making clear that Gates is proving his usefulness as part of his plea deal. In contrast we still don’t know precisely what role former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is playing behind the scenes as part of his plea deal. Flynn has mostly been quiet – but his son Michael Flynn Jr has been running his mouth something fierce. That’s suddenly a problem.
Among the issues cited by Robert Mueller in his sentencing recommendation for George Papadopoulos: allegedly false claims that his wife Simona made during interviews. It’s not clear what if any impact this may have ultimately had on Mueller’s decision to recommend the maximum sentence, but Mueller was clearly bothered by it enough to bring it up in the official sentencing recommendation filing. This brings us to Michael Flynn, who by all accounts cut a plea deal in the hope that Mueller would go easy on Flynn Jr.
Even as that plea deal has played out, Michael Flynn Jr has regularly tweeted and retweeted one deranged phony conspiracy theory about the Trump-Russia investigation after another. He’s doing what Simona Papadopoulos did, times a thousand. To be clear, Michael Flynn is still cooperating, or else Robert Mueller would have revoked his plea deal and hit him with a full array of Trump-Russia charges by now. But the text of Flynn’s deal does specifically not guarantee immunity for his son. Flynn Jr’s deranged Twitter rants could very well result in a harsher sentence for his father, and could even prevent him from getting off the legal hook himself.
