The real reason Michael Flynn is getting the prison sentence he’s getting

| 1:36 pm EST January 7, 2020
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After a very long cooperation plea deal, and more recent trouble with that cooperation deal, Michael Flynn is finally being sentenced to prison. The government had originally recommended no prison time at all, due to Flynn’s extensive cooperation. Now it’s changing its mind – but it’s not the result that some were rooting for.

The government says it’s now recommending that Michael Flynn get zero to six months in prison, as opposed to the zero months it originally recommended. This has led many in the resistance to ask how Flynn can end up with such a lenient sentence, considering the nature of what he did to his country. After all, he conspired with the Russian Ambassador against the United States. But here’s the thing: this is simply how plea deals work.

Flynn was the very first to cut a cooperating plea deal in the Trump-Russia scandal. The first person out of the gate in a massive criminal conspiracy generally gets a sweetheart deal. In Flynn’s case, prosecutors agreed not to charge Flynn for his more serious crimes. He only had to plead guilty to lying to the FBI, and the sentencing recommendation for that is six months. Flynn did cooperate for a long time, regardless of Mueller’s inability to use that information to take Trump down.

The only reason Michael Flynn is no longer getting off scot free is that at the end of his deal, he went berserk and screwed up the trial of his business partner Bijan Khan. Prosecutors consider that to be egregious enough to recommend the high end of the sentencing for the one charge he pleaded guilty to, but not egregious enough to void his entire plea deal and bring additional criminal charges against him, which would require a new trial, and would take forever.

You’re not supposed to like how plea deals work. Guilty people get sentences far more lenient than they should, simply because they gave up information on other guilty people who were more important. If Michael Flynn’s plea deal had taken Donald Trump down, no one would care how much or little prison time Flynn got. Because that didn’t happen, it just feels weird that Flynn still gets a short sentence for his role in Trump’s treason plot. But if you want to be frustrated at someone, you should look at Robert Mueller, or whoever sabotaged Robert Mueller, as Flynn’s cooperation should have been enough to take Trump down. We’ll just have to vote Trump out in 2020, after which Trump will go to prison – and for a while lot longer than six months.