“Please proceed”
After Special Counsel Robert Mueller recommended that Michael Flynn receive no prison time as part of his plea deal against Donald Trump, Flynn made the surprise move of accusing FBI agents of having tried to trick him into lying to them. At the time, Palmer Report suggested that Flynn wouldn’t dare try such a thing unless Mueller had signed off on it. Now a series of events points to why Mueller might have allowed Flynn to do it.
Let’s be clear here. Michael Flynn included this in his sentencing memo because he was afraid the judge might overrule Mueller and send him to prison, due to the severity of the crimes he committed (espionage, etc). Flynn is trying to convince the judge to go with Mueller’s recommendation. But when Mueller is your meal ticket, you don’t dare risk pissing him off. When Flynn decided that he wanted to make the accusations against the FBI in his memo, he would have run it past Mueller first. But why would Mueller have signed off on it?
Because Michael Flynn has told the judge that the FBI violated his rights during the interview, the judge has decided that the FBI’s interview notes should be made public, so everyone can see what really went down. Sure enough, the FBI has just released a partially redacted version of the memo it originally crafted after the Flynn interview.
There is nothing in the memo to support Michael Flynn’s assertion that the FBI was trying to trick him into believing that they were simply having a conversation among colleagues, as part of his role as White House National Security Adviser. Instead, the memo reveals that the FBI was asking Flynn serious questions about his phone calls with the Russian Ambassador, and there’s no possible way that a seasoned military and intel officer like Flynn could have believed he wasn’t being interviewed.
For that matter, there’s no possible way Flynn or his lawyers could have expected a judge to look at this memo and come to that conclusion. So maybe Flynn was just hoping the judge would simply take his word for it, as opposed to asking the the FBI for the records. But this still doesn’t explain why Flynn would risk alienating Mueller by attacking the FBI in his sentencing memo, unless Mueller signed off on it. Again, the question is why Mueller would do so.
Considering that Robert Mueller usually ends up getting the outcome he wants, it’s worth looking at the outcome here. Michael Flynn’s sentencing is almost irrelevant; he’ll get a short prison sentence or no prison time, and that’ll be that. What stands out is that the public now gets to see FBI records which reveal in detail just how thoroughly Flynn was conspiring with the Russian Ambassador while answering to Donald Trump.
Maybe Robert Mueller just decided to let Michael Flynn hang himself with this stunt. Or maybe Mueller saw this as an opportunity to get information out there that helps lay the groundwork for what he’s about to reveal about Donald Trump’s role in the Trump-Russia conspiracy. Did Mueller have a hunch the judge would order the FBI memo to be publicly released? If so, this has echoes of when President Obama simply said “Please proceed” during the 2012 debate, because he knew Mitt Romney was about to finish himself off.
