Michael Flynn Deserves No Sympathy
“He knew he had committed serious offenses, and he knew that prosecutors had him dead to rights.”
Shed no tears for him.
Photographer: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty ImagesMichael Flynn’s lawyer won’t say that the Federal Bureau of Investigation entrapped him, but that hasn’t stopped a lot of other people from saying it did. The editorial writers of the Wall Street Journal have been the leaders of the pack, calling the former national security adviser to President Donald Trump “the most tragic” of Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “many targets.” Its analysis has been echoed by other conservative voices. White House spokesman Sarah Sanders says Flynn was “ambushed” by a biased FBI.
The Journal has several complaints about the FBI. Andrew McCabe, who was its deputy director in January 2017, encouraged Flynn to meet with agents without a lawyer present. The agents did not warn Flynn that lying to them would be a crime. They did not tell him they already had a transcript of his conversations with the Russian ambassador, which Flynn proceeded to mischaracterize.