Mike Flynn Story

    
                                                 By Florida Bill  

                                              Hopefully, the Covid-19 crisis will play out and come to an end, and when that happens, there are other controversies crying for resolution.  One of them involves Michael Flynn, a three-star army general who has been dealt a bad hand by the same forces that pushed the nonsensical Russian "collusion" investigation of President Trump.
                               In December of 2017, Gen. Flynn, who had been appointed National Security Adviser, by President Trump, was accused of lying to two FBI agents concerning the precise contents of a telephone conversation he had with the Russian Ambassador, a year earlier, on December 16, 2016. The criminal charge was at the very least, clumsy and unfair, in that the FBI agents had a full transcript of the call, and knew precisely what had been discussed between the new NSA chief  and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, and nothing in the call involved secret or confidential matters.
                               The agents did not tell Flynn that they had a transcript of the conversation.  Instead, they finagled him into hedging on answers, and then advised the media that the "Russian" probe was bearing fruit, and that General Flynn had perjured himself. The accusation against the retired three-star army officer, suggested "Russian" involvement, and the biased and Trump-hating media, screamed loudly that this was  proof of "collusion" committed by an ally of President Trump. 
                                Flynn was charged with "perjury" and told that prosecutors would seek five or more years of prison time. But here it is 2020, and the charge still hangs over his head with the court declining  to sentence him even though he had actually entered a guilty plea to the indictment.  
                                In the latest development of this strange and manufactured wrongdoing,  Gen. Flynn has petitioned the court to withdraw his plea on grounds that the government acted improperly, withheld exculpatory evidence and otherwise committed outrageous crimes in "a plot to convict an innocent man." As part of the picture, and obviously weighing heavily on the mind of the district judge, was testimony by former FBI Director James Comey before a congressional committee that the general had not been dishonest in his answers to the FBI agents.     
                               What about the conversation that Gen. Flynn had  with the Russian ambassador?  Reportedly, much of it included chit chat with the Russian diplomat who extended his congratulations to Flynn on his new position. There were references to sanctions placed upon Russia by the Obama administration and apparently the Russian official wanted to know the possibility of relaxing those sanctions, with Flynn suggesting that they would be dealt with later by the Trump administrations.   

                          Because Flynn's official tenure as NSA adviser did not commence until the new President's swearing in in January, discussions of sanctions were supposedly off- limits at that time to Gen. Flynn as the new appointee of President-elect Trump.                                      Gen. Flynn spent 33 years in the army serving in both domestic and combat zones, and was the recipient of medals and honors.  Under President Obama he had served as the country's Defense Intelligence chief. After leaving that office, he became an adviser to then candidate Donald Trump, and as such, drew the enmity of a biased media which was pushing for the election of Hillary Clinton and spouting the tenets of the Democratic National Committee.  
                         Reportedly, the prosecutors pushing the story of Flynn's dishonesty, also drew the guilty plea from the general after threatening him with a future prosecution of his son for unauthorized dealings with a foreign country without registering his business in accord with USA law. 
                         Some legal scholars are arguing that the charges against General Flynn should be thrown out as they have no standing in law.  Former Harvard Criminal law Professor Alan Dershowitz has said that even if Gen. Flynn told a lie in connection with this meaningless conversation, there was no crime.  
                          "The lie has to be material to the investigation," asserts Dershowitz, "and if the FBI already knew the answer to the question and only asked him the question in order to give him an opportunity to lie, his answer, even if false,was not material to the investigation." Other attorneys have suggested that the FBI conduct smacks of "entrapment," and that the agents ought to be sanctioned for their misbehavior. 
                            On Feb. 27, District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan continued the Flynn case indefinitely.  
                            

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Fact Checkers"--Are they For Real?

                              
    
                                                 By Florida Bill  

                                Recently in the Chicago Tribune, I saw a comment  by  Columnist Clarence Page that President Trump has lied more than 16,000 times in public statements since he took office in January, 2017--and Page's source: "Fact Checkers" at the Washington Post. 
                         Page complains regularly about Trump and has categorized him as a "racist" in many columns.  He doesn't like Trump--I get that.  The Washington Post is a bombastic critic of Trump and for that very reason alone, its reliability for producing accurate "fact finding" data is highly suspicious.  In fact, its finding of 16,000 prevarications is absurd on its face and a veteran reporter like Clarence Page has to know that, but apparently he wants to remain in good standing with the media's "Trump-hating" crowd.  
                        Based upon a three year time frame, (including weekends) during which the President allegedly misstated  facts, the President would be lying at the rate of 44 times a day.  I know that Post "fact checkers" may contend that there are countless prevarications in a single speech, but that statistic strains the imagination since prepared statements are for the most part examined by aides in the White House and by attorneys  and former newsmen before they are delivered for pubic consumption.  It is easy to sit back and  point to this or that as false and untrue, and then call it a lie and pass out those armchair findings to hungry Trump critics in the subservient Democrat controlled media. 
                         A main contention by the fact finders is that Trump's "most repeated falsehood" is his claim that the government is "going to have over 400 miles of wall built by the end of  year (2020)." The President has repeated that more than 160 times, fact checkers assert. Since several hundred miles of the wall are already up, who is doing the fibbing on that one.  

                          Trump is called a liar for having said that the Mexicans would pay for a border wall.  A lie?  No, it was  a prediction--a promise.  Did it come true?  Your call. Tariffs on goods have been turned upside down so that Mexico's whopping deficit on goods sold has been flipped around with the Mexicans paying billions dollars more in tariffs to the USA.  Even before becoming President, Trump explained in an interview with Bill O'Reilly that tariff adjustments would produce money for use in construction of the wall on the nation's southern border. Overlooked by the fact checkers?

                            But what about the "fact checkers" who are accountable to no one? What are their credentials, and how do these gifted minds go about their work? The Post has published various commentaries patting themselves on the back, noting awards received for their work from other Trump-hating organizations. I waded through some of the Post's accounts of its fact-finding process, and concluded that its process would never stand the test of cross examination.  But then--who cares.  Freedom of the press!!!
                            The Post, like all corners of the news media, is protected by a First Amendment privilege which allows it to say in print absolutely anything, and the Post will pay no penalty for its scurrilous behavior and dishonesty.  As every lawyer knows ( and I am one), it is virtually impossible to ever sue successfully for libel or defamation when the defamed party is a public official.  There is a pathway in some cases, but it simply does not happen.  
                          The Post has a "fact checking" team of four reporters headed by Glenn Kessler, 60, a veteran newsman with credentials in investigative journalism and as an author of one book. His has three assistants and their experience and abilities are anyone's guess. But their allegiance to the Post and its liberal anti Trump agenda presumes that they will pull out all stops in a team effort to discredit the president, honesty and objectivity be damned. 
                          With their fact checking, the team awards "Pinocchios" that correspond to increasing levels of untruth, culminating at four.   A pinocchio-4 is as bad as it gets and is called a "whopper," and with this process, the "fair minded" newspaper  can say they do not call someone a "liar,--only that he has a long nose with the length indicating the severity of the dishonesty. The Post simply leaves it to others in the media, print and electronic, to denounce President Trump as a "liar," and point to the "fact checkers" at the Washington Post as the unassailable source. 
                           Supposedly, other working bureaucrats are fact- checked in response to requests, but in truth it is President Trump that is the principal target for mendacious behavior. Around Post editorial offices, that mission is referred to as "Project Trump." Kessler has written that the Trump project takes up huge amounts of time, but not every entry to the "fact checkers" database, is a full length article and most require only 15 minutes on average for the armchair evaluators to compose a comment.  
                           The Post which is committed to bringing down the nation's 45th President, and without having to account or be penalized for any fabrications and nonsensical interpretations, the Post is free to accuse the President of unadulterated dishonesty, and serial exaggeration. The burden for proving the accuracy of a claim rests with the speaker, Kessler says.  Trump haters love it, and it always supports the agenda of the Democrat party.
                            I have found that citizens who oppose the President call him a "liar," but are unable to cite examples. Some point to Trump's assertion that the Mexicans will be paying for the "wall," which was more of a promise than a lie, and actually in view of the tariff change, has come true. Like Trib columnist Page, who clearly hates Trump and has abandoned all objectivity, they "know" he is a liar because the Washington Post says so, and so do Democrats in the House of Representatives headed by Nancy Pelosi.  
                           Thus far, in the past 40 months, the Post has been unsuccessful in destroying the Trump presidency through the phony "Russian" investigation and then the "Ukraine Quid Pro Quo," hoax and currently is attempting to blame the President for failing to properly lead the country's fight against Covid-19.  Is this the Post's dreamy reenactment of their reporting in the 1970s, which was key in the take down and resignation of President Nixon?  
                            The Post ignores all of the false and foolish statements of Joe Biden who they are supporting in a race against incumbent Trump next November. Stories of Biden's sexual attack on a senate aide is ignored. No "fact checking" there, although there would be plenty to feed into that "database."                                                                  Currently, and even with WaPo's shameful reporting and lack of journalistic objectivity,  pundits, without an agenda, are predicting that President Trump will win reelection in a landslide.

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