Michael Flynn Slithers Back into the Oval Office

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Of all of the disgusting and reprehensible characters spawned by  the Trump administration,  Michael Flynn is perhaps the most disgusting and reprehensible of all.

Flynn, who spent thirty-three years (1981-2014) in the US Army, primarily in the field of intelligence, hit the summit of his career in 2012 when he was appointed to head the US. Defense Intelligence Agency.  During the two years that he served in that role, he became known within the Obama administration for his opposition to Team Obama's approach to conducting the wars in the Middle East.  Obama wanted to excise certain elements from the opposing forces, and Flynn was more of a mind to bring down the entire Muslim world.  Obama finally sent the general into retirement in 2014.

From retirement Flynn began doing private "consulting" on an international basis.  Upon leaving the DIA Flynn had been cautioned by the US government about not accepting payments from foreign governments.  In December of 2015 he gave a speech at a formal dinner in Moscow in which he sat next to Russian President Vladimir Putin.  Flynn was paid over $30,000 for that speech.  It was at about that same time that Flynn established contact with representatives from the Trump campaign.  Flynn had once been openly skeptical and wary of the Russians, but Trump impressed upon him his notion that cooperation with the Russians might be the best way forward for the United States in the post-Obama era.

When Barack Obama left office in January of 2017, one bit of sage advice that he reportedly gave Trump was that he should not appoint Michael Flynn as his National Security Adviser - advice which Trump ignored.

Michael Flynn served just 24 days as National Security Adviser before he was forced to resign in disgrace on February 17, 2017 - becoming what the New York Times referred to as the "first felon to emerge from this (the Trump) administration."  As a result of the Mueller invenstigation, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators about his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States prior to the Trump administration coming into office.  Flynn and the ambassador had reportedly talked about the sanctions that the Obama administration had placed on Russia because of that country's illicit involvement in the 2016 US presidential elections.

When Donald Trump was asked about Flynn's guilty plea, he responded "I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI."

During Flynn's multi-year involvement with law enforcement, he actually pleaded guilty in court two times to lying to the FBI, and he was assisting with the Mueller investigation.

But then Trump fired the head of the Justice Department, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and replaced with Bill Barr who quickly began exercising more control over the FBI and it's on-going investigations.  In early May of 2020 Barr suddenly said his department would move to drop all criminal charges against Flynn - saying that Flynn's admission had been in response to an interview that had been conducted "without any legitimate investigative basis."

After Barr's dismissal of the charges, an ecstatic Trump, who had once "fired" Flynn for lying to the Vice President and the FBI, now crowed that the general was "an innocent man!"

However,  Judge Emmet Sullivan of the District Court of Washington, DC, was not having it,  and he moved to continue the case against Flynn.   The general secured new legal counsel, Sidney Powell out of Texas, and sought to have his guilty plea withdrawn.   Powell filed a "writ of mandamus" with the DC Circuit Court of Appeals asking that Sullivan be ordered to drop the charges, in line with the Justice Department's new position on the case.  The three justices who heard the case, on a vote of 2-1, agreed with the writ of mandamus and ordered Judge Sullivan to dismiss the case.  Sullivan then took the matter to the full Court of Appeals for DC which heard the arguments and declined to order a dismissal of the case against General Flynn.

After the dust from the court maneuverings began to settle, Donald Trump stepped in on November 25th and granted Michael Flynn a full presidential pardon for "any and all offenses" in connection with the Mueller investigation.

Then, this past Friday night - December 18th - Donald Trump hosted a "pity party" in the Oval Office with the primary focus of coming up with ways to hold onto his job as President.  Some of the people in the room included Trump's Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani,  and Michael Flynn and his lawyer, Sidney Powell.  The current National Security Adviser, Robert O'Brien, reportedly participated in the meeting by phone.

News reports indicate that the Friday night meeting in the Oval Office degenerated on multiple occasions to "screaming and yelling" among the attorneys in the room over who was doing the most to support Trump.  One idea that Trump floated was to appoint Sidney Powell, Flynn's attorney who has also been promoting a wide range of conspiracy theories about the election, as a special counsel to probe claims of election fraud.

Trump apparently also discussed the idea of seizing voting machines in certain states to try and ascertain if they had been tampered with.  Giuliani has also been pressuring Ken Cuccinelli, a Homeland Security official who formerly was a right-wing office holder in Virginia, to seize voting machines, but Cuccinelli has so far turned down those requests because he believes that he lacks the authority to do so.

Flynn, for his part, has been discussing the idea of invoking "martial law" in the United States until all of the election controversy could be settled - presumably in Trump's favor - a position he likely expounded upon during the White House meeting.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows may have been the only adult in the room and reportedly spent the evening pushing back against all of the crazy.

Meanwhile Michael Flynn, a man who five full years ago was speaking for pay to a group of Russian dignitaries in Moscow -  and who four years ago was, as someone outside of government, was meeting with the Russian ambassador to the United States and discussing lifting sanctions against Russia - and a man who pleaded guilty, in court, twice, to lying to the FBI - that Michael Flynn - was sitting in the Oval Office with the President of the United States and others as they actively sought ways to subvert democracy!   

And all of the while Michael Flynn was drawing a monthly check from the United States Government for his retirement from the military - a check roughly equal to what his full-time pay had been when he retired after as a Lieutenant General after thirty-three years of service.

That is an outrage of outrageous proportions!

If Michael Flynn cannot bring himself to support the Constitution of the United States of America, then the Treasury of the United States should damn well not support him!

Joe Biden likely will not attend to the matter of Lt. General Michael Flynn (Ret.) and his conduct unbecoming of an officer in the US military, but he should!