Perhaps it is just human nature to at first be sorry to learn that Michael Flynn is not going to get jail time for his lies. After all he had the temerity to yell “lock her up” to campaign crowds regarding Hillary’s emails. As far as we know. her mistakes never put the nation’s security at risk while the same cannot be said about Flynn’s lies. He denied having any contacts with the Russian Ambassador to the U.S. And with that denial the Russians had him in a compromised position. Flynn became the marionette, and the Russians had control of the strings. Now THAT is an example of a huge security risk.
On further reflection, Flynn’s hypocrisy notwithstanding, it is important to align one’s thinking with Mueller. After all, according to Mueller, Flynn’s testimony was extremely significant and apparently launched the Mueller probe in extremely important ways. Flynn provided seventy hours of testimony over nineteen different sessions -giving Mueller and his team an enormous amount of facts and leads to follow up on. So if Mueller thinks Flynn deserves a get out of jail free card, then the Resistance can certainly agree with his decision..
This article from The Atlantic gives readers an excellent comeback to the argument that the Trump accomplices are guilty of only process crimes. Process crimes are lies which cover up other more questionable behaviors. GOP defenders like Guiliani infer by using that term that somehow lying does not rise to the level of substantive malfeasance – that these lies are just trifling misstatements mentioned after long hours under the heat of Mueller’s investigators’ questions.
Writer Harry Litman in this article does a beautiful job puncturing a hole in the notion that Trump’s cohorts are guilty of mere lies. Litman suggests that these people are genuine fraudsters who participated in a huge scam to fool the American people. These are not trifling lies – they are intimations of repugnant cover-ups with attendant victims.
It doesn’t take long to find an example of victims based on the work of a Trump fraudster. Just look at the low life Attorney General, Matthew Whitaker who was involved in a fraudulent business which left thousands of victims, many of whom lost their life savings. Those who voted for Trump, but wouldn’t have if they had known that he was still doing business with the Russians are victims. All of the Trump supporters today, who believe his lies are victims of Trumps subterfuge. Let the Trump attorneys call the guilty as having committed mere process crimes. All of us in the Resistance know better.
Enjoy the article.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/muellers-charges-arent-process-crimes/577351/