Quote (IceMage @ May 16 2019 07:04am)
There's no exception to the Logan Act that says "if the current president is doing things you don't like on the way out, you can interfere in US foreign policy as a transition member". There's no exception to lying to the FBI that says "if I was engaged in improper interference in US foreign policy as a transition member, I can lie to the FBI about it".
It doesn't really matter what the Logan Act says if its been defunct for 220 years and never enforced. Even CNN who yapped about miniature black holes swallowing flight 370 had no problems dismissing the Logan Act on Flynn as "a relic of a bygone era" and said ""It gets trotted out every time there's a political disagreement when someone who is not the president touches on foreign policy," Vladeck said. "It's the old chestnut that everyone quotes and no one understands."
If you need to hinge your understanding of the affair on taking the Logan Act seriously, you're doing something wrong.
Again, it shouldn't matter if democrats can make some hissy argument about Trump's transition conducting diplomacy after being elected and before being sworn in and saying its improper and violates some law that's about as enforceable as anti-sodomy statues. It shouldn't matter if republicans can make some hissy argument about Obama trying to use his last few minutes in control to sabotage Trump and strip all the "T" keys off the keyboards. What should matter is the fact that absent a clear violation, absent a smoking gun in an unambiguous malfeasance- there cannot be any justification for the FBI taking extreme and dangerous steps that threaten the very fabric of our government. And its easy enough for me to criticize them for spying on Trump now that we know he was innocent and I can say 'neener neener, told you so~', but what matters was what they knew and didn't know at the time. And they did not have any suitable justification for their actions against Trump or Flynn at the time. It reeks of political animus and abuse of power. It was committed by people we later learned held deep political animus and committed other abuses of power.
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There was no setup. Comey said to send a couple agents over there to interview Flynn. They went, they gave him a chance to tell the truth, or at least tell them to get lost. He chose to lie. Simple as that.
They sent a couple agents over there to ask Flynn about that very subject, already knowing what he had said and what he would say and that they would have a criminal case against him as soon as he answered their questions in the way they expected him to answer. They already knew that he had lied about it in public and they knew that he had no reason to suspect they knew he lied in public, or suspect any adversarial motive from them for that matter. To deviate from what he had said publicly would be to admit it was a lie. That's a setup. If you knowingly create the circumstances that will incriminate someone who otherwise would not commit the crime, then its a setup. And that's true irrespective of any technical definition of entrapment.
And again, since this doesn't get through: They already openly admit it was a setup. They already talked about the motivation for the setup, they already admitted they were exploiting his presumption of cooperation, they convinced him he wouldn't need a lawyer. They justified setting up Flynn by arguing that the Russians would hold leverage on them since they could theoretically expose that he was lying in order to embarrass him, and hold that threat over his head. Of course, in a rational world, that's an absurdly thin pretext and Flynn simply wouldn't care if Russia said such a thing in public. Why would anyone believe them and it simply wouldn't matter much anyway. It might have caused him a black eye in the media for all of a 48 hour cycle during a period in which the MSM was melting down with team coverage every time Trump farted on an elevator.
We're talking about actions committed by the FBI that have caused severe damage to our institutional credibility and government function. Even with the leadership slate wiped clean and facing their own OIG probes, its going to be a long time before IC partners are at ease with each other and not looking over their shoulders to see who's going to stab them in the back. The reputation of the FBI was nuked to a crisp and its going to harm public trust, willingness of potential informants and allies, and lower recruitment. And they're bleeding FBI agents who get ousted for misconduct after Comey & McCabe led a politicized culture from the top down. How many heads have rolled already, and how many are on the chopping block?
This post was edited by Goomshill on May 16 2019 08:45am