Quote (IceMage @ May 6 2020 09:04pm)
I don't know what "set him up" means. You'll have to explain in detail how the FBI set Flynn up.
The pre-interview notes to me don't mean that much. We don't know what the FBI was thinking. Some bullet points can be interpreted in a myriad of ways. Let's just assume they mean what the cult assumes... so the FBI was operating as they normally do with a person who was under investigation. This person happened to be the National Security Adviser to the President of the United States, and he was lying publicly about conversations he had during the transition. He lied to the VP and Chief of Staff. As far as the FBI knew, he may have been running (illegal) diplomacy without the knowledge of Trump.
For context, this is a guy who got paid by Turkish interests to lobby on their behalf while he was part of Trump's campaign, and then Trump's transition.
So agents interviewed him, and he chose to lie to them. He could've told the truth, and he could've refused to answer "sensitive" national security matters. He lied. He admitted to it in court, multiple times.
In a world where reasonable right-wingers exist, Flynn would be tarnished for his behavior. He decided to get paid by Turkey while working for a presidential campaign and transition. He didn't seem to care about Russia intervening in our election on the call with the ambassador. But 99% of you have turned into cultish weirdos who can't separate fact from fiction, so the fallback is attacking law enforcement officers who tried to figure out what happened in 2016.
The investigation into Flynn was purportedly to investigate whether he was a Russian agent. We know he wasn't. We know there wasn't any evidence at the time to warrant an investigation, and we know that day-to-day FBI agents tried to close the case because of the lack of evidence.
Flynn was not charged with participating in "illegal" diplomacy. It's routine for members of the national security team to participate in advance diplomacy, but it's really besides the point. Nobody asserts Flynn was taking an illegal call, so why are you harping on this as a talking point?
Flynn was asked to talk to the agents in a casual setting. He wasn't aware he was being interviewed as a subject of a probe, and had no reason to suppose he had to be exact in his communication. The FBI made a conscious decision to avoid reminding him that he was a subject of a probe, emphasized by their forgoing of the customary "it's a crime to lie to the FBI". Afterwards, the interviewing agents themselves acknowledged that there was no apparent attempt to deceive. Flynn was answering questions off the cuff and either spoke poorly, misremembered, or perhaps lied. We'll really never know. But the reason the FBI interviewed him, the reason why they avoided contacting the Trump administration, the reason why they avoided customary courtesies in speaking with him, are all obviously apparent. As an addendum, all of his "lies" are completely innocuous. Did he have reason to lie? Certainly not because the truth would have gotten him in trouble, because it didn't. The intent was to interview him in secret, make him think it was a casual conversation, and then to use something he said to tag as a lie and prosecute him.
Was Flynn a good person? I'm not sure it matters. His alleged crimes were minor, rarely if ever prosecuted before him, and the motive to relieve him was entirely political. It's ironic that you would accuse anyone of being a cultist. You cling to tired, thin, storylines because the alternative would mean recognition that the world is a lot grayer and more complex than you wish it appeared. It's ok to take the stance that Flynn was both unqualified for his role and inappropriately prosecuted. Yet you belong to a cult, just not Trump's cult, and so that nuance is lost on you.