You can surely understand the unseemly haste from Sarah Sanders. If you were the White House press secretary, you’d definitely want to wrap up your rare media briefing after just 15 minutes. You’d also want a shiatsu massage, a large hot toddy and the best lawyer money can buy.

“Do your job Sarah,” shouted one reporter, clearly frustrated by a press secretary whose last on-camera briefing was 21 days ago. But she was doing her job, guys. Her job is to dodge all the pesky questions, so 42 seconds of daily briefing time seems about right.

Rarely has a White House seemed so festive and so felonious at the same time. Tuesday was the day Team Trump released an utterly heartfelt and heart-warming photo of Donald and Melania holding hands, surrounded by a small forest of Christmas trees festooned with enough scarlet baubles to decorate Red Square.

Gone was all that nasty talk of hush money for porn stars, jail time for lawyers and conspiracies with tabloid rags. For a brief moment, captured for eternity in an official portrait, they could hide among the yuletide pines and forget about all the plea deals.

For Michael Flynn, the prospect of jail time is even more rich than a tin plate of plum pudding

But the season of goodwill to all men did not extend all the way down Pennsylvania Avenue to the US courthouse. There, yet another senior aide to the president found himself staring at a now familiar fate for those who get too close to Trump: swapping the White House for the Big House.

For Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, the prospect of jail time is even more rich than a tin plate of plum pudding. General Flynn famously led the pitchfork mob at the 2016 Republican convention in a charming chant of “Lock Her Up!”

“We do not need a reckless president who believes she is above the law,” Flynn declared, in a statement that only proves there is a god of irony after all. “Lock her up! You know why we’re saying that? If I did a tenth of what she did, I would be in jail today.”

For someone who once ran the Defense Intelligence Agency, Flynn wasn’t all that intelligent. Then again, he got fired from that job for reportedly being ineffective and disruptive: two qualities that made him the perfect fit for the misfit toys known as Team Trump.

Michael Flynn arrives for sentencing hearing in Washington. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

As Judge Emmet Sullivan pointed out on Tuesday, Flynn posed something more than a tenth of the national security risk represented by Hillary Clinton’s private email server. That’s because Flynn was actually working with hostile foreign officials to undermine American national security while serving in the presidential campaign and subsequent transition as, um, national security adviser.

At the same time as President Obama was imposing sanctions on Russia for interfering with the 2016 election, Flynn was telling his Russian friends not to worry. For some strange reason, Flynn later lied to FBI agents about this un-American ruse. Flynn and his business partners were also undeclared agents representing the president of Turkey while at the same time advising the president of the United States.

It’s hard to know how you can make America great again if you’re spending so much time and energy making Russia and Turkey great too.

“Arguably, this undermines everything this flag over here stands for. Arguably, you sold your country out,” said Judge Sullivan, who asked out loud whether Flynn had committed treason. The judge later steered the court away from reading too much into his questions about treason, which must have been so very reassuring for the defense.

But his true feelings about Flynn’s crimes were hard to avoid. “I’m not hiding my disgust, my disdain, for this criminal offense,” said the judge, who earned successive appointments from presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton.

This perhaps was not the outcome Flynn’s lawyers or even Robert Mueller’s prosecutors had in mind when they arrived at the court for a little gentle sentencing. Both sides recommended no jail time for Flynn because he was cooperating so very helpfully in Mueller’s broader investigations into all things Trumpy.

Even Flynn’s old boss seemed to be hoping for some Christmas cheer from the court, wishing his old national security adviser some very sporting good fortune. Of course, he couldn’t help slide in a little hint about, you know, not spilling your guts about all that Russian stuff, nudge nudge.

“Good luck today in court to General Michael Flynn,” tweeted Trump. “Will be interesting to see what he has to say, despite tremendous pressure being put on him, about Russian Collusion in our great and, obviously, highly successful political campaign. There was no Collusion!”

Some lawyers might call this leading the witness. Others might just call it mind-numbingly obvious. But this is the season for gifting, and it is now public knowledge that this president loves re-gifting, so let’s give him the benefit of some reasonable doubt, shall we?

This wasn’t a great day in the annals of Trump legal history, or philanthropy for that matter.

‘Rarely has a White House seemed so festive and so felonious at the same time.’ Photograph: UPI/Barcroft Images

New York’s attorney general declared that the Trump Foundation had agreed to close down amid a broader lawsuit seeking millions in restitution. Barbara Underwood said the foundation had engaged in “a shocking pattern of illegality” and served as “little more than a checkbook to serve Mr Trump’s business and political interests”.

At a time when people the world over turn their attention to the neediest among us, it’s good to know that Trump always recognized that he was the neediest of them all.

Of course this holiday season is also a time when the world takes stock of itself. Trump can look back at all the investigations that have indicted or jailed his former aides and friends, and look forward to so much more of the same.

Meanwhile a small army of Democratic candidates can contemplate whether and how quickly to run against Trump for president next year. There may be a temptation among them to overthink their message to voters as they ask for support across a weary nation.

But they should know that we can still only faintly see the outlines of Trump’s corruption through the wrapping paper. We don’t even know what Flynn has told Mueller about the Trump family’s ties to Russia. So don’t get too excited, too early. This is the gift that keeps on giving.