Techno is a lawyer who runs twitter.com/techno_fog

On Monday he contributed this guest post in defense of General Michael Flynn.

On December 14, Tiana Lowe wrote an opinion piece at the Washington Examiner titled “Right-wing mythmaking of Michael Flynn.” In the hit piece Lowe accuses Trump supporters of transforming General Michael Flynn “into a victim of the legal system, framed and hoodwinked by the FBI.” As a vocal supporter (on Twitter) of General Flynn, I couldn’t let Ms. Lowe’s sloppy and contradictory piece go unanswered.

As a lawyer I’ve seen the guilty escape conviction, companies pay to settle fraudulent claims, and the innocent, when faced with years of prison, make a deal. But don’t take my word for it – do your own research here.

It’s an undisputed fact that the legal system is set-up to avoid trial and get defendants to plea. No matter the evidence, no concern if a poverty-stricken defendant has ineffective counsel. For example, according to a 2018 report by National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, under former Attorney General Eric Holder, prosecutors sought a “waiver of a prospective claim of ineffective assistance of counsel as a condition of a guilty plea.” The prosecutor’s mandate of “seeking justice” is nothing more than a suggestion.

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With that overarching theme in mind, consider the FBI and DOJ’s recent behavior. We know:

(1) The FBI and DOJ used the unverified Steele Dossier in its FISA applications; and

(2) They violated the FISC local rules by not disclosing the source/funding of the dossier or material facts the dossier got wrong.

And now it’s clear that the FBI was so focused on Flynn, so willing to take him down and end his career, that they used the Logan Act, a dead and unconstitutional law, as an excuse to send investigators to conduct an interrogation masked as a cordial conversation.

Then consider the sad case of Ms. Lowe. Ignorant of prosecutorial abuse in securing plea deals, and minimizing the FBI’s perjury trap, she has the gall to take Mueller’s December 14 Response as gospel, concluding that “Flynn is a liar, one clearly smart enough to think he could game the legal system, but not strategic enough to get away with it.”

Ms. Lowe continues, alleging “Flynn chose to lie to federal investigators, intentionally and deliberately.”

Well, there you have it. Case closed. Ms. Lowe is the knower and seer of all. If only we could harness her omniscience for the greater good. Make her an FBI Special Agent. On the double, Director Wray. Imagine the possibilities.

How certain is she that Flynn is a liar?

Ms. Lower has an answer: “It still remains unclear how much Flynn is actually guilty of.”

In this moment of incoherence, Ms. Lowe accidentally stumbles upon a good point. It wasn’t her intention and it contradicts her later statements, but credit where credit is due, I guess. We know the accusations. We know the plea. But we don’t know what really happened at the interview.

We don’t know Flynn’s state of mind when he spoke with Agents Strzok and Pientka.

We don’t know the questions Strzok asked. (Seasoned investigators use compound questions to find lies where there are none.)

We don’t know Flynn’s answers because the FBI relies on agent memory, which is faulty, instead of recordings, which don’t lie.

However, we do know the following, which undercut Flynn’s motivation to lie:

Flynn told McCabe that he (McCabe) probably knew what was said in his calls with the Russians.

Flynn asked McCabe “how so much information had been made public” and expressed concern about leaks.

We also know that Flynn had an incentive to plead. Flynn (and possibly his son) faced criminal charges for alleged FARA violations. Curiously, this was an offense that Mueller’s FBI, and the DOJ as a whole, ignored until they found Trump associated offenders. Look to Manafort’s DC superseding indictment to see how that would play out. Mueller would have used a FARA violation to charge Flynn with money laundering and quite possibly conspiracy against the US.

The legal theories to justify those charges are shaky, but look at Flynn’s choices.

Spend hundreds of thousands of more dollars for a coin flip chance in front of a liberal DC jury? Worse case you get years in jail. Best case you’re cleared of all charges. Either way you’re bankrupted with legal fees.

Or do you save money, plead to a crime you didn’t commit, and get no jail time?

All this is lost on Ms. Lowe, who somehow interpreted accusations of FBI misconduct as attempts to reinvent Flynn as naïve and clueless.

But it gets worse.

She writes, “But to reinvent the character of Mike Flynn as so despondent and unfamiliar with the law but also so awesome that Trump chose him to lead his NSA is pure mythmaking and a pathetic attempt to boot.”

“Lead his NSA.”

Poor Ms. Lowe is confused. Flynn was chosen to be the National Security Advisor. He wasn’t going to “lead [Trump’s] NSA.”

Tip: If you haven’t familiarized yourself with Flynn’s position, then you have no business discussing Flynn’s plea.