Apparently, the official policy of the Justice Department at this moment is that if you are a Trump administration member, the following conduct is not worth prosecuting:
Mr. Flynn … was not forthcoming with Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Mr. Kislyak.
Mr. Flynn eventually admitted that those discussions were part of a coordinated effort by the president’s aides to make foreign policy before they were in power, which undermined the policy of President Barack Obama.
Mr. Flynn also lied in federal filings about his lobbying work for the Turkish government, court papers show.
And, furthermore, the FBI should not treat Trump administration members suspected of colluding with foreign governments as if they were — wait for it — suspects. As the Justice Department revealed in its court filing, by asking about meetings with foreign government representatives,
the [FBI] questioning “was untethered to, and unjustified by, the F.B.I.’s counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn” and that the case did not meet the legal standard that Mr. Flynn’s lies be “materially” relevant to the matter under investigation.
And let’s not even talk about Flynn’s apparent perjury in court and maybe out of it too.
Is it any surprise, therefore, that
In a possible sign of disagreement with the Justice Department decision, Brandon L. Van Grack, the department lawyer who led the prosecution of Mr. Flynn, abruptly withdrew from the case on Thursday.
Add it all to the list.
You know, on days like today, I don’t care what happened in a hallway in 1993, or whether Biden is as sharp as butter. Maybe I’m a bad person. Or maybe there really is too much at stake.
Update: More details about just how weird and horrible today’s decision to (attempt to) abort the Flynn case — after he’d had guilty pleas accepted twice — can be found in this excellent analysis by Marcy Wheeler.
