Just so no one is blind-sided. :)  Why the White

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Nov 6, 2017 at 5:06 PM 99

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Just so no one is blind-sided. 

Why the White House Dreads a Flynn Indictment

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/...se/545039/

Unlike the Paul Manafort case, charges against the former national-security adviser would touch the White House itself and could ensnare the president.

David A. Graham
12:10 PM ET Politics

snip//

Whatever the superficial similarities between the Manafort and Flynn situations, though, the key difference is that a Flynn indictment would put the Mueller probe in the White House. Manafort was pushed out of the campaign in August and never worked in the Trump administration (though he is said to have remained in contact with Trump for months).

Flynn, however, worked in the White House for almost a month. That means he could have discussed many of the potential areas for charges—from conversations with Kislyak to Gulen to who knows what—with any number of White House staffers on any level.

Mueller could call them in for questioning. Even if none of those staffers did anything illegal, and at this point there’s no indication they did, the threat of testimony will create new stress and distraction in a White House already riven with both.

They’ll also all need lawyers, and good expensive ones; the Papadopoulos plea-deal is a vivid illustration of the dangers of talking to federal agents. (Trump has offered to contribute $430,000 to legal fees, but the more staffers involved, the faster that will be used up.)

Moreover, a Flynn investigation would move things much closer to Trump himself. The president distanced himself from Manafort—former Press Secretary Sean Spicer claimed he played a “very limited role” in the campaign—but not from Flynn.

Trump allowed Flynn to stay in the administration even after it became clear he had lied to Pence, and also after a conversation between then-Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and White House Counsel Don McGahn. Yates would not divulge the contents of that late-January conversation when she testified to Congress in May, but if Flynn did lie to the FBI, it appears likely that Yates told McGahn then.

Then, after Flynn’s departure, Trump asked then-FBI Director James Comey if he could let Flynn go, saying he was a good guy, according to sworn testimony Comey offered to Congress. “General Flynn at that point in time was in legal jeopardy,” Comey said in June.

“There was an open FBI criminal investigation of his statements in connection with the Russian contacts, and the contacts themselves, and so that was my assessment at the time.” Then, several months later, Trump fired Comey, a decision he attributed to Comey’s investigation into Russian interference in the election.

That creates two separate occasions on which Trump could potentially have obstructed justice—first by meddling in the FBI’s probe into Flynn, then by firing Comey altogether.

As the law professor Ryan Goodman writes at Just Security, it would be possible to make an obstruction-of-justice case against Trump in the absence of charges against Flynn, but it’s much more straightforward to make such a case if there’s actual evidence of a case that Trump was attempting to obstruct.

Actual criminal charges against Flynn would provide that.

No wonder the Trump team was pleased that Manafort, rather than Flynn, took the first hit—but that relief could be short-lived.

Even if one takes Trump’s staunch denials of collusion with Russia entirely at face value, that doesn’t mean Robert Mueller can’t go after him on obstruction of justice or something else entirely. A Flynn indictment is the shortest path to that outcome.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/...se/545039/

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