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Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has reportedly offered to testify about President Trump's campaign and Russia:
President Trump's former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has reportedly told the FBI that he is willing to testify about the Trump campaign's potential ties to Russia, in exchange for immunity from prosecution, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Flynn resigned in February, after it was reported that he misled White House staff on his interactions with Russia and had discussed sanctions with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak ahead of President Trump's inauguration. The Journal reported, citing officials familiar with the matter, that the FBI and the House and Senate Intelligence committees that are investigating Russia's attempts to interfere in the U.S. election have not taken his lawyers up on the offer.
Flynn's lawyer said in a statement that "General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit."
[...] In September, criticizing Hillary Clinton over former aides being given immunity deals as part of an investigation into her private email server, Flynn said, "When you're given immunity that means you've probably committed a crime."
Also at the LA Times, the Washington Post, Bloomberg, NYT, and Politico.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @04:56PM (2 children)
Dragging up a law that is literally more than 200 years old and under which again literally not a single person has ever been prosecuted to try to possibly convict somebody of doing something which is more or less standard practice is generally what most would call unfair prosecution. A similar thing happened during the Occupy Wallstreet protests. New York City had a law on the books, again more than 150 years old, on the books about it being illegal to wear a mask in the city going back to some tenant farmer uprising they were having. After its passage it went through about a century of completely disuse since it was just about the one specific issue which resolved a few years later. Nonetheless it was brought back up to give the city an excuse to go start arresting otherwise law abiding and peaceful Occupy Wallstreet protesters - they were wearing Guy Fawkes masks.
If you think these sort of things are about upholding the law and not political retribution, then I would say you might want to look in the mirror before calling others "hyper-partisans." One of the big failings of our system is that laws never expire allowing them to be exploited to malicious ends many decades after they should have been retired. So for instance simply requiring that any offense he be charged with be a law that has been 'regularly invoked' and is not for behavior generally seen as otherwise lawful would be a means of protecting himself against unfair prosecution without seeking outright immunity.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday March 31 2017, @06:10PM
The law against murder is also more than 200 years old. That doesn't make it not a good law to go after somebody about.
There was 1 indictment under the Logan Act, so it's not like the law has never ever been used. However, there's a good argument that the reason that it tends not to come up is that the people known to have broken that law end up being the very same people in charge of enforcing it and thus escaped prosecution due to corruption. A couple of major examples of this phenomenon:
- Richard Nixon and his staff sabotage LBJ's attempts to end the Vietnam War in 1968 [nytimes.com]
- Ronald Reagan and his staff sabotage Jimmy Carter's negotiations to try to get the Iranian hostages back in 1980 [washingtonreport.me]
What you are calling "standard practice" is that once a presidential election is over, the outgoing administration is supposed to hand off their foreign policy knowledge and duties to the incoming administration. Since both of those cases occurred before the election, and the accusations in this case also occurred before the election, that doesn't put it in the same category.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @06:17PM
> Dragging up a law that is literally more than 200 years old
So, you accept that he was asking for immunity. Good. Glad we cleared that up.
Now... Why do you hyper-partisans insist on making this about the logan act?
The guy lied to the FBI exactly the way he lied to Pence.
The logan act has nothing to do with that.