Category Archives: current events

The long “Libertarian” campaign against the US Postal Service

In their single-minded determination to privatize every aspect of American government, outside of the military and the police (and possibly local fire departments) wealthy lovers of Liberty have long eyed the popular United States Postal Service as ripe for privatization. The history of this well-engineered plan is discussed here. It is laid out in an article HERE

Ridding us all of the US Postal Service was a longtime dream of America’s most aggressive and influential Libertarian, Charles Koch. Koch-funded institutes, think-tanks, candidates and other organs of influence have moved his once extremist vision into mainstream Republican politics Here is a short history of the recent, organized Republican/Trump administration attempt to bankrupt and dismantle the public postal system.

The skinny: 2006 the lame duck Republican Senate (rascals voted out in the blue wave that preceded Obama 2008), a few days before Christmas, in the dead of night, by voice vote, passed the crippling , Postal Accountablity and Enhancement Act, forcing the Postal Service to fully fund all pensions 75 years in advance, eventually creating a $72,000,000, hole in the USPS budget.

It turns out that, during the Obama administration, of course, Mitch McConnell blocked the nominations by Obama for the USPS Board of Governors. This left the board vacant and allowed Trump to fill all vacancies. This allowed the USPS Board of Governors to appoint Louis DeJoy, until May the finance director of the Trump 2020 campaign, during the pandemic, when voting by mail became much more crucial to ensuring everyone’s right to vote safely. This appointment allowed DeJoy to remove mailboxes and high-speed sorting machines and institute strict rules about overtime in order to hobble the timely delivery of mail.

As always, nothing to see here. Nothing to fucking see here!

In other news:

Both of these things cannot be true

A federal judge ordered Trump to produce evidence by August 14th, a judge politely asked Trump if he felt like producing evidence.   Both cannot be true.

President Trump, as part of his open national effort to suppress the “Democrat” vote, has gone to court to challenge the use of drop box voting in Pennsylvania.   He won that key state’s twenty electoral votes in 2016 by a whopping 0.7 percentage points, 44,292 votes.   The more people he stops from casting ballots, the better his chance to win the Electoral College votes of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. 

Trump knows that his best, likely his only, chance of re-election lies in motivating his diehard base by constantly stoking their anger, their most extreme fears, driving them to the polls in their full 40% numbers, and making sure large numbers of voters for the other party do not get to vote.   He is also setting things up to contest the results of another “rigged” election if he loses.  He will do this in court and by “Second Amendment” means, if necessary.  Those who believe Trump is fighting a cabal of Satanic pedophile cannibals will take up arms, as they did recently against the tyranny of a “Democrat” governor who attempted to force them to wear masks during an extremely infectious pandemic.

Trump’s legal team in the Western District of Pennsylvania made explosive claims about widespread voter fraud, claims they offered no evidence to support.   As Bill Barr has said when questioned about what proof he has of voter fraud: “it’s obvious!”.    The judge in the Pennsylvania case was appointed by Trump and McConnell.   It seemed Trump might have another Neomi Rao, the loyally partisan DC District Court of Appeals appointee, overseeing his claims that to allow widespread absentee voting in Pennsylvania would inevitably lead to massive “Democrat” fraud.

On August 13 the federal judge in that case ordered the Trump campaign and the RNC to submit evidence of fraud or admit it had none.   As reported the following day in the New York Times:

Screenshot_20200815-003724_Messages

Though this order appeared to be a do-or-die profile in courage by this 42 year-old Trump appointee, drawing a line in the federal court sand against the president’s constant abuse of the court system to delay and bully (in cases he almost always loses in the end), there was no media follow up on this case. Over the following days I wrote to news directors at several outlets, was in communication with the news director at WESA, the public radio station in Pittsburgh, where the district courthouse is. The only article I saw was published on the Intercept website. It is headlined:

TRUMP COMES UP EMPTY WHEN PRESSED FOR EVIDENCE OF ELECTION FRAUD IN COURT:

The Trump campaign’s 524-page response to a discovery demand turned up precisely zero instances of mail-in vote fraud.

WESA published this piece earlier today.

This morning a friend sent me this Reuters piece which contains this, eh, analysis:

The Trump campaign says the ballot drop box invites fraud. The federal judge asked the campaign to provide evidence of actual fraud, but the campaign declined, arguing it did not have to do so in order to win the case.

The upshot of the Reuters update is that federal judge Ranjan put the federal lawsuit on hold to allow state lawsuits to resolve the state law issues. Presumably, on the advice of his superiors, the new judge chose to “stay” the case rather than dismiss the complaint outright as a flagrantly political stunt submitted in bad faith and without any evidentiary basis. Reuters reports:

The Republican president has repeatedly and without evidence said that an increase in mail-in ballots would lead to a surge in fraud, although Americans have long voted by mail.

There is perhaps no more consequential lawsuit than the one in Pennsylvania, which Trump won by less than 1 percentage point in 2016 and is considered essential to his re-election effort.

J. Nicholas Ranjan, U.S district judge for western Pennsylvania, said the federal case brought by the Trump campaign would not move forward until similar lawsuits in state courts are completed or unless they are delayed.

But what’s with Reuters’ ridiculously anodyne statement of Trump’s apparent defiance of a court order?

but the campaign declined, arguing it did not have to do so in order to win the case.

The federal judge didn’t “ask,” he ordered the campaign and the RNC to produce evidence or state that they had none, according to every report I read a week earlier.  A judge does not ask when issuing a court order. That’s why it’s called an “order”. 

The powerful plaintiffs respectfully disagreed with the judge’s “request” and said they’d win even without evidence, like in the rigged Senate “impeachment” “trial”.   

What the fuck, man, is everybody asleep?

On His Way Back from Epstein’s?

World-class instinctual expert on propaganda, Adolf Hitler, applauded the Allied propagandists who, during the World War (the first, and at the time, only one) created incendiary, aggressively lying captions for news photos.  These captions effectively inspired hatred, rage and terror, three things needed to make an army fight a hated enemy (or civilian group, for that matter) to the death.   Mr. Hitler could not endorse this tested and effective technique of creating lying captions strongly enough.  He sang its praises lustily in the pages of Mein Kampf.     

So, using this principle, I could take, say, an otherwise innocent picture of somebody, like this one:

And simply provide a scandal-evoking caption like:

Coming home from Epstein’s?

to suggest, without a shred of evidence (and with perfect deniability– it’s just a question!), that the man pictured here is with a child prostitute, solicited and groomed by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell [1], for the use of wealthy, influential pedophiles. The girl is a takeout order.

It is a small step from producing fake photographic “proof” (the kid is actually a young self-made entrepreneur-in-training named Ivanka Trump) to spinning the rest of the conspiracy– not only does this evil pervert pay a sex-trafficker to kidnap this young girl so he can take her away in his limo to sexually abuse her, but, even worse, not long after this picture was taken he murdered her and drank her blood.

And, of course, as the mysterious and all-knowing oracle named W preaches: only Joe Biden can save us from this dastardly plot hatched by this depraved sex-pervert cannibal and his likeminded followers!!!

[1] The above link will take you to a long Guardian article about Maxwell’s father, Ian Robert Maxwell, controversial self-made millionaire media titan and politician and his influence on Jeffrey Epstein’s best friend. In Ghislane’s larger-than-life father’s defense, and you have to love it, his widow had this to say:

In her autobiography, Betty, who died aged 92 in 2013, described Maxwell as bullying, unfaithful and frequently absent. But she insisted he was “not the degenerate monster” many said he was.

source

There will be those who will try to refute this

The more I think about the coalition of conservatives who formed the Lincoln Project , their political views, the efforts they’ve made in the past to bring something like this about (Trump was an unintended consequence for them, though predictable) the less I like this group — though I respect that they’re trying to atone for bringing the nation to the brink of totalitarianism. And, as their type always has, they make very powerful political ads.

This hard-hitting spot is not going to sit well with the pro-evil forces, I can tell you for sure. It can be refuted only by calling all reports of federal action and inaction in a pandemic, all death and infection numbers, all comparisons to other nations, all reports about political calculation by the most nakedly “transactional” administration in history, all “news”, the product of vicious, lying partisans intent on destroying the greatest genius that has ever led a nation in the history of the world.

It’s perhaps worth noting that the teenaged daughter of Kellyanne and George Conway, Kellyanne perhaps the loyalest and most savage of Trump defenders, he of the Lincoln Project– and a man who holds that Trump suffers from an extreme and malignant form of narcissistic personality disorder — effectively forced both of her parents out of politics for the foreseeable future. The fifteen year-old “influencer” announced her intention to “emancipate” herself, to get out of the madhouse she’s been growing up in. Kellyanne and George both publicly agreed to a public ceasefire, Kellyanne announcing that she’s stepping down as Trump’s loudest mouthpiece, George stepping away from the Lincoln Project.

May the most malignant conspiracy theory… not win.

Update on Trump 2020-RNC filing of evidence of vote-by-mail fraud!

In granting a motion in the case Trump 2020 and the RNC brought to restrict alternatives to live, in-person voting in Pennsylvania, Judge Ranjan ordered Trump’s lawyers to submit evidence of mail-in voting fraud or admit that it has no evidence.    Never ones to be put in a corner, or back down, or admit their claim was based on nothing but a desire to win at any cost, the Trump campaign chose a third option:   they submitted 524 pages of what purported to be evidence of fraud. 

Did they offer any actual evidence that allowing voters to submit mail-in ballots at drop boxes (to get around Trump mega-donor Louis DeJoy’s multi-pronged slowdown of US Postal Service mail delivery): “provides fraudsters an easy opportunity to engage in ballot harvesting, manipulate or destroy ballots, manufacture duplicitous votes, and sow chaos.”???

No.

Did they admit that they had no proof?

No.

524 pages, your honor, some of it redacted.   Read it and weep, chumps.  One of the parties in the lawsuit had this comment after reading it all.

“Not only did the campaign fail to provide evidence that voter fraud was a widespread problem in Pennsylvania, they failed to provide any evidence that any misconduct occurred in the primary election or that so-called voter fraud is any sort of regular problem in Pennsylvania,” said Suzanne Almeida, interim director of Common Cause PA, one of the parties in the lawsuit. The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.

source

Beautiful NY Times nuance in arguable Trump perjury

You have to admire a newspaper that can report that Senate Republicans “rejected” Trump’s claim (under oath) that he did not recall talking to Roger Stone about the perfectly timed release of hacked DNC emails, while fairly pointing out that the Senate Intel Committee report did not state that Trump was lying.   They rejected his claim, yet didn’t claim he was lying, though they rejected the truth of what he submitted under oath.

A neat display of lawyerly Republican contortions and a nice bit of New York Times journalism, in an article that notes Trump and Stone spoke by phone at least 39 times (that are known) from March to November 2016, and that they spoke (on a Trump assistant’s phone, as the careful conspirators often did, for deniability) on the eve of the disclosure of hacked emails that was timed to knock the “you can grab ’em by the pussy” tape off of the news.

Let’s have a look at this neat bit of journalistic fairness:

The Republican-led committee rejected Mr. Trump’s statement to prosecutors investigating Russia’s interference that he did not recall conversations with his longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr. about the emails, which were later released by WikiLeaks.

Senators leveled a blunt assessment: “Despite Trump’s recollection, the committee assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his campaign about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions.”

The senators did not accuse Mr. Trump of lying in their report, released on Tuesday, the fifth and final volume from a three-year investigation that laid out extensive contacts between Trump advisers and Russians.

source

Beautiful, no?   They rejected Trump’s claim under oath that he didn’t recall ever talking to Stone about the WikiLeaks dump, yet… they did not accuse Mr. Trump of lying.   

Both fair and balanced. 

Meanwhile, no Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee will talk to the New York Times.   You can’t blame them.  As Mr. Barr told Representative Swalwell in reply to his question about whether he was investigating Mr. Trump for commuting the sentence of Mr. Stone, who bragged about dummying up for Mr. Trump and not turning rat, “why should I?”

As for convicted perjurer Roger Stone, he dismissed the whole thing as a fabrication based on the sworn testimony of two fucking liars, two stinkin’ rats.

In fairness to the Grey Lady, the editorial board did publish this today, entitled The Trump Campaign Accepted Russian Help to Win in 2016.  Case Closed:

A bipartisan report released Tuesday by the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee cuts through the chaff. The simplicity of the scheme has always been staring us in the face: Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign sought and maintained close contacts with Russian government officials who were helping him get elected. The Trump campaign accepted their offers of help. The campaign secretly provided Russian officials with key polling data. The campaign coordinated the timing of the release of stolen information to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The editorial board takes a paragraph or two to debunk the narrative being spun by AG Barr that “Russiagate” was a transparent partisan attempt to persecute the president.   Then:

The committee documented that, on Oct. 7, 2016, Mr. Stone received advance notice of the impending release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Mr. Trump brags about sexually assaulting women. In response, Mr. Stone made at least two phone calls arranging for WikiLeaks to release stolen internal emails from the Democratic National Committee.

it concludes:

There’s no way to sugarcoat it. In less than three months, the American people could re-elect a man who received a foreign government’s help to win one election and has shown neither remorse nor reservations about doing so again.

Case closed, voters?   Or, a second Civil War against the angry, violent hoards who hate the white Christian values typified by great men like Donald Trump, William Barr, Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence and Michael Flynn?

 

Blood libel 2020 style

In recent centuries, whenever angry European peasants and other low paid workers, their masters’ foot on their necks, needed a reason to riot and rape and kill Jews in springtime, the Blood Libel was a handy rationale.   The idea was simple:  Jews kidnapped and killed young Christian children around Easter time because they needed young Christian  blood to make matzoh for Passover.

Matzoh, a crisp, very thin flatbread, is made of flour and water.   Of course we don’t list the secret ingredient, Christian child blood, on the box!  Proves the cunning of my accursed race, does it not?   There you go.

We have a similar conspiracy theory afoot in the United States at the moment.   QAnon believers are convinced, by a secret soothsayer named Q, that the “Democrat” party is run by a cabal of pedophiles who kidnap and traffic young children for sex and then kill and eat them.   These evil perverts seek something in the children’s blood, apparently to give them superpowers or something.

Naturally, when asked about this conspiracy theory point blank, a theory that many of the president’s most ardent supporters take as gospel, Mr. Trump had a nonchalant reply.    From the Grey Skank:

When told by a reporter about the central premise of the QAnon theory — a belief that Mr. Trump is saving the world from a satanic cult made up of pedophiles and cannibals connected to Democratic Party figures, so-called deep-state actors and Hollywood celebrities — Mr. Trump did not question the validity of the movement or the truth of those claims.
 

Instead, he offered his help.

“Is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing?” the president said lightly, responding to a reporter who asked if he could support that theory. “If I can help save the world from problems, I am willing to do it. I’m willing to put myself out there.”

Mr. Trump’s cavalier response was a remarkable public expression of support for conspiracy theorists who have operated in the darkest corners of the internet and have at times been charged with domestic terrorism and planned kidnapping.

In normal times, this would be very alarming.   But these are not normal times.   

I’m more interested in what unreported tissue of bullshit the president’s army of lawyers presented to Judge Ranjan in the Federal District of Western Pennsylvania almost a week ago.   You will recall they were ordered by the Trump-appointed judge to present evidence of mail-in voter fraud, or admit they have none, by close of business Friday, August 14.   Since then: crickets.

Of course, whatever that legal filing might or might not contain, or whatever its implications, it pales next to the horrific specter of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris gleefully sodomizing terrified white children and then drinking their blood.   You know what I’m sayin’?   

Paul Manafort — the spy who did not “collude”

“According to the report, Mr. Manafort was forthcoming: He briefed Mr. Kilimnik [Russian intelligence officer] on Mr. Trump’s path to victory and his strategy to win in battleground states.” 

source

Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign manager, a man fond of expensive jackets made out of things like ostrich, was a founding partner, with self-proclaimed “political dirty trickster” Roger Stone, of the longtime DC lobbying/campaigning firm Black, Manafort and Stone.   They were pioneers in campaigning for national elections (starting with Ronald Reagan’s presidential run) and then profiting as lobbyists by providing paid access to their candidates once in office.

Manafort later made millions grooming and helping Kremlin-backed Ukrainian politician Viktor F. Yanukovych become president of Ukraine.  Yanukovych’s successful presidential run, orchestrated by Manafort, was backed by pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarchs, as well as at least one Russian oligarch, Oleg V. Deripaska.   Would-be strongman Yanukovych was forced out of office for corruption and abuses of power by a popular uprising in 2014 and fled to Russia. 

Manafort felt he’d been stiffed out of millions in fees that were owed to him for his tireless efforts on behalf of Yanukovych and his pro-Putin backers.  The billionaire Deripaska believed Manafort owed him a small fortune on a business deal gone bad.   Manafort, needing money, volunteered to head Trump’s presidential campaign, working without a fee, for the promise of a big payday from his wealthy longtime associates in Russia and Ukraine.   

In the course of his work for the Trump campaign Manafort met with, communicated secretly with, and gave detailed, strategic voter and campaign information to, a Russian intelligence officer named Konstantin V. Kilimnik.   Manafort did this important but illegal work, with agents of a foreign adversary, to get his client Mr. Trump elected secretly, like a spy.   Thus concludes the Rubio-Cotton Report, volume five, released by the Senate Intel Committee yesterday.   The report Marco Rubio spins as proving once and for all that there was “no collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence.

Stone and Manafort are both convicted felons who lied under oath to the Mueller investigators, but the extent of Manafort’s direct ties to Putin’s intelligence service was revealed yesterday for the first time by the Senate report.

The following is from the New York Times article outlining what was revealed about Manafort’s extensive ties to, and communications with, a close longtime associate, Russian intelligence officer Konstantin Kilimnik. 

The report portrayed Mr. Manafort as deeply compromised by years of business dealings with those oligarchs. Collectively, they had paid him tens of millions of dollars, lent him millions more and may also have owed him millions.

These complex financial entanglements apparently figured in Mr. Manafort’s decision to give Mr. Kilimnik inside campaign information, including confidential polling data and details of Mr. Trump’s campaign strategy. The report builds on other evidence suggesting that Mr. Manafort hoped that Mr. Kilimnik would open up lucrative business deals with the oligarchs in return or that they would consider the value of the information as its own form of payment.

and:

The report said Mr. Kilimnik was Mr. Manafort’s link to Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who is close to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and has acted “as a proxy for the Russian state and intelligence services” since at least 2004, when Mr. Manafort apparently met him.

Mr. Deripaska, who has worked to install pro-Kremlin governments around the globe, initially hired Mr. Manafort as a political consultant, the report said. A group of pro-Russia oligarchs in Ukraine later became the financiers of Mr. Manafort’s operations to help Viktor F. Yanukovych, a politician aligned with Russia, become Ukraine’s president.

Mr. Manafort recognized the Kremlin’s interests, the report said. “This model can greatly benefit the Putin government if employed at the correct levels with the appropriate commitments to success,” he wrote in a memo to Mr. Deripaska.

The report called Mr. Manafort’s efforts for the oligarch “in effect, influence work for the Russian government and its interests.”

No collusion, baby!!!   Nothing to see here!   Liberal fascist lies, unwittingly abetted by Tom Cotton and Marco Rubio!    Traitors, devils and darkness!!!!

Of course, the president’s enemies will try to spin this to make Manafort look guilty of spying or treason.   The New York Times continues, citing the Cotton-Rubio report released yesterday:

Despite questions about who was behind Mr. Kilimnik — both financially and politically — Mr. Manafort increasingly depended on him. But by 2014, the Ukraine work had dried up.

Mr. Yanukovych had been forced out as president after a popular uprising and fled to Russia. Mr. Manafort claimed the Ukrainian oligarchs had stiffed him out of millions for his work for Mr. Yanukovych. And Mr. Deripaska was trying to collect from Mr. Manafort for a failed private equity deal in Eastern Europe.

Now broke, Mr. Manafort volunteered to work for the Trump campaign, which hired him in March 2016. In a memo, Mr. Manafort offered to brief Mr. Deripaska on “this development with Trump.”

Mr. Manafort also speedily passed along the news of his new job to Mr. Kilimnik, who traveled to the United States specifically to meet him in May and again in August 2016. According to the report, Mr. Manafort was forthcoming: He briefed Mr. Kilimnik on Mr. Trump’s path to victory and his strategy to win in battleground states.

After he rose to campaign chairman, Mr. Manafort also instructed his deputy, Rick Gates, to periodically share confidential Trump campaign polling data with Mr. Kilimnik, including surveys showing what voters most disliked about Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump’s Democratic opponent. Mr. Gates “understood that Kilimnik would share the information with Deripaska,” the report said.

The transfer of internal campaign data to a known Russian agent is “about as clear a coordination or cooperation between two entities as could be established,” said Senator Angus King, a Maine independent on the Senate Intelligence Committee who votes with Democrats.

The president’s enemies try to make it sound like secretly meeting with a member of a foreign intelligence organization and sharing detailed election polling and voter information with a country that later is shown to have hacked into electronic elections in all fifty states, in order to give their chosen candidate victories by tiny majorities in each key swing state, is some kind of nefarious crime, something akin to treason.

We never get tired of slinging these kind of outrageous, slanderous, libelous allegations against the best people, do we?

“According to the report, Mr. Manafort was forthcoming: He briefed [Russian intelligence officer] Mr. Kilimnik on Mr. Trump’s path to victory and his strategy to win in battleground states.”

SO?

A Word to my Christian Brothers and Sisters

This guy really nails it with his test based on the Seven Cardinal Virtues and the Seven Deadly Sins.   

In deadly sins (Gluttony, Avarice, Pride, Sloth, Anger, Lust, Envy)  our president is seven for seven. 

In virtues — and this guy’s list is a little idiosyncratic (Truth, Love [agape type], Courage, Wisdom, Tolerance, Freedom, Creativity [1]) the president’s score is much lower.   

Check this guy out, he gives a pretty good test in about two and a half minutes. 

[1]  The president doesn’t fare much better in the virtue test with the traditional Christian Seven Cardinal Virtues

After Pope Gregory released his list of seven deadly sins in AD 590, the seven virtues became identified as chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility. Practicing them is said to protect one against temptation from the seven deadly sins.

Virtue Latin Gloss Sin Latin
Chastity Castitas Purity, abstinence Lust Luxuria
Temperance Temperantia Humanity, equanimity Gluttony Gula
Charity Caritas Will, benevolence, generosity, sacrifice Greed Avaritia
Diligence Industria Persistence, effortfulness, ethics Sloth Acedia
Patience Patientia Forgiveness, mercy Wrath Ira
Kindness Humanitas Satisfaction, compassion Envy Invidia
Humility Humilitas Bravery, modesty, reverence Pride Superbia

Flynn– from the Mueller witch hunt

While I was looking for something else (Mueller’s characterization of Trump’s evasive written statements under oath– I think it was “incomplete and inadequate”), I came across these paragraphs on former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.  These are from the section, starting on page 191 of Mueller’s first volume, about obstruction of his investigation into Russian interference.

4. False Statements and Obstruction of the Investigation

The Office determined that certain individuals associated with the Campaign lied to investigators about Campaign contacts with Russia and have taken other actions to interfere with the investigation. As explained below, the Office therefore charged some U.S. persons connected to the Campaign with false statements and obstruction offenses.

 

Michael Flynn agreed to be interviewed by the FBI on January 24, 2017, four days after he had officially assumed his duties as National Security Advisor to the President. During the interview, Flynn made several false statements pertaining to his communications with the Russian ambassador.

First, Flynn made two false statements about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Kislyak in late December 2016, at a time when the United States had imposed sanctions on Russia for interfering with the 2016 presidential election and Russia was considering its response. See Flynn Statement of Offense. Flynn told the agents that he did not ask Kislyak to refrain from escalating the situation in response to the United States’s imposition of sanctions. That statement was false. On December 29, 2016, Flynn called Kislyak to request Russian restraint. Flynn made the call immediately after speaking to a senior Transition Team official (K.T. McFarland) about what to communicate to Kislyak. Flynn then spoke with McFarland again after the Kislyak call to report on the substance of that conversation. Flynn also falsely told the FBI that he did not remember a follow-up conversation in which Kislyak stated that Russia had chosen to moderate its response to the U.S. sanctions as a result of Flynn’s request. On December 31, 2016, Flynn in fact had such a conversation with Kislyak, and he again spoke with McFarland within hours of the call to relay the substance of his conversation with Kislyak. See Flynn Statement of Offense ¶ 3. 194 U.S. Department of Justice Attorney Work Product // May Contain Material Protected Under Fed. R. Crim. P. 6(e)

Second, Flynn made false statements about calls he had previously made to representatives of Russia and other countries regarding a resolution submitted by Egypt to the United Nations Security Council on December 21, 2016. Specifically, Flynn stated that he only asked the countries’ positions on how they would vote on the resolution and that he did not request that any of the countries take any particular action on the resolution. That statement was false. On December 22, 2016, Flynn called Kislyak, informed him of the incoming Trump Administration’s opposition to the resolution, and requested that Russia vote against or delay the resolution. Flynn also falsely stated that Kislyak never described Russia’s response to his December 22 request regarding the resolution. Kislyak in fact told Flynn in a conversation on December 23, 2016, that Russia would not vote against the resolution if it came to a vote. See Flynn Statement of Offense ¶ 4.

Flynn made these false statements to the FBI at a time when he was serving as National Security Advisor and when the FBI had an open investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, including the nature of any links between the Trump Campaign and Russia. Flynn’s false statements and omissions impeded and otherwise had a material impact on that ongoing investigation. Flynn Statement of Offense ¶¶ 1-2. They also came shortly before Flynn made separate submissions to the Department of Justice, pursuant to FARA, that also contained materially false statements and omissions. Id. ¶ 5. Based on the totality of that conduct, the Office decided to charge Flynn with making false statements to the FBI, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a). On December 1, 2017, and pursuant to a plea agreement, Flynn pleaded guilty to that charge and also admitted his false statements to the Department in his FARA filing. See id.; Plea Agreement, United States v. Michael T. Flynn, No. 1:17-cr-232 (D.D.C. Dec. 1, 2017), Doc. 3. Flynn is awaiting sentencing.

source  at 194-195

Flynn is awaiting sentencing, the immediate dismissal of his case by Trump gunsel William Pelham Barr (who overruled Mueller and deemed Flynn’s lies innocently immaterial [1]), or, if all goes south, a pre-hearing — perfectly legal — pardon by the president.

USA!   USA!!!

 

[1]  From Mueller (above)   

Flynn’s false statements and omissions impeded and otherwise had a material impact on that ongoing investigation. Flynn Statement of Offense ¶¶ 1-2.

They also came shortly before Flynn made separate submissions to the Department of Justice, pursuant to FARA, that also contained materially false statements and omissions. Id. ¶ 5. Based on the totality of that conduct, the Office decided to charge Flynn with making false statements to the FBI, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a).