Campaign Action
Special counsel Robert Mueller gave former national security adviser Michael Flynn a sweet plea deal in exchange for his cooperation with Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation. So Team Trump is gearing up a two-pronged strategy to push back: insist Flynn’s got nothing anyway, and smear his character.
Attorneys for Trump and his top advisers have privately expressed confidence that Flynn does not have any evidence that could implicate the president or his White House team. But since Flynn’s cooperation agreement with prosecutors was made public earlier this month, the administration has been strategizing how to neutralize him in case the former national security adviser does make any claims.
Attorneys for Trump have also reportedly expressed confidence that Trump would be getting an exoneration letter from Mueller, so … take their expressions of confidence for what they’re worth.
“He’s said it himself: He’s a liar,” said one person helping craft the strategy who was granted anonymity to describe private conversations.
Ha ha ha. Donald Trump’s people are going to go after someone else for lying. Not to mention that Trump himself kept praising Flynn to the skies even after knowing he had lied—it was only when Flynn began cooperating with Mueller that his lies became a serious issue.
Whatever Flynn has to offer, he’s not the only possible source of information out there. A jailed Russian hacker says he broke into the Democratic National Committee’s computers on orders from the Russian intelligence agency FSB and that he left a signature behind to prove it. That wouldn’t prove collusion by the Trump campaign, of course, but every piece of information potentially gets Mueller one step closer. Which is why Republicans are so desperate to smear and even “purge” Mueller’s investigation.