The sore loser in the White House is likely to pardon former national security adviser and traitor to Russia Michael Flynn before he leaves office, multiple outlets report. CNN has three sources telling them that, though they "cautioned that Trump could change his mind about making such a move." Others he is considering pardoning are other traitors: George Papadopoulos and Paul Manafort.
Axios has two sources with "direct knowledge" who say "Trump has told confidants he plans to pardon his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts." Specifically, in the weeks before Trump's inauguration, Flynn had three calls with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about how Russia should respond to the Obama administration’s sanctions in response to election interference, about future relations between the countries, and about a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements on the West Bank. Flynn pleaded guilty twice to lying to the FBI about these conversations, the only White House official to plead guilty in the Mueller investigation.
In January of this year, Flynn tried to withdraw his guilty plea, saying he'd been railroaded by prosecutors, and Attorney General William Barr stepped in and recommended that the charges be dropped because the FBI interview in which Flynn lied was "conducted without any legitimate investigative basis." Enter Judge Emmet Sullivan, who refused to drop charges and brought in outside counsel to consider the case. Sullivan is still considering that bonkers Justice Department motion to withdraw charges after months of back and forth that even features Sidney Powell, the lawyer who was too banana-pants for Rudy Giuliani's "elite strike force team" trying to overturn the election.
Which is the perfect segue back to Judge Emmet Sullivan, who has just been assigned a Voting Rights Act case accusing Trump of engaging in an illegal strategy to disenfranchise Black voters in an attempt to overturn the election. The complaint, filed by attorneys with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) on behalf of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization (MWRO) and three Black citizens of Detroit, names Trump as an individual and his campaign as defendants for trying to "pressure state and local officials not to certify election results in key states and then have state legislatures override the will of the voters by installing" a "slate of electors" who are loyal to Trump and the Republican Party.
Trump and his campaign "have actively pursued this strategy, compromising the integrity of the election process, and unlawfully interfering with will of the voters," the lawsuit alleges. "To effectuate this strategy, [they] are openly seeking to disenfranchise Black voters, including voters in Detroit, Michigan." They claim that Trump, his legal team, and his campaign have worked "in concert" and engaged in conduct to "intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten or coerce” election workers involved in "aiding [a] person to vote or attempt to vote." And that, they argue, is a direct violation of the Voting Rights Act.
Which is now going to be heard by Judge Sullivan. Who is also the judge who valiantly fought back against Trump and Postmaster General Louis Dejoy's efforts to sabotage the U.S. Postal Service and the mail-in vote this fall. So that's fun. Go ahead, Trump. Pardon Flynn. See how that works out.