Back on July 4, 2020, the family of disgraced and subsequently pardoned former national security adviser Michael Flynn took a video during their Independence Day festivities. The video came into the public sphere because Michael Flynn posted it to his Twitter account, adding the hashtag #TakeTheOath. In the video, Flynn and his family are seen recording themselves chanting, “Where we go one, we go all.” The phrase had become well-known as one of the catchphrases of conspiracy theorists in the QAnon world.
CNN reported this. Michael Flynn quickly took down the post and said his family was simply reciting their oath to themselves. Yeah. It sounded just as true then as it sounds now. Any the ways! Flynn’s brother and sister-in-law decided to sue CNN for defamation. A judge allowed the lawsuit to continue, even though CNN pointed out how many times the Flynns supported QAnon hokum on social media. However, the problem with suing for defamation is that it gave CNN and its lawyers the right to ask for a review of responsive evidence, including text messages and emails from the phones of Flynn family members.
Since that time, CNN has tried unsuccessfully to get that information. Flynn family attorneys have claimed that the evidence sought is “highly confidential” and/or nonexistent. As CNN attorneys wrote last September, “CNN is not merely speculating that additional responsive documents exist that have not been produced; rather, CNN actually knows this to be true. For example, on September 15, 2022, nearly two months after the first meet and confer, Plaintiffs’ counsel produced a single text message conversation between Leslie Flynn and Valerie Flynn discussing the CNN Report at-issue.”
Having f’ed around, the Flynn family is now about to find out, as CNN lawyers are turning up the heat.
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According to Law & Crime, CNN attorneys are asking the judge in the case to order a “forensic examination of their [the Flynns] cellphones.” CNN says that the Flynn family seems to have deleted the evidence that they were looking for during this discovery period of the case. According to the filing, CNN’s attorney, Katherine M. Bolger, wrote, “Plaintiffs’ counsel has said he has not—and will not—search additional messaging platforms containing potentially responsive documents on his clients’ cell phones, despite confirming that his clients communicated on these platforms.”
“A forensic search is warranted here given the serious doubts created by Plaintiffs’ incomplete document productions and failure to produce responsive documents and communications unless confronted by the document via a third party production,” Bolger wrote. “Finally, Plaintiffs’ counsel has admitted that Plaintiffs have either deleted or no longer have access to some documents and communications that are relevant to this matter and were created when they were contemplating this litigation.”
Since this all began, Michael Flynn filed his own lawsuit, though that one was against the Jan. 6 committee’s attempt to get his phone records. So much litigation. So much fundraising for … litigation. Flynn’s position in the MAGA movement has been closely tied to the QAnon-conspiracy wing of the base; as a former lieutenant general, he has provided a level of credence (to those looking for it) in the concept of a “deep state” seemingly focused on persecuting Donald Trump.
CNN’s attorneys are pushing for access to encrypted messaging that the Flynns may or may not have been participating in around the time they decided to sue CNN. According to Law & Crime, CNN asks that if these materials cannot be retrieved, they will reserve the right to either “seek sanctions” or “adverse inference.” The latter is a term that would result in “an instruction to a jury or other fact-finder that missing evidence would have been unfavorable if preserved.”
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