Since Donald Trump became the GOP’s leader, there seems to be no limits to how far the Republicans will go to protect and defend him. Even if it means discrediting longstanding institutions trying to do their job. On Monday, January 29, 2018, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee to release a memo painting the FBI and the Justice Department as being biased against Trump so much that people in both agencies have conjured up an investigation into his ties with Russia to take him down. Not surprisingly California Rep. Devin Nunes wrote the memo that reportedly frames Robert Mueller’s investigation as an FBI to hurt Trump as well as uses both Hillary Clinton and the infamous Steele dossier in establishing connections. Trump has until February 2, to declassify the report. But in the meantime, the hashtag #Release the Memo has started spreading on Twitter. We should all know Devin Nunes is the last guy you’d want to lead any investigation into Trump’s Russian connections. And that any memo coming from him stating that the Trump-Russia investigation is a mere conspiracy by law enforcement to hurt Trump is a baseless narrative. He’s a longtime Trump ally and was on his transition team. He’s defended Michael Flynn when he was credibly accused of lying about his Russian contacts last February. As head of the House committee investigating the Trump-Russia connections, Nunes “seemed to go out his way to defend Trump.” The most noteworthy example was after Trump tweeted in March that President Barack Obama had “wiretapped” Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential campaign. The heads of both the FBI and the NSA categorically denied such wiretapping took place. But Nunes quickly stood by Trump and held a press conference to proclaim that “the intelligence community incidentally collected information about US citizens involved in the Trump transition.” What this means is that some Trump personnel had been in contact with foreigners legally under surveillance, and their conversations were intercepted and collected as part of it. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t vindicate Trump’s claim of the Obama administration’s spying on his campaign headquarters. But the timing of Nunes’s press conference and the confusing way he presented made it seem he was trying to cover Trump’s ass. Then it turned out that the California congressman got his information from the Trump White House itself. National Security Council senior intelligence director Ezra Cohen-Watnick uncovered the info. White House attorney Michael Ellis who worked for Nunes prior to the Trump administration, personally delivered the information to him.

In sum, Devin Nunes released information in a way to make it seem like Trump’s claims of being persecuted by law enforcement were true and did so after secretly getting the details from the Trump White House. However, the situation became such an embarrassment that Nunes was forced to recuse himself from the intelligence committee’s investigation into Russia for 8 months during a House ethics investigation into his conduct. Apparently, these measures didn’t stick. Because when news broke out in mid-January that Nunes had been working on a secret memo on FBI surveillance of the Trump campaign, intelligence experts initially sensed a repeat of the wiretapping debacle where he misrepresented intelligence to support Trump’s political position. And in a way, it is.

But many of Nunes’s colleagues in the House saw the memo as damning proof of anti-Trump bias in the FBI. So they started the publicity campaign backed by conservative media to #ReleasetheMemo. This culminated in Monday intelligence committee vote to release it along party lines. That the Republicans would even speculate the FBI and the Justice Department being so against Donald Trump they’d set up an investigation into his Russian ties to specifically hurt him is ridiculous conspiracy nonsense. There are a lot of moving parts to what Nunes reports claiming versus what we already know. 

1. A FISA court judge reviewed evidence and approved a warrant to wiretap a Trump associate.– In fall 2016, FBI investigators applied for a warrant with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to wiretap former Trump adviser Carter Page who has business ties to Russia and open sympathies with the Kremlin’s foreign policy. They presented evidence that he may be acting as a Russian agent and the judge approved the warrant.

2. The Core of the Nunes Argument.– Those familiar with the Nunes memo, Devin Nunes believes that the case was primarily built on the Steele dossier which was funded partially funded on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. He then reportedly said that the investigators misled the judge by not saying they were relying on the Steele dossier. Therefore, the surveillance on Page was improperly authorized and potentially politically motivated

In reality, the FBI got its evidence from several sources and FISA warrants generally require corroboration. Carter Page was known to have business ties to Russia and open sympathies with the Kremlin’s foreign policy. While advising the Trump campaign in July 2016, Page flew to Moscow and met with Russian officials, which raises suspicions among intelligence officials. Besides, Senator Diane Feinstein’s release of the Simpson testimony reveals that the FBI investigation into Trump’s Russia ties most likely began when a drunk George Papadopoulos bragged to an Australian diplomat that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton. Not to mention, the DNC email hacking right before the Democratic National Convention. Thus, the FBI had taken the Trump-Russian collusion question seriously for reasons that had nothing to do with the Steele dossier.

Furthermore, while Robert Mueller’s investigation hasn’t yet proven like the vast conspiracy the Steele dossier alleges, it certainly revealed real evidence of wrongdoing. George Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty. Charges have been filed against former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. We’ve also learned that Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner were at least eager to possibly collaborate with the Russian government into revealing Clinton’s dirty laundry, instead of reporting the existence of an active Russian intelligence effort aimed at the United States. Then there’s the fact the Steele dossier’s less explosive allegations have so far proven to be true. The FBI might’ve relied on the former British agent’s findings since he’s a respected investigator. But if it’s true, it doesn’t necessarily discredit the application.

In addition, the memo’s claims are impossible to without seeing the underlying intelligence it was based on. Nunes could’ve highlighted the FBI’s Steele citation without mentioning other, more concrete sources the agency listed. As University of Texas professor Steve Vladeck said, “The memo won’t actually answer the underlying question, which is whether there was sufficient independent evidence to support the underlying FISA application. Only the application materials can conclusively shed a light on that.

Then there’s the idea that FBI agents would act in such a way and a FISA judge would let them strikes plenty of legal experts as absurd. As civil libertarians have warned about for a long time, the FISA process can and has been abused. But this particular method of abuse requires an implausibly vast conspiracy. As former FBI agent and current Yale Law professor Asha Rangappa writes:

“The Nunes Memo reportedly alleges that at least a dozen FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors fabricated evidence, engaged in a criminal conspiracy to commit perjury, lucked out on being randomly assigned Judge Low Blood Sugar who looked the other way, and — coincidentally — ended up obtaining evidence that justified extending the initial FISA surveillance. …

“If Nunes has in fact singlehandedly uncovered this vast criminal enterprise, it’s hard to know what’s more astonishing: That a government bureaucracy managed to pull it off — or that Nunes has exposed it all in a scant four-page memo.”

3. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is dragged into this as well.– The Nunes memo reportedly says that Rosenstein knew and approved the application for the warrant knowing they were relying on the DNC-funded Steele dossier. Thus, it would imply that the deputy attorney general has an anti-Trump bias.

In late spring 2017, the FBI petitioned to renew its surveillance warrant on Carter Page. The New York Times claims that Rosenstein personally signed off on the renewal application. As the Times writes, the reason this matters is that, “Republicans could potentially use Mr. Rosenstein’s decision to approve the renewal to suggest that he failed to properly vet a highly sensitive application for a warrant to spy on Mr. Page.” But it’s deeper than that.

The memo apparently implies that the Russian investigation is a corrupt partisan hatchet job. Bring Rosenstein into it, it also indicts the guy currently in charge of it, suggesting he’s incompetent at best and corrupt at worst. Theoretically, this can lead Trump to dismiss Rosenstein. Because he can’t fire Mueller without the deputy attorney general’s say-so. Rosenstein had already said in December that there’s no “good cause” to fire him. If he were to fire the deputy attorney general, he probably could get to Mueller. And we all know Trump wanted to fire Mueller as early as June.

In reality, we forget that the firm behind the dossier was originally hired by the conservative Washington Free Beacon in 2015. Hillary Clinton and the DNC didn’t enlist the firm until Trump’s Republican nomination became more imminent. Besides, by the time Christopher Steele turned his dossier to the FBI, the bureau had already been getting reports that there was something shady going on in the Trump campaign. Not to mention, if the Steele dossier was a purely political document, then Steele wouldn’t have turned it in to the FBI out of his British allegiance.

4. The conspiracy comes together.– So why is the Rosenstein angle important? Because if he, as a proxy for the Justice Department, can be seen as anti-Trump, then it means his hiring special counsel Robert Mueller had ulterior anti-Trump motives. Thus, meaning that the entire Trump-Russia investigation is happening because some “deep state” officials want to undermine Trump and take him down. So it’s not being conducted on its own merits.

However, if you think that Nunes’s theory relies on lots of incredible assumptions (some of which having already been disproven), you’re not alone. Assuming the New York Times’s description of the memo is accurate, there are good reasons to be skeptical. Even beyond Nunes’s personal history of misusing intelligence.

Apparently, Republicans in the House have pushed to release the Nunes memo because they believe it outlines surveillance abuses Americans need to know about. As Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz said on the House floor, “Let’s have a great debate about its consequences and the opportunity it presents to make things better, so these things never happen again.” However, FISA system experts and even civil libertarians critical of how law enforcement uses it, are skeptical. They clarify that Republicans aren’t proposing any changes to how FISA works or even suggesting that the system in general needs to reform to stop any future abuses. Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez noted, “There’s a conspicuous lack of interest in drawing any policy conclusions from what they purportedly consider a major institutional scandal.”

Instead, the motivation seems purely political as many of the #ReleasetheMemo supporters have also called for Donald Trump to fire Mueller. They may apparently genuinely believe that the Russia investigation is a partisan witch hunt targeting Trump. Or more likely think there is there’s some political advantage gained from championing an anti-FBI crusade near and dear to Trump’s and Fox News’s heart. Either way, experts claim the motivation behind the memo’s release is very clear as a way to wage war on the Russia investigation specifically and the FBI in general. Former Defense Department special counsel Ryan Goodman told Vox, “The release of the memo, and the fabrication of a set of ideas around the memo, empowers Trump to go after the FBI. The ultimate goal is undermining the Mueller investigation. There doesn’t seem to be another reason for the president to be so obsessed with Rod Rosenstein and to be gunning for him.”

Naturally the FBI and the Democrats don’t like the Nunes memo because they think it’s full of lies. The Democrats on the House intelligence committee compiled a 10-page memo of their own. It reportedly asserts two things. First, that the FBI didn’t abuse its FISA power when requesting the Page warrant. Second, that the Nunes memo is simply an effort to help the White House discredit the Mueller probe. On January 29, Rep. Mike Quigley asked Nunes if his staffers worked on this memo with the White House. The California Republican originally answered by saying, “as far as I know,” no one collaborated. But ultimately, he refused to reply, possibly suggesting collusion. Not to mention, the House Intelligence Committee voted not to make the Democratic memo public. On January 31, the FBI released a statement strongly signaling the agency’s worry on the memo’s accuracy:

“The FBI takes seriously its obligations to the FISA Court and its compliance with procedures overseen by career professionals in the Department of Justice and the FBI. We are committed to working with the appropriate oversight entities to ensure the continuing integrity of the FISA process.

“With regard to the House Intelligence Committee’s memorandum, the FBI was provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it. As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”

While it’s unclear whether Donald Trump will declassify the Nunes memo, he’s signaling he might. Though he has yet to see the memo, after his State of the Union address, he reportedly told Rep. Jeff Duncan that he’d “100 percent” make the memo public in the coming days. The next day, White House chief of staff John Kelly told Fox News that the memo, “will be released here pretty quick, I think, and the whole world can see it.” Of course, Trump’s reasons for releasing the memo are obvious. Since he’s publicly decried the Trump-Russia probe as a “witch hunt” perpetrated by rouge partisans within the FBI several times. As Cato’s Julian Sanchez told Vox, “Trump is shockingly overt about believing that the problem here is that the FBI is staffed by loyalists to the wrong person. He does, in fact, seem to think that the job of the DOJ, and the FBI, and the rest of the intelligence community is to protect the president and follow his orders — including going after his political enemies based on stuff he saw on Fox News, if that’s what he wants to do.” So Lord Cheetohead could just release the memo as an attempt to prove his suspicions correct. Yet, it can also backfire since it’s possible Nunes’s evidence presented in the memo is thin. Worse, the release fallout could lead to more leaks proving Nunes’s account wrong. That would not only hurt the conservative argument against the Russia probe but prove a self-inflicted wound.

But once the memo’s released, Devin Nunes needs to have a very good case to prove his argument, which he doesn’t. People will want to know his evidence to prove that the Mueller investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign was entirely based on the controversial Steele dossier. The FBI will have to back up its claims that it obtained the Page warrant based on information from a variety of sources showing a probable cause he may have acted as Russian government agent. This will lead to calls to release the FISA documents, which the FBI might find easy to do if the Trump-picked FBI Director Christopher Wray would approve it. Many conservatives are calling for the memo’s release and the FISA documents’ disclosure to show the information included in the warrant application presented to the federal court judge who approved Page’s surveillance. If it’s what conservatives claim, they can proclaim they’ve uncovered a conspiracy. But if the FBI documents show that the FBI told the truth which they most likely will, the Nunes-led narrative will fall apart.

However, we must understand that the Nunes memo is part of a much larger conservative effort to discredit the Mueller investigation. Once it’s released, it’ll serve as another data point in the growing anti-Mueller movement. But it can also be used as pretext for removing those responsible for the Mueller investigation. According to the Washington Post, Donald Trump told his close advisers that the memo could give the excuse he needs to either fire Rosenstein or force him to resign. He then replace the deputy attorney general with someone friendlier to his administration and more willing to constrain Mueller, which can hurt the probe in the long run. According to Rangappa, the new deputy attorney general can effectively cripple the Mueller investigation by rejecting the special counsel’s requests to investigate more people, obtain new evidence, or pursue charges against more people. Or the new appointee could just fire Mueller. Should the Nunes memo’s allegations prove true in the highly unlikely scenario, then that could potentially delegitimize the Mueller probe and lead to the special counsel’s dismissal. Nevertheless, this is more of a political game than a legal one. So the memo’s release will just take this fight into an all-out war between Republicans and the Trump administration who want Rosenstein fired and the Russia probe shut down, and the Democrats and FBI who don’t.

There are two broad ways this political war between the Snowflake King and the FBI can go. In the first, the FBI’s brought to a heel. Donald Trump fires Rod Rosenstein and other senior FBI executives and replaces them with more sycophantic appointees. The Mueller investigation is quashed while the bureau serves more like an arm to the Trump administration than a quasi-independent agency. Of course, the implications of this scenario on American democracy are simply terrifying to think about. For who knows what Trump would use the FBI for than to go after his critics and enemies. As Sanchez told Vox, “I shudder to think what the [2020] election looks like when you’ve got a guy who says, ‘I saw Fox & Friends this morning and my opponent is a crook’ … except now you’ve got an FBI and a DOJ that say, ‘Yes, sir.’” Let’s just say, such scenario would be a nightmare if you value American democratic values, particularly free speech. In the second scenario, the memo leads to a lot of FBI-Republican skirmishing but no actual showdown. Donald Trump doesn’t either fire Rosenstein or is somehow stopped from doing so, the Mueller investigation continues unhampered, and the FBI remains untainted by political influence. There are many factors that could make the difference between the two outcomes. Two of the key ones are congressional Republicans, particularly those in the Senate along with Trump’s own staff.

Senate Republicans have been notably quieter and more restrained in attacking the FBI than their peers in the House. They also have to confirm Donald Trump’s nominees to the Justice Department. They can make it clear that if he fires Mueller or Rosenstein and tries to appoint a crony in their place, they won’t confirm his picks. What Republican senators say and do after the memo’s release could indicate to Trump whether he has enough backing to take on the FBI.

But we must not forget that members of Donald Trump’s own White House have also blocked moves to interfere with the Mueller probe. The New York Times recently reported that in Trump ordered White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller. McGahn threatened to resign than do that and Trump backed off. He was, according to the Times, concerned that firing the special counsel would incite more questions about whether the White House was trying to obstruct the Russia investigation.” If McGahn and other voices of relative restraint in the White House succeed in backing Trump away from the memo fever that will soon play out all over conservative news, or even refuse to carry out his orders, then you might see the same thing again after the memo’s released.

Nonetheless, in regards to the current antagonism between the White House and FBI, there is no good historical precedent. Never has a US president attacked so publicly attacked the FBI. Nor have congressional committees with oversight responsibilities have also never attacked the agency this way. There have been tensions between the White House and the FBI over the years, but not so publicly. Russian President Vladimir Putin rightly thought there was a chance of an ally in the White House. And he sanctioned interference in the presidential election to further that goal. Donald Trump wants to be friends with Russia but suffers from a Putin-like hubris and has been hoist by his own petard in that he can’t be friends with friends with Russia without appearing part of Putin’s conspiracy. Still, the memo scandal is a move on the White House’s behalf to tarnish the FBI’s reputation and call the Mueller investigation’s motives in doubt. Even though the man who hired Mueller was one of Trump’s own appointees.

Framing investigative developments as partisan ploys is nothing new. But here, the charges aren’t simply that Mueller is an overzealous prosecutor. It’s that the FBI tried to help throw an entire election. And the House memo seems like it’ll suggest that the FBI was implicated in an attempted coup. The memo release’s long-term significance is that it may confirm some people’s suspicions of how few in government can be trusted to act independently and honestly. Trump and the GOP’s attack on the FBI puts its independence under siege. Bringing an independent judiciary and investigative branch under the executive’s domination is one of the first moves regimes who don’t respect the rule of law. Pinochet’s Chile. Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union. Putin’s Russia. And looking at Trump’s history, the lack of respect for the rule of law is very clear. Besides the military, the judiciary and law enforcement branches are the most powerful in a state. Control and politicization of that wing allows the ruler to criminalize his opponents, and label them as enemies of the state when the those so-called enemies are really defenders of a more viable, democratic nation. This is why the Nunes memo is a threat and I don’t think Trump is above wanting to use the FBI to go after his opponents, which scares the hell out of me. Now the White House seems pressuring the FBI, but it’s too soon to tell whether that leads to the FBI significantly losing its independence. Nevertheless, if Nixon’s debacle with Watergate has taught us, if a president has secrets he wants to keep, he shouldn’t mess with the FBI.

 
In the biggest development yet in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn agreed to a plea deal with prosecutors on Friday, December 1, 2017. The legal move poses the most direct threat to the Trump presidency itself so far. Flynn pleaded guilty to a single count of lying to the FBI on or around January 24 about conversations with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December 2016. However, Flynn did not admit to colluding with Russia during the 2016 presidential election. Nevertheless, Flynn’s plea deal will strengthen Mueller’s sprawling probe into the Trump team’s possible criminal acts and Russian ties.

Of course, once Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were indicted while George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty, it was only a matter of time when Michael Flynn would flip. In fact, it’s been speculated for weeks that Flynn wanted to protect himself from a more serious criminal indictment. As with Manafort, Mueller had a solid case against the retired general. Earlier this year, Flynn offered to testify in exchange for full immunity from prosecution but Mueller refused. On November 23, The New York Times reported that Flynn’s lawyers told Trump’s lawyers they could no longer share information. Four days later, ABC News reported that Flynn’s lawyers met with Mueller’s team, a strong sign a plea deal was imminent.

Michael Flynn’s plea deal is the most significant moment in Mueller’s probe to date since he is the first person who had actually served in the Trump White House to admit breaking the law. Nor was he just any old official either since Flynn’s role as national security adviser is one of the highest-level and most powerful posts in Washington. The retired three-star general temporarily had enormous influence over Donald Trump’s early policy and personnel choices. And due to his unique ties to both the Trump campaign and Trump White House, he’s particularly well-suited to answering the Mueller probe’s central questions on whether the Trump campaign knowingly colluded with Russia and if Trump obstructed justice by trying to derail the FBI’s investigation. Flynn’s plea deal gets Mueller closer to finding that out. Now Mueller gets Flynn to talk along with an admission of guilt. Obviously, this is bad news for Michael Flynn but it could be even worse news for Donald Trump. As legal expert Asha Rangappa noted, “When you flip somebody, you’re using them to go up the chain. This suggests that Mueller’s investigation is going to go into the even-tighter inner circle of the campaign and possibly the administration.”

A retired lieutenant general who served in the Army for over 30 years, Michael Flynn is a quintessential General Ripper. Hell, take General Jack D. Ripper’s line “I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids,” and replace each mention of “Communist” with “Islamic” and you basically have Flynn. And let’s just say if it weren’t for his soft spot for Russia, he’d feel right at home among the trigger happy military brass in Dr. Strangelove. Anyway, in 2012, he was named head of the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, the Defense Intelligence Agency. During this time, he clashed with other Obama administration officials who viewed him as sloppy with facts and incompetent with management. Soon he was pushed out and resigned from his post in 2014. Technically, President Barack Obama fired him but you know how they do things in Washington. Furious, Flynn began his post government public life commenting on foreign policy and military issues in the media, becoming infamous for his extreme Islamophobic rhetoric. For example in February 2016, he tweeted, “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL.” Such language combined with his poor DIA track record made Flynn a pariah in the mainstream foreign policy community. For the Trump campaign that championed a Muslim ban, he was a perfect fit.

In fall 2015, Michael Flynn began occasionally briefing Donald Trump on foreign affairs and his involvement in the campaign gradually deepened. By late May 2016, he was mentioned as a potential vice presidential pick for Trump. In July of that year, Flynn gave a now ironic speech at the Republican National Convention in which he riled the crowd with “Lock her up.” But while Flynn advised the Trump campaign, he operated a lobbying and consulting firm called the Flynn Intel Group which importantly, also employed his son. He was also a frequent guest on the Russian government’s English-language propaganda outlet RT, where he’d often espouse the idea that Russia and the US should team up against Islamic extremism. And it’s Flynn’s lobbying and work for the Russian government which first led into dangerous legal territory. In December 2015, Flynn traveled to Moscow for a gala celebrating RT’s 10^th anniversary. He sat next to Vladimir Putin and delivered a speech about his foreign policy vision. For his services, RT paid Flynn a $45,000 speaker’s fee while Russian companies him $22,500 for speeches during the same trip. Now that in itself isn’t necessary illegal. However, Flynn reportedly lied about the source of the payments in his security clearance renewal form, claiming they came from “US companies.” Lying on this form is equivalent to lying to federal investigators which is a felony and perhaps one of the reasons why Flynn took the plead deal. In August 2016, an entity called Inovo BV hired Flynn’s consulting firm. Though it claimed to be Dutch company, Inovo BV turned out to be a shell corporation for a wealthy member from the Turkish government. Flynn seems to have continued working for Turkey until November at the earliest while Ankara paid him at least $530,000. Under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, Flynn had to publicly disclose any lobbying work for the Turkish government when he started. His FARA paperwork said he worked for a Dutch company, not the Turkish government. In March 2017, Flynn filed paperwork correcting the error, admitting that Inovo really paid him to work on behalf of Turkish interests. If that’s all he did, then Michael Flynn would’ve been fine. After all, the US government typically doesn’t arrest people for filing incorrect FARA paperwork after they correct it. But if there’s more undisclosed lobbying for foreign governments like more Turkey payments or undisclosed Russian activity than he revealed in March, then he’d be in deep shit.

Still, you’d think Flynn’s legally questionable shenanigans would’ve ended in November 2016, when Donald Trump made him his national security adviser in his new administration. Though outgoing Obama officials warned the Trump transition team about appointing the guy. But if anything, it got worse. Throughout the transition, Flynn had several contacts with Kislyak. In one early December meeting at Trump Tower, he and Jared Kushner talked to the Russian ambassador about setting up a secret channel through which they can communicate. On December 29, 2016, the day Obama announced sanctions on Russia in response to the country’s hacking efforts, Flynn and Kislyak reportedly exchanged 5 phone calls. One of the discussion topics was sanctions. But Flynn reportedly told Vice President-elect Mike Pence and others on the Trump team that sanctions never came up in his calls with the Russian ambassador, spurring them to make false statements to that effect in public. This conversation between Flynn and Kislyak is part of the just-released document Mueller had sent to court.

On Donald Trump’s Inauguration Day, Michael Flynn’s former business partner allegedly bragged that he told him that Trump would quickly lift US sanctions on Russia, which would pave way for a controversial plan to build nuclear plants across the Middle East with Russian help. While this is an explosive but unverified allegation coming from a whistleblower cooperating with House Democrats, there have been reports over the last few months that Flynn continued to promote this Middle East nuclear project after the election and even as national security adviser. In the Trump presidency’s first week, Flynn was questioned by the FBI in which he denied contact with Kislyak during the transition. That same week, then acting-Attorney General Sally Yates warned the White House that intelligence showed Flynn had lied about his conversations with Kislyak and he was vulnerable to Russian blackmail. Unsurprisingly, the Trump White House did nothing about this until it leaked to the press a few weeks later, when they were spurred to fire Flynn on February 13, 2017. Then there’s an entirely separate matter of whether Flynn improperly acted on Turkey’s behalf during the transition or while in office. According to the Wall Street Journal, Mueller is investigating an “alleged plan” in which Flynn and his son would be paid as much as $15 million for forcibly removing Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric living in Pennsylvania, from the United States and delivering him to Turkey. Flynn discussed this possibility with Turkish government representatives at a December meeting during the transition as incoming national security adviser.

Altogether, there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence that Michael Flynn broke the law. The plea deal where he’ll admit to lying to federal investigators confirms he did and he’s trying to get a lighter punishment. The best Flynn can do is tell Mueller everything he knows abut Trump and Russia. The next important question is whether other Trump officials aided Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential campaign. If there was collusion, Flynn most likely knows about it. This is why Mueller wanted Flynn to strike a deal. Particularly, one where Flynn agreed to a lesser sentence in exchange for giving an honest accounting of what he knows about Trump-Russia ties. Sure getting Papadopoulos to agree to cooperate with Mueller’s team was pretty awesome. But getting Flynn to flip is a much bigger prize.

And it’s possible that Flynn has more Russia ties than known since there’s already some reporting suggesting we don’t have the full Flynn and Russia story. In June, The Wall Street Journal reported that a Trump supporting GOP operative and private equity executive Peter Smith embarked on an effort to track down Hillary Clinton’s infamous 30,000 or so deleted emails during the fall of 2016 and contacted Russian hackers to ask if they had them. Smith wasn’t part of the Trump campaign. But according to sources, he told people working with him that he was coordinating with Flynn. While trying to recruit for the effort, Smith also distributed a document naming the Trump campaign as one of the 4 groups involved. Another piece of information pointing to Flynn was that US officials were aware of some intelligence that Russian hackers had at least discussed sending leaked emails to Flynn through a third party. As Shane Harris wrote for the Wall Street Journal: “Investigators have examined reports from intelligence agencies that describe Russian hackers discussing how to obtain emails from Mrs. Clinton’s server and then transmit them to Mr. Flynn via an intermediary, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the intelligence.” Smith died this year, reportedly by his own hand and Flynn hasn’t said anything about the Journal report. Nevertheless, all this is enough to raise serious questions about just what Flynn knew about this or any other attempted outreach to Russian hackers or other Russian entities. However, we don’t know yet if this led to actual collusion implicating Flynn or anyone else on the Trump team. Perhaps Smith made his effort seem important by name dropping Flynn, rather than working closely with him. In addition, Smith’s efforts to find Clinton’s deleted emails have failed since they never surfaced. Michael Flynn’s is also central to determine whether Donald Trump obstructed justice as president, essentially by unlawfully interfering with former FBI Director James Comey’s inquiry. Since Flynn is a central character in this entire drama and fate could shape Trump’s. As Rangappa told Vox, “I think Flynn’s value to Mueller is less on the collusion part and has more to do with obstruction of justice. If Trump had any knowledge of any kind of criminal liability that Flynn may have had — and he was trying to get Comey to drop the investigation — that essentially seals Mueller’s obstruction case.” After Flynn was fired, Trump held a counterterrorism meeting with his national security officials which ended when he ordered everyone except then-Director Comey to clear the room. According to Comey’s written notes, Trump asked him to lay off the investigation into Flynn’s Russia statements. He said that Flynn “is a good guy” and urged the then-FBI director “to see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.” Comey refused so Trump eventually fired him a few months later.

Flynn’s testimony could help answer if Trump wanted to protect him out of fear on what he might know. It’s not enough to show that Trump didn’t like where the Russia investigation was going. A prosecutor or member of Congress pushing for impeachment would need to show that Trump actually tried to cover up some kind of wrongdoing on his part to establish an obstruction case. As federal prosecutor Alex Whiting explained the specifics of Trump’s relationship with Flynn matter a great deal, noting: “Did [Trump] know that Flynn’s story was an important piece in the larger picture, one that he did not want revealed? Or did he know that the FBI’s pressure on Flynn could force him to give up other incriminating evidence? Far from simply acting to shield a former subordinate and ally, was Trump actually just trying to protect himself, and those close to him? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then Trump’s actions will have a very different feel to them, and his potential defenses much harder, if not impossible, to swallow.” Flynn may know the answer to Whiting’s questions which Mueller will likely hear soon.

Still, former US attorney Preet Bharara isn’t convinced that Michael Flynn received “a sweetheart deal of a lifetime” in exchange for hugely important cooperation. On the latest podcast episode, the former New York prosecutor disputed that the relatively light charge against the former 3-star general clearly showed he must’ve agreed to provide especially valuable information to Mueller’s investigation. Bharara refers to his own experience supervising similar high-profile cases. He claimed, “When we had evidence against somebody and wanted them to flip, we made them plead guilty to every bad act that they had ever done. Especially if we were later gonna be alleging other people had engaged in that activity as well.” Such actions, the former prosecutor argues makes a witness like Flynn more credible in court if he has to testify against someone else. “Otherwise, the only thing the jury will know for a fact about your witness is that he is an admitted, convicted liar,” he said. What he suspects is that Mueller doesn’t’ have anything else on Flynn that might stand in court. But he also suggests that Mueller is “holding back on other charges to which Michael Flynn will plead guilty if and when they form the basis of charging some other folks.” In other words, certain potential charges against Flynn could implicate others in Trump’s team as well and that Mueller’s team just isn’t ready to make those charges yet (and may never be). Yet, this case could be different than Bharara’s own past prosecutions. For one, Mueller’s potential endgame might be impeachment referral rather than a high-profile court trial. In addition, Mueller could be concerned about Trump’s pardon power, possibly holding off some potential charges against Flynn so he could bring them later, in case of a pardon. And seeing how quickly Trump pardoned infamous former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Mueller might’ve taken a cue.

On Saturday December 2, 2017, Donald Trump tweeted that he fired his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn because he lied to the vice president and the FBI. If that’s the case, Trump knew that Flynn lied to the FBI when he asked then FBI Director James Comey to drop his inquiry into Flynn and then fired him when he failed to do so. This could play into an obstruction of justice case against him. Looking into Trump’s history which shows unparalleled disrespect for the rule of law, committing obstruction of justice shouldn’t come as a surprise. Donald Trump’s corruption is mindboggling beyond any measure that anyone could imagine. He has already abused his power as president in order to enrich himself as well as constantly lies about everything whenever he opens his mouth. But should Mueller’s team find compelling evidence if the Trump team engaged in a criminal conspiracy to help hack Hillary Clinton’s email (since stealing documents is illegal), violated campaign finance laws through soliciting foreign help like from the Russian government, or committing crimes against the investigation itself like witness intimidation, perjury, obstruction of justice, and the like, Mueller can convene a federal jury and seek a criminal indictment against the person. If the grand jury signs off, that person is then arrested and charged. Eventually Trump can be forced to make a terrible choice. He could risk a close associate or family member going to jail or possibly making a deal with federal prosecutors in return for testimony that could incriminate others. Or he could use his pardon power to shield his cronies from federal charges. Should he go the second route, expect a massive political conflict with Congress because of the obvious impropriety of President Pussygrabber pardoning family members or close associates for crimes committed to help him win the presidency in the first place.

Then there’s the question of what happens if Mueller finds evidence of criminal behavior by Donald Trump himself. Granted that Trump is a narcissistic sociopath with a history of abusing his power for his own enrichment, disrespecting the rule of law, and getting away with egregious corruption practices, this is extremely likely. As special prosecutor, Mueller has the legal authority to file charges against any Trump associates or family members. But there’s another legal debate as to whether it’s constitutional for prosecutors to indict a president on criminal charges. Because no state or federal attorney has ever indicted a president on serious criminal charges and we have no Supreme Court precedent to answer that question. Mueller would likely sidestep that whole minefield and simply make a report to the House of Representatives documenting evidence of Trump’s “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the constitutional standard of impeachment. Should Mueller’s report contain damning evidence, it would put a lot of pressure on the House to begin impeachment proceedings. In short, Mueller could take the first step toward ending Trump’s presidency. So Trump really needs to be afraid. Especially since Mueller is currently looking into his business practices and finances which contain plenty of shady stuff less wealthy people have been arrested for.