No ‘Russia Collusion’ in Mueller’s Case Against Flynn

By Art Moore. It’s significant that Michael Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, pleaded guilty Friday to the “process crime” of lying to FBI agents rather than to a conspiracy of collusion, contends a former assistant U.S. attorney.

Flynn’s plea in federal court centered on his conversations with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. in December 2016, during the presidential transition period. ABC News reported Flynn plans to testify that Trump himself directed him to reach out to Russians.

But Andrew McCarthy, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, argues Special Counsel Robert Mueller would not permit Flynn to settle the case with a single count of lying to FBI agents if his conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak had provided evidence that the Trump administration would ease or eliminate sanctions on Russia as a payback for Russia’s cyber-espionage against the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party.

He pointed out that the only major case Mueller previously has brought was against former Trump-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and an associate, which had nothing to do with the 2016 election.

“It is becoming increasingly palpable that, whatever ‘collusion’ means, there was no actionable, conspiratorial complicity by the Trump campaign in the Kremlin’s machinations,” McCarthy wrote in a column for National Review. (Read more from “No ‘Russia Collusion’ in Mueller’s Case Against Flynn” HERE)

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Dem Senator: Mueller Must Be Protected From ‘Another Saturday Night Massacre’

By Brandon Carter. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) warned Friday that Congress must protect special counsel Robert Mueller from being fired by President Trump, or risk “another Saturday Night Massacre.”

“We proposed legislation that would stop [Trump] from firing the special counsel, and it would shield the special counsel from any sort of political interference, which now seems increasingly threatening,” Blumenthal said on MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes.”

“It is a shattering moment for the Trump presidency,” he continued. “Comparing it to Watergate – there’s a real danger of another Saturday Night Massacre.”

The “Saturday Night Massacre” occurred in 1973 when then-President Richard Nixon fired the special prosecutor in charge of the Watergate investigation, which also triggered the resignation of the attorney general and deputy attorney general.

Blumenthal said the Senate should “send a signal” and pass a bill to protect Mueller to ensure Trump is “discouraged or deterred from endangering our democracy.” (Read more from “Dem Senator: Mueller Must Be Protected From ‘Another Saturday Night Massacre'” HERE)

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