Liz Dye writes:

Two years ago, a court in Florida threw out Michael Flynn’s malicious prosecution lawsuit seeking $50 million from the US government. Yesterday, the government agreed to settle it anyway, handing $1.25 million in taxpayer dollars to the former national security advisor.

Clearly this is an outrageous abuse by the Trump DOJ. It’s also a template for the looting to come, as everyone from Proud Boy Enrique Tarrio to Trump himself lines up to feed at the government trough.

During the 2016 transition, outgoing President Obama warned Trump that General Michael Flynn was untrustworthy. Trump wrote this off as sour grapes and changed history.

If Flynn hadn’t been on Trump’s team, he wouldn’t have gotten picked up on a FBI wiretap promising sanctions relief to Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. If he hadn’t been compromised by that communication, the FBI wouldn’t have gone to ask him about it. If he hadn’t lied to the FBI, he wouldn’t have wound up in the middle of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. If Trump hadn’t asked FBI Director Comey to kill that investigation and then fired him for refusing, there’d be no Special Counsel Robert Mueller. And without Mueller, Flynn wouldn’t have gotten indicted for lying to the FBI.

But he did, and here we all are.

Flynn pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI in December 2017. Then, at a December 2018 plea colloquy, he did it again, affirming under oath a second time that he was guilty and that his plea was voluntary. But Judge Emmet Sullivan refused to accept that plea, ordering him to go back and earn it by cooperating a whole lot more in the prosecution of his former business partner Bijan Rafiekian on charges of secretly lobbying for the Turkish government. [Continue reading…]