My guess, and I imagine it’s what Tierney is suggesting - Trump told/ordered him to lie about it. Not saying that’s the answer, but wouldn’t it fit everything we know about His Orangeness?
Flynn lied because he thought he could get away with it, and of course $$$$$.
Perhaps Trump’s team was already laughing that the president could pardon anything they did, without thinking through that prosecutors might reserve some charges for the state legal systems, where they can’t be pardoned by the president.
Flynn Facts?
Or did the trump cabal really think that they could keep this information from coming out? (Of course, they’ve managed to do untold damage in the almost-a-year since Flynn lied, and if he’d told the truth there might have been other questions that would have hobbled the administration in its early days.)
No, Trump and his minions will say it was Obama who did it.
OK, I’m confused. As I’ve been following today, Flynn was directed to to talk to members of the UN Security Council about upcoming sanctions on Israel, right?
If this is correct, then “They denied it had anything to do with sanctions the Obama administration was in the process of imposing on Russia” doesn’t seem contradictory.
Were the talks with Russia about the Security Council resolution or upcoming sanctions against Russia???
These people lie like they breathe. When you spend your time trafficking in conspiracy theories and projecting your own failures onto others, why not lie to the FBI? (That doesn’t even get to the extreme hubris.)
@daled Flynn/Trump wanted Russia to veto [edit: a UN resolution] on Israel that Obama wasn’t going to veto, and in return Trump would lift the sanctions on Russia.
Exactly. And since they were well aware that they were the smartest people in the world, they knew they could pull the wool over the FBI and Justice Department easily. Oops…
Trump or Kushner said to lie and not worry about it since the FBI would get off this issue as soon as Trump took control. Remember that Trump thought he could order the government to do anything just he could with his business.
There was an agreement and understanding among everyone on the Trump campaign team, transition team and administration to deny, lie about and mislead about any contacts or conversations with Russia/Russians no matter what. And if they were proved to be lying at some point, they’d deal with it then. They are now dealing with it in their own inimitable way.
Josh’s blog is interesting on this dealing with it point: “The top responses from the White House today have been, first, “everybody lies in Washington” and now claiming that the Obama White House in fact authorized Mike Flynn’s secret calls with Russian Ambassador Kislyak.”
ETA: If the WH is really claiming Obama’s administration told Flynn to talk to Kislyak…who could come up with such an attempted ruse? Who still has it in for Obama? I mean, it would almost be like saying the 6/9/16 meeting at Trump Tower was about orphans.
Trump and his band of miscreants can claim this is all political, but when Mueller is done with this, some of these treasonous bastards will be in jail. Now that Flynn flipped, everyone is freaking out about whether to flip too; cut a deal now before the real heavy shit comes down. This is the oldest law enforcement tactic in the book: Let the crooks wonder what the other crooks are telling the law. Trump was personally involved in all the Russia crap and he cannot hide forever. It’s like when Nixon said, “I am not a crook”. Ha!
Not sure if that was meant as humor, but that is exactly what they are saying now.
I pray for the poor journalists who have to watch Jeanine Pirro’s show for work. “Obama and Flynn: Treasonous Interracial Gay Couple?!?”
[quote=“daled, post:7, topic:65758”]
Were the talks with Russia about the Security Council resolution or upcoming sanctions against Russia???
[/quote]Two different sets of conversations on different days.
To paraphrase Harry Truman’s famous take on Nixon:
“The Trump Administration is made up of no good, lying bastards. They can lie out both sides of their mouths at the same time, and if they ever caught themselves telling the truth, they’d lie just to keep their hands in.”
"Why did he lie in the first place?"
Maybe he was told that Mueller would be fired and an investigation would be stopped. So why not lie so there is nothing on the record to justify that investigation, or a new one….
(Edited to reflect @jakebarnes correction re: Mueller hiring)
Well, they must be right… it’s all part of the Uranium One Deal. And Benghazi. And Whitewater. And what about Chappaquiddick?
We’ve got the first President ever to be guilty of overt TREASON. Nixon was the first to be implicated in a burglary, and trump’s the first one to be implicated in selling out the nation for small quantities of cash.
This was months before Mueller was ever involved.
The only conclusion that makes sense is that Flynn didn’t think the FBI mattered. He didn’t think any questions they asked, or answers he gave them, were relevant because he was the most powerful intelligence official in America. It is entirely possible that Flynn was too arrogant to realize that federal law applied to him, and lied unstrategically and foolishly out of hubris.
It’s also possible that he has so much to lie about that he had a hard time telling the truth when it would have been a better strategy.