Sidney Powell Submits Evidence Proving Materiality of Flynn’s Lies
In my third post about how stupid Sidney Powell is, I present this exhibit, which DOJ thinks helps Mike Flynn. These are hand-written notes of an FBI attorney recording a meeting talking about Flynn’s interview the earlier day. Powell thinks this exhibit helps her because people at the meeting thought the Logan Act — which was never the key point of investigating Flynn — would be an “uphill battle.” She also focuses on FBI GC Jim Baker’s question about how you’d prosecute false statements when you wouldn’t prosecute the underlying crime — which, on January 25, 2017, might have been the Logan Act.
Still, the notes point out what a glaring counterintelligence problem Flynn was because of his overt lies about what he said to Russia.
For years Flynn’s boosters have claimed that FBI and DOJ didn’t recognize his lies as lies. Here they are doing so.
But one of the first things on the page (after a discussion of Flynn’s trip to Dominican Republic) — one of the first things these FBI lawyers discussed when trying to make sense of the National Security Advisor lying his ass off about his conversations with the Russian Ambassador is this:
Toll records. Did Flynn “talk to admin first”?
As I have noted repeatedly, Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka knew when they interviewed Flynn that he was lying about having raised sanctions with Sergey Kislyak.
What they didn’t know — because they hadn’t gotten National Security Letters on Flynn earlier in the investigation, as they normally would have — was whether or not Flynn’s claims not to have spoken to anyone in advance of his call, and not to have known about Obama’s sanctions, were true.
The way they planned to figure that out was to obtain Flynn’s toll records, which they did, in February and March. That showed, not only, that he was using a whole slew of phones. But that in addition to the lies the FBI identified immediately, he told other lies, lies to hide that he had consulted with Mar-a-Lago.
And Sidney Powell, bless her soul, has just provided proof that that was virtually the first thing FBI turned to try and figure out.
Once the FBI obtained proof that Flynn had consulted with those attending Donald Trump, the entire meaning of his lies would change. As would the Administration’s willingness to fight to reverse the investigation back to before the moment when Flynn’s consultations with Mar-a-Lago — the possibility he undermined sanctions on orders from Donald Trump — became the entire point.
Are there any repercussions for a lawyer behaving this way?
I hope so – I read this kind of thing and think that she should lose her license[s] for lying to the court and for submitting evidence that shows her positions are completely ass-backwards.
Seems like she might be angling for a lucrative conspiracy theory media career anyway.
OANN isn’t on all that many cable channels.
Or medications?
Yes, the judge can impose sanctions including Bar referrals to lose her license, but unlike the DOJ lawyers’ consistently shoddy fibbing Powell is in an advocate role and so has a lot more leeway about what she can say when presenting her case. If she has evidence to back her up (no matter how flimsy or misinterpreted) it will not get hammered as much by Judge Sullivan unless Powell goes full Klayman or Kobach. These filings get us pretty close to that line if not over.
The DOJ lawyers on the other hand were and are expected to be truthful in the evidence presented to the court and as EW noted in this set of posts they clearly did not to a judge very unlikely to tolerate fibbing by the Government.
Boom! What a great takedown of the slime merchant Sidney Powell. Nicely done.