“When you are given immunity, that means you have probably committed a crime.”<p>— Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, in an interview with NBC News on September 25, 2016.<p><a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/09/25/gen_flynn_hillary_clinton_shouldnt_be_too_big_to_jail.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/09/25/gen_flynn_...</a>
Has the United States ever convicted someone on the level of National Security Advisor (i.e., effectively a member of the cabinet, such as Secretary of Defense), or even put them on trial? Petraeus got a slap on the wrist, but for actions while he was a General.<p>In other countries, even the heads of state get put on trial. Off the top of my head, it's happened relatively recently in France and Israel. In the U.S., I can't think of even a member of the cabinet being tried; on the order of 1 federal judge has ever been impeached. Nixon was pardoned, for example.<p>Someone mentioned 5 people were granted immunity for the Clinton investigation; were any of the 5 at such a high level? Has someone on that level ever been given immunity or needed it?
As of now, it looks like nobody has taken his offer of immunity for testimony. What are the implications of this? The commentators on other sites seem to imply this means investigators already know something big.
This seems closer to "Ex-Trump adviser Flynn's lawyer tries a pretty common (for his client's industry) maneuver to ensure his client won't get jail time no matter what happens"<p><a href="https://twitter.com/robkelner/status/847590575352270850" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/robkelner/status/847590575352270850</a><p>I'd be quite surprised if any of the Russian connections turned out to be meaningful. Every story that I've seen about anything along the Trump/Russia axis is soaked in enough weasel words to make a defense attorney cringe, and the details are generally senseless on close examination.
Trump on Feb. 15 — <i>after</i> Flynn was fired — saying Flynn's a "wonderful man [who'] been treated very, very unfairly by the media"<p><a href="https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/847587940557623296" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/847587940557623296</a>
Manafort and Stone have offered to testify to Congress. Flynn wants immunity to testify.<p>I've wondered if these are positions taken from under the bus.
I'm not a Trump supporter (voted for Johnson but would have voted for Clinton if it mattered in my state), but this whole "Russia" investigation feels like partisan signaling nonsense like the Benghazi hearings.<p>Flynn didn't do anything illegal (I've yet to see a compelling argument that the Logan Act would apply here), just a breach of protocol. It was lying to Pence that did him in.<p>Manafort consulted for lots of presidential campaigns including Ford, Reagan, and Bush, so it doesn't surprise me that Trump used him, too. Of course, he's a criminal and a sleazeball, and he left the Trump campaign a long time ago.<p>Tillerson is just an ex-CEO of Exxon, so he might be pro-Russia but not in any untoward way.<p>It's likely that the DNC was hacked by APT28/29, and it's likely that they're FSB/GRU, and it's likely that they released the documents to Wikileaks. There's no public information that Trump was involved.<p>The Steele dossier is juicy and is being investigated by the intelligence agencies, so nothing to learn there until they tell us.<p>Then we have the Yates and Nunes ordeal, but I'm willing to believe that's just partisan junk.<p>Annnnyyywwaaaay, in an effort to be more rational this year, I'd like to try to solidify my positions and confidence levels via wagers. My <i>general</i> position is that Trump is not involved with Russia in any treasonous or even "quite inappropriate" way.<p>If you concretely believe that Trump is a Russian spy, or personally negotiated with Putin to get him to win the election in exchange for reversing sanctions or something, hit me up (my email is in my HN user info thing) with your proposed hypothesis and we can make a bet. I won't promise to take on all bets, but certainly a lot of the extreme positions I've seen on here I would. E.g., I'd bet at pretty high odds that he didn't take a position in Rosneft, as someone was claiming).
Listen, I know it's a big deal when the POTUS lies. But aren't we used to it by now? If Trump somehow manages not to be a criminal and a crook (which seems downright impossible), it will be highly unusual for the recent history of his office.<p>Now: other than bluster, what is there actually about this "Russia" probe? What exactly are we investigating? Whether Russia was involved in "fake news" stories? Whether Russia was involved in releasing emails from the DNC? Emails which revealed terrible, immature, anti-democratic conduct?<p>The "Russia hacked the election" narrative doesn't include, AFAIK, accusations that they stuffed ballot boxes or anything, right?<p>edit: If the house investigation is about the Steele dossier (ie, the alleged oil deal between Trump and Russia), then that's a different ballgame entirely and that's great. This article doesn't mention that; my understanding was that that had only been brought up on the Senate side. It seems that the House side is still just about the "election hacking" - I hope I'm wrong.