Retired Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn (shown above left) was forced to make a plea deal for something that isn’t a crime — in an effort to undermine President Donald Trump, a former U.S. attorney argued on Wednesday morning.
“There is nothing to say because General Flynn gave [the Mueller investigation] nothing about the president,” former U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova (above right) told host Laura Ingraham on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”
“There is no mention of collusion in any part of the pleadings,” he said.
“The matters that are blacked out [in the filings] that are no doubt related to criminal activities [have] nothing to do with the campaign whatsoever but other things and certainly not involving the president.”
Flynn was serving as the national security adviser for the president but resigned just a short time into his term.
Related: Trump Calls for His Former Lawyer to Face Strict Sentence After Plea Deal
The decision came as information surfaced that he had misled the FBI and Vice President Mike Pence about a conversation he had had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
His actions soon after caught the attention of the special counsel’s investigation into the president.
Listen to the segment from “The Laura Ingraham Show”:
Special counsel Robert Mueller has been leading the investigation looking at whether the president or his associates colluded with Russian interests during the campaign. Flynn apparently initially resisted cooperating, but eventually did after formalizing a deal with the special counsel to plead guilty December 2017.
“I think General Flynn has been abused by many people, but the person who was the worse, the villain, is Sally Yates, who created the pre-textual investigation under the Logan Act in order to frame Flynn,” diGenova, who now works as a partner at diGenova & Toensing, LLP, said.
“He apparently did not lie about perfectly legal activities, and yet he finds himself pleading guilty to something he didn’t do in order to prevent harm to his family and further harm to himself,” he told Ingraham and her radio audience.
The special counsel recommending a lenient sentence, with the possibility of no prison time, for the former national security adviser on Tuesday, as Fox News and other outlets reported.
Mueller stated in the filing that Flynn has offered “substantial” help to investigators about “several ongoing investigations.”
Related: Trump’s Former Lawyer Admits He Lied to Congress About Moscow Project
“Everything that General Flynn was doing before the election involving the Russians was perfectly legal,” diGenova said. “Talking to foreign officials is not a crime. It’s not a crime to discuss foreign policy with foreign officials, even if you’re on a campaign. People do it all the time. Democrats have done it for years. This was a designed plot to ruin an elected president.”
Michael Cohen, a former attorney for the president, admitted to lying to lawmakers in federal court last week about how much he discussed his proposed business project in Moscow with the president as part of his own plea deal.
Trump responded by calling him “weak” — while adding that he was only after a lighter sentence for his own crimes.
Flynn is scheduled to have a sentencing hearing on December 17.
Check out this video:
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