The plea deal agreed to by Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, is a “nothing-burger” that shows the Justice Department has little to show for the investigation of Russia-related hacking during the 2016 election, said Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.

Flynn admitted to a federal court on Friday that he misled federal investigators when asked about a meeting with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition last year.

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“All of Flynn’s conversations with the ambassador to Russia were perfectly legal during the transition period and even before,” said diGenova, speaking to host Laura Ingraham on Fox News. “It’s not a crime to communicate with an ambassador of a foreign country about foreign policy when you are the foreign policy adviser to the incoming president. So I don’t know why he lied. It’s inconceivable to me. If he had told the truth, there would be no crime.”

DiGenova, speaking Friday night on “The Ingraham Angle,” said Flynn would be in the clear except for a failure to register as a lobbyist for a foreign power. But even that law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, is rarely enforced.

Flynn served as national security adviser for Trump for less than a month before he was forced to resign, on February 13, for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the conversation with the Russian ambassador.

“This is a ‘nothing-burger,'” said diGenova. “After all this time, this is what he gets out of Flynn? It tells me that there is not much there. It certainly can’t involve the president, because the president has the authority to do all the things that he did.”

DiGenova said if Robert Mueller, the Justice Department’s special counsel, is looking at Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and White House adviser, he likely won’t be able to get very far on the Logan Act, which forbids private citizens from negotiating on behalf of the federal government in a dispute with a foreign state. The 1799 law has never been prosecuted.

“You can’t violate the Logan Act when you are in the transition team,” diGenova told Ingraham. “You are a government employee. You get a green check. When you are on a transition team, you are a special government employee. They can communicate with anybody they want … The Logan Act has never been enforced. And if Mueller were to use it in this case, then if I were the president, I would fire him.”

(photo credit, homepage image: Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, CC 0, by Claudette Roulo)