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Thoughts re: Gen. Flynn's sentencing documents

After giving it further thought, I am curious. I have not kept up on this but I take the issue to have been over Russian interference in the US elections, and whether or not the Trump campaign colluded with them illegally (i.e. a conspiracy). As of last Friday, we know that to be true?

And, given that collusion is a necessary precondition to conspiracy (how else to conspire?) I don't think it significant that Trump and his attorneys claim that he didn't even collude...which, by the way, has been the initial basis of the partisan's dispute on both sides.

Red + Blue:
  • As of last Friday and even today, that Russia tasked people and resources to the end of interfering in the 2016 election so as to aid and abet Donald Trump's winning has been established, is known. The main raison d'etre for seating the Special Counsel was to determine:
    • What American citizens, if any, collaborated with Russian state actors and cutouts in Russia's interference in the 2016 election.
      • With regard to citizens determined to have thus collaborated, the investigation's aim is to determine whether the nature and extent of their collaboration was conspiratorial, that is to say, criminal in nature and/or extent.
The investigation the Special Counsel leads may, as a matter of course, reveal potentially criminal activity (actus rei) that's unrelated to election interference. The Special Counsel has the imprimatur to investigate those acts and determine whether their nature and/or extent is criminal. An example of such acts are those for which Manafort has been found guilty and those to which Michael Cohen has pled guilty. As has been shown by the DoJ and Special Counsel's behavior, such matters may be given to other DoJ investigative units to pursue and some may not.​

  • Blue:
    The "blue" phrasing is why I could not simply answer "yes" to the "black bold" question you posed.

    The explicit focus of the Special Counsel's investigation has never explicitly been to determine "whether or not the Trump campaign colluded [illegally with Russia/Russians]." It has been to identify whether anyone did so.

    The first sentence in this bullet point may seem to some as denotationally and connotationally identical to the "blue phrase; however, the two are materially different. Your phrasing necessarily implies the investigation has/had the predicate of Donald Trump having conspired with the Russians. It did not; however, insofar as his election is what the Russians sought to bring to fruition, and given his and his associates (campaign and otherwise) extensive ties/relationship to a host of Russian oligarchs and state actors, he is obviously/necessarily a subject whose behavior is being examined.

An important quality of the matters being investigated in the Russia Investigation is that they pertain to elections. Election matters can be of two basic dimensions:
  1. Domestic actors "messing about" to influence election outcomes. Such behavior is "typical" election fraud (what's going on in NC is an example) and funding violations.
  2. International actors, with or without US actors' involvement, covertly acting (via messaging or other means) to influence election outcomes.
The second of the two is what took place in 2016. Obviously, to the extent any American was involved, any such person is compromised by the Russians. If those compromised persons are highly-enough placed in the US government, the fact of their compromise exposes the US not only to the "original" risk of having an election outcome engineered by a foreign state, but also to the risk that they be forced to provide to that actor US national security information.

This thread's OP posits that among the information Flynn provided is info that pertains to Russia having somehow to some extent infiltrated/compromised US national security. The reasons I have are noted in my OP. I'm aware that I may well be wrong as right for I haven't USIC experience. I do have enough life experience to know the gov't typically says nothing about IC-related ongoings and I know that IC matters involving foreigners can be combated, but rarely, if ever prosecuted as crimes. I know of no other wrongdoing that simply cannot and would not be prosecuted.
 

Red + Blue:
  • As of last Friday and even today, that Russia tasked people and resources to the end of interfering in the 2016 election so as to aid and abet Donald Trump's winning has been established, is known. The main raison d'etre for seating the Special Counsel was to determine:
    • What American citizens, if any, collaborated with Russian state actors and cutouts in Russia's interference in the 2016 election.
      • With regard to citizens determined to have thus collaborated, the investigation's aim is to determine whether the nature and extent of their collaboration was conspiratorial, that is to say, criminal in nature and/or extent.
The investigation the Special Counsel leads may, as a matter of course, reveal potentially criminal activity (actus rei) that's unrelated to election interference. The Special Counsel has the imprimatur to investigate those acts and determine whether their nature and/or extent is criminal. An example of such acts are those for which Manafort has been found guilty and those to which Michael Cohen has pled guilty. As has been shown by the DoJ and Special Counsel's behavior, such matters may be given to other DoJ investigative units to pursue and some may not.​
...

While I have always been suspicious of Flynn's competence (and of his needless disruptiveness) as I review the information I am having difficulty with understanding the investigation - not necessarily its goals but its timeline and motivations. How did Flynn, one of the earliest interviewees, become the early target for investigating pre-election knowledge of Russian election interference? And how does that connect to the FBI query of his transition team discussions with the Russian ambassador, after the election, on matters of foreign policy?

I read the link on how this got started, but I noticed that it had almost nothing to do with Flynn. Other than the author slipping in a immaterial mention of Papadopoulos exchange of New Year's greetings with Flynn a month or less before the inauguration, there is nothing there.

And if, as is reported, the FBI knew the substance of his conversations then why would Comey schedule an interview to ask him to repeat what he said ? Did that have anything to do with election interference?
 
While I have always been suspicious of Flynn's competence (and of his needless disruptiveness) as I review the information I am having difficulty with understanding the investigation - not necessarily its goals but its timeline and motivations. How did Flynn, one of the earliest interviewees, become the early target for investigating pre-election knowledge of Russian election interference? And how does that connect to the FBI query of his transition team discussions with the Russian ambassador, after the election, on matters of foreign policy?

I read the link on how this got started, but I noticed that it had almost nothing to do with Flynn. Other than the author slipping in a immaterial mention of Papadopoulos exchange of New Year's greetings with Flynn a month or less before the inauguration, there is nothing there.

And if, as is reported, the FBI knew the substance of his conversations then why would Comey schedule an interview to ask him to repeat what he said ? Did that have anything to do with election interference?

Red:

I think you're trying to get at what specific election-/campaign-related information Mike Flynn has shared with the Special Counsel. We don't know. We know units within the DoJ/FBI have found "substantially" useful whatever Flynn's told them, and that whatever he's told them has been thus useful in three matters. Are all three within the Special Counsel's scope? I don't know; the DoJ hasn't told us one way or the other.

All I, we the public, know is that Flynn has proffered very useful information. The Special Counsel's office has handled his sentencing because it's the unit that obtained Flynn's guilty plea. That doesn't necessarily mean, however, that the info Flynn's provided has a damn thing to do with the election/campaign itself. Remember, once one agrees to plead guilty and cooperate with the DoJ/FBI, that cooperation is comprehensive, that is to say, one agrees to cooperate with and provide assistance regarding whatever it be the DoJ/FBI asks about and that one knows about.
  • How, for example, cooperation agreements pursuant to guilty pleas aren't structured:
    • Well, Mr. Flynn, even though you're a mob boss of some sort, insofar as you've pled guilty only to a mob bombing, that's all we're going to ask you about. We won't ask you about the money laundering, organizational structure of your organization, what other potentially criminal behavior you're aware of, where other "bodies" are buried, the nature, extent, ways and means your organization uses to do "this and that, " etc.
  • How cooperation agreements pursuant to guilty pleas are structured:
    • Okay, Mr. Flynn. Here's how this works: We say "jump." You ask, "how high," and then proceed to do so. Your life and what you know about the world, is now, to us, an open book, to the nature and extent we want it to be. We'll let you know what be that nature and extent by asking questions and asking for content. Even though we don't ask about a specific thing, if it at all seems like it might be relevant to what we've asked about or what you can glean we are examining, it's in your interest to volunteer that information rather than make us figure out to ask for it.
 
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