Electile Dysfunction (Current students plz look!)

[G.Irish]

Admittedly not following it all very closely at all. What do you think it will implicate the Trump admin in actually doing? Influencing the election?

From what is publicly known, these are some of the crimes members of the Trump admin may be guilty of:

• FARA violations
  
• Obstruction of justice
  
• Conspiracy against the United States
  
• Making false statements to the FBI
  
• Violation of the Logan Act
  
• Violation of the Hatch Act
  
• Emoluments violations
  
• Falsifying SF-86
  
• Money laundering
  
• Espionage
  
• FEC foreign assistance violation
  
• Conspiracy to commit kidnapping
  

Some of these crimes are already slam dunks from what we publicly know.

Papadopoulos and Flynn have already made plea deals to avoid some of those charges, but the only reason they would've been given deals is in return for valuable evidence for higher value targets. Given that the list of things Flynn did could've landed him in jail for decades, chances are good that he is giving the special counsel particularly damaging testimony and or evidence against Trump, Pence, Kushner and/or others.

The charges stem from a date post election. Why didn't Obama/Comey pull some shit on Flynn, who they actually disliked, while still in power?

Obama fired Flynn and warned Trump about him, pre-inauguration. Elijah Cummings wrote Pence a letter warning about Flynn in November. Sally Yates warned the White House about Flynn about a week or so after inauguration.

Why wasn't Flynn put in jail then? Probably because the FBI was trying to snare more people than just him. When the Feds go after high profile cases like mafia bosses or espionage cases their goal is not just to score one or two people in jail. Their goal is to totally dismantle the criminal operation. With Flynn, by the time the Feds came after him, they probably had so much evidence that he was convinced that if he didn't take a deal and snitch on the Trump admin, he (and maybe his son) would be going to jail for a very long time. Same with Papadopoulos.

Ok - so if it's not influencing the election, what were they actually trying to accomplish? IANAL but won't they need to establish a motive - or is that already established as something else?

Motive is not going to be a problem in this case. Gaining the power of the presidency and all of the associated spoils is plenty of motive.

I do think you're exactly right - whatever has happened, has happened precisely to save Flynn's son some grief. I don't have the exact quote but it sounded like the investigation has been taking a monetary and emotional toll on the family. I just can't figure out what any of them were attempting to accomplish.

These guys were trying enrich themselves and subvert rule of law. Rule of law is going to slap them down HARD.