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March 5, 2023

This week there was what I consider to have been extensive unwarranted attention given to the murder trial in South Carolina of Alex Murdaugh. Unwarranted because it seems to me this is at best a matter of local or regional interest.  In the end, those who followed it learned one important lesson for all the coverage they saw or read: Do not carry your cell phone around when engaged in murdering your wife and son because, if you do, you leave a digital footprint easier to trace than Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumb trail.

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Alexis de Tocqueville long ago wrote of American’s fascination with courthouse trials, calling it “another theater.” That was even before sensational television coverage, and while I do not pretend to understand this, I suppose it’s related to desire in our national character to see evil punished and justice done.

I understand more clearly that the media covers some criminal cases — usually the more sensational ones — which do not involve prominent Democrats more than it covers others. On the other hand, I get it that when the target is a prominent Republican, especially anyone in any way connected with Donald J. Trump, the coverage of the cases is far from objective and ignores the strengths of the defense. So I was heartened to see that General Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, has sued the Department of Justice for $50 million in damages for its malicious prosecution of him in 2017. Paul Svab offers up a useful summary.

The case against Flynn was riddled with contradictions and inconsistencies. FBI agents had already decided to close his case by early January 2017, but higher-ups intervened to keep it open on the justification that Flynn may have violated an obscure and antiquated law called the Logan Act by discussing with a Russian ambassador the priorities of the incoming administration during the transition period. DOJ officials at the time rejected the legal theory. The 1799 Logan Act, which prohibits certain kinds of unauthorized diplomacy, may in fact be unconstitutional, several lawyers previously told The Epoch Times. It has never been successfully prosecuted, much less aimed at an incoming national security adviser.

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The supine press carried government-generated damaging leaks accusing Flynn of illegal conduct in discussions — as are perfectly normal — with a Russian official during the transition. Then the FBI by deliberate plan sandbagged him in an “informal interview” for which he was unprepared and threatened his son with prosecution if he did not plead guilty to the manufactured charges against him.

The DOJ dropped the charge in 2020, after then-Attorney General William Barr ordered an outside prosecutor to review the case. Then-head of the District of Columbia U.S. Attorney’s Office Timothy Shea concluded that it seemed the FBI’s purpose for interviewing Flynn was to “elicit… false statements and thereby criminalize Mr. Flynn.”

The judge overseeing the case refused to dismiss the charges until Trump ultimately pardoned Flynn in 2020.

Flynn charges not only malicious prosecution but as well that the government abused legal process in threatening prosecution of his son if he did not plead guilty.

He alleges he was damaged greatly by the government’s improper conduct and on that point, there can be no contest:

“He was falsely branded as a traitor to his country, lost at least tens of millions of dollars of business opportunities and future lifetime earning potential, was maliciously prosecuted and spent substantial monies in his own defense, and has suffered and will continue to suffer mental and emotional pain for the rest of his life, in addition to other pecuniary harms such as costs, fees, attorneys’ fees, and other losses.”