Day 71: Flynn May Flip
Whether the DOJ accepts Flynn’s offer of testimony for immunity — more than the offer itself — is the most important signal to predict the future of the investigation.
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal broke a bombshell of a story: Donald Trump’s former national security adviser is willing to speak to investigators in the FBI and House and Senate intelligence committees under one condition: he receives full immunity from prosecution.
Flynn has previously had strong thoughts on immunity-receivers.
Trump had many of those same thoughts.
Now, it seems the president has changed his mind about immunity.
Trump is actually trying to blame Democrats yet again, even though they control neither intelligence committees nor the FBI, much less Congress or any department of the federal government. The Department of Justice, headed by Trump-appointee Attorney General Jeff Sessions, makes the final decision on the granting of immunity or whether to move forward with criminal charges.
It’s absolutely possible that Flynn is just covering all his bases by asking for immunity. After all, asking is free.
Whether the FBI takes him up on the deal, however, is critical. If they did, the obvious implication is that there is a lot more to the story and that they need Flynn to tie the pieces and players together. The story is a whole lot bigger than a random conversation with a Russian ambassador or a happenstance run-in.
The DOJ would only grant immunity on two conditions: 1) Flynn offers everything he knows about Trump-Russia connections; and 2) Flynn offers to flip on a bigger fish.
Flynn disclosing everything is an obvious condition to such a deal; the failure to tell all would open Flynn to having the deal revoked.
Flynn not offering up a higher target doesn’t do the FBI much good. The DOJ would have little reason to grant immunity just to gather additional information. The FBI investigates potentially criminal activity and the DOJ prosecutes individuals responsible for such activity. Neither organization is looking to just fill out reports of what they learned.
If Flynn is going to flip, there is only one person above him in the food chain. Flynn answered to one person dating back to the campaign and that person sits in the Oval Office at the Resolute desk: Donald J. Trump.
Corroboration is key to everything, though. Flynn’s testimony on its own would be unlikely to sink the S.S. Trump. The FBI is certainly combing through other potential sources of information: call logs, transcripts, emails, meeting dates, financial documents and more. The big piece of evidence would be another person willing to speak out about what they know, since documents are only worth so much and context is often lacking.
Trump’s big concern has to be if more than one person is willing to step forward and explain what they know in exchange for immunity. Former campaign chairman Paul Manafort — with his millions of dollars and thousands of contacts in Russia — is an obvious choice. But the FBI’s investigative waters run deep and other witnesses could be as obvious as Manafort or people that the public is largely unaware of.
While it’s tempting to speculate about what Flynn knows, the more compelling inquiry is whether the FBI takes him up on the offer. If so, it would indicate they have their sights set on someone above Flynn.
71 days in, 1391 to go
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