"Well, Mr. Franklin, what kind of government have you given us? A Republic, if you can keep it!" -- Mrs. Powell to Benjamin Franklin
Silence in the face of tyranny is not moral. Nor, is quiet pushback acceptable. When people abuse their offices to engage in selective prosecution, especially politically motivated prosecution, then the only moral answer is public outrage, preferably with a beacon shown upon those who would so abuse our laws. Roger Stone is a pugnacious quirk. But, he remains an American citizen, which means he deserves no less than the full protection of his rights under law. This extends to the mandate that if he's found guilty, that it be by a court proceeding that adheres to rule of law, not rule of mob. His conviction is under fire because the jury foreperson immediately and quite publicly pronounced herself a political activist, who used her position to render a political vendetta against people whom she disfavored.
Her actions are an outrage, but sadly they pale relative to the outrage of the entire phony investigation that ensnared Stone, as well as the perjury trap laid before him, and finally the horrendous sentencing recommendation of seven to nine years the four federal prosecutors first handed to the judge. That latest outrage was one too far, so finally saner heads weighed in, giving these politically motivated prosecutors the springboard they desired to publicly announce their resignations from the case, and simultaneously their launch into the campy ranks of the Trump resistance.
Put into perspective, these four paid political assassins recommended double the sentence regularly handed down to convicted burglars and rapists! Indeed, it was 75% of the sentence regularly handed down to those convicted of manslaughter! We should endeavor to take lying to Congress seriously, but never elevated to the same level of rape, assault, and killing!
Moreover, the witness tampering charge was universally considered flimsy, with the supposed target of the tampering himself saying it amounted to nothing. Now, it is likely that a new trial will be ordered against Stone, and it wouldn't surprise anyone to see the whole case dismissed.
Individually, this example of jurisprudence run amok is foul enough. But, it is but one example among dozens in recent times, and collectively, the stench is growing more obnoxious each passing day. It must stop, and it can only be stopped when we return to equal protection of the law as well as equal prosecution under it. For context, let's return to 2016, shortly after Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President.
John Brennan ran his CIA as an opposition political research agency, and James Clapper allowed the Defense Intelligence Agency to be similarly abused. In an era when Islamic terrorism remained a mortal threat to the nation, and every intelligence agent was needed to ferret out vital information to protect the nation from terror attacks, Brennan and Clapper instead ordered their agents to conduct missions against a Presidential campaign. To circumvent federal laws that barred such domestic espionage, these operatives recruited allied nations, such as Great Britain, Australia, and Italy, to carry out the actual intel actions. These agencies collectively sent moles to seek out various people working in the Trump campaign, as well as plan the initial stages of the salacious Christopher Steele dossier, a patchwork of gossip and innuendo masquerading as opposition research. Sadly, most recent information indicates that Steele allowed himself to be willingly used by Russian operatives as a false flag courier, one the Russians couldn't hope to create, but were eager to leverage once handed to them on a silver platter. That platter was crafted by none other than John Brennan.
Of itself, bad enough, but worse when these two corrupted agencies conspired with Obama's Department of Justice to take the poison fruit to the FBI as the basis of FISA Court warrants to illegally wiretap the Trump campaign. That wiretapping led directly to eavesdropping on the initial meeting between incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. But, the real efforts to destroy Flynn started well before then.
Mike Flynn was one of the few willing to tell the truth about the years' long failed campaign in Afghanistan, and for sounding these alarms, he was drummed out of office. Flynn resigned as Barack Obama's Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Ironically, Flynn was replaced by Clapper, who was proven to lie under oath in Congressional testimony many times. We are still waiting to see if either Brennan or Clapper will be given anything like the Stone treatment! Neither have even been indicted, and both are guilty of much worse than anything Stone or Flynn ever did.
It was Flynn who criticized the doctoring of intelligence briefs that painted an overly positive picture of the situation in Afghanistan. But, perhaps Flynn's greatest "sin" was in confronting the Obama strategy to use proxies to topple Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, warning that the current strategy was playing into the hands of nascient Islamic terror organizations in the region. Given the subsequent rise of ISIS, Flynn's warnings were accurate.
Flynn went on to join the Trump campaign, and delivered a series of blistering attacks against rival Hillary Clinton, citing both her violation of laws regarding the safeguarding of classified information, and also her bungling of the Libyan consulate attack. It was at this time that the FBI started to receive the information from the illegal wiretaps hatched by Brennan, but carried out by James Comey's FBI, who started their Crossfire Hurricane operation against Flynn and the rest of the Trump staff.
When Trump named Flynn to be his incoming National Security Advisor, he and Obama met two days after the 2016 election. Obama informed Trump of "profound concerns" over Flynn being the next NSA. Truth is, Obama was wanting to keep the gadfly away from any ability to release details of how badly the Obama administration had bungled the situations in Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan.
How Flynn was mistreated by James Comey is now well documented. Flynn was the real whistleblower, who received no protection, and was instead subjected to an illegal criminal investigation, and has had to endure years of false accusations of lying to FBI interviewers. Flynn's latest attorney, Sidney Powell, has done much to unearth the corrupt efforts against him, and now finally an independent counsel has been ordered by Attorney General William Barr to take a fresh look at the investigation, including the conveniently lost original interview report that is said to have concluded that Flynn never lied. Prosecutors tied to the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation used phony charges to bankrupt Flynn, and then tried to get him to corroborate false accusations against the new Presidential administration.
Michael Flynn and Roger Stone are guilty of just one thing, and it's a crime only in the eyes of the rabid Trump resistance. These leftists are people who abuse our law and turn it into political weapons. This phony crime is nothing else but supporting Donald Trump, and providing him material support in the ongoing efforts to dismantle the Washington swamp. What happened when the four Roger Stone prosecutors abruptly resigned, is that four more members of the swamp were drained out. When, in all likelihood, the independent review of the Flynn case is completed, and all the charges against Flynn are dropped, we will see those prosecutors likewise drained out.
But, that is insufficient. What must happen is to see those who abused their offices be criminally indicted and tried. Brennan, Clapper, and Comey all join other agents like Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Andrew McCabb, and these Stone and Flynn prosecutors. They must all be held to account. John Durham has the mighty task of investigating all of these people, and he must do a thorough and honest job.
Nothing less than confidence in the American justice system, and our federal government, is at stake. If the people rightly lose confidence in our government to fairly and impartially adhere to and implement the law, then Benjamin Franklin's warning to that woman in Philadelphia becomes less a warning, and more a sad postscript of how our Republic was indeed lost!
-- Ken Stallings
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