Hurry Up And Defrost That Turkey, Michael Flynn! You Might Be In Jail By Thursday!
Looks like Michael Flynn is going to be getting a lump of coal in his stocking this year! The former National Security Advisor has been very naughty, and a new witness who knows all about it has just agreed to cooperate with the special counsel's investigation. Someone is making a list and checking it twice, and it is Robert Mueller! HO HO HO!
After Michael Flynn got booted from the Obama Department of Defense for being a lying bigot, Flynn and his dipshit son set about selling themselves to the highest bidder. Business was good, between Poppa Bear's military connections and Lil' Bear's fancy degree in golf course management. But things really got rolling after Flynn attached himself to the Trump campaign.
In August of 2016, Flynn was approached by Innovo, a Dutch cutout company representing Turkish government interests. Would Flynn like to take all the Ameros to be Turkey's man on the inside of the Trump Administration? HE WOULD. So they signed a contract on August 9, and Flynn started using his platform to tell everyone the US government should give Turkey everything it wanted because ... reasons.
What did Turkey want? Well, they wanted the US to hand over cleric Fetullah Gülen, arch enemy of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Obama Administration was reluctant to extradite someone convicted of no crime to face certain execution based on a political vendetta. But Michael Flynn doesn't go in for that sissy shit. If he couldn't persuade Trump to hand him over, Flynn was totally down to kidnap Gülen and black helicopter him away to a Turkish prison. All for the low-low price of $15 million dollars!
Turkey also wanted the US to drop the prosecution of Turkish-Iranian national Reza Zarrab, who was then a resident of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. Zarrab faced prosecution by US Attorney Preet Bharara's office for violating US sanctions on Iran. (Wait, the guy who was prosecuting Trump's Russian buddies for money laundering and got You're Fired just before the case settled for a pittance? Yep, same guy!) Zarrab is accused of trading Turkish gold for Iranian gas on behalf of the Turkish government and several high-profile Turkish banks. Public disclosure of Iranian sanctions violations would be extremely embarrassing for the Turkish government and their banks, which faced possible exclusion from the international credit market.
First Turkey approached Joe Biden and asked him to fire Bharara for being an agent of Fetullah Gülen. But OHJB don't play that, so they looked for someone with a total lack of integrity and a willingness to sell out his country's interests for cash.
Michael Flynn with his idiot spawn
Naturally, Flynn was only too happy to take Turkey's money to persuade Trumpland to hand Zarrab over. NBC reports,
Four people familiar with the investigation said Mueller is looking into whether Flynn discussed in the late December meeting orchestrating the return to Turkey of a chief rival of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who lives in the U.S. Additionally, three people familiar with the probe saidinvestigators are examining whether Flynn and other participants discussed a way to free a Turkish-Iranian gold trader, Reza Zarrab,who is jailed in the U.S. Zarrab is facing federal charges that he helped Iran skirt U.S. sanctions.
The balls on this guy!!! He got a letter in November from the Justice Department telling him they were looking into his Turkish lobbying, and he still sat down with his Turkish contacts in December to work out a price list for extracting Gülen and Zarrab! All while leading the pitchfork mob in chants of LOCK HER UP! What an asshole!
BUT WE DIGRESS.
In February, Rudy Giuliani visited Ankara to negotiate a political settlement for Zarrab. Did Turkey perhaps want to exchange US citizens held in Turkish prisons for the gold trader? US Attorney Joon Kim objected that Giuliani and former AG Michael Mukasey were trying to short-circuit the prosecution. Also, their law firms had extensive ties to the Turkish government and the Trump administration, which is a screaming conflict of interest. But Zarrab waived the conflicts, so there was very little the court could do. And, OH, HEY ROBERT MUELLER, we can't help but notice that Flynn and his buddies Rudy and Mike were all lobbying Turkey for the exact same thing. Coincidence?
But it seems that Zarrab is no longer seeking a political solution because he recently disappeared into Robert Mueller's warm embrace. Per The Daily Beast,
Last month, lawyers for his co-defendant, bank manager Mehmet Atilla, remarked sardonically in court filings that Zarrab, the man at the root of the charges facing their client, had all but vanished, and it seemed “likely that Mr. Atilla will be the only defendant appearing at trial.”
The Bureau of Prisons website shows that Zarrab was released from BOP custody on Nov. 8. [...]
“All I can tell you is that he is in federal custody,” Nick Biase, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, told The Daily Beast.
NBC confirms that Zarrab is indeed cooperating with the special counsel and has been transferred into protective custody, where we assume he's going to stay for a long, long time. Safe bet that Zarrab will not be going back to Turkey if he's spilling the beans on Turkish influence operations and Flynn's relationship with Erdogan.
"You can fill in the gaps that federal investigators are looking for any relation between Erdogan and Flynn," said [MSNBC legal analyst Danny] Cevallos. "So, to the extent that Zarrab has any connection or knowledge of that, it is very important that they're flipping him."
Cevallos said that based on his experience and what he's read about the case, Zarrab's release from federal jail to federal custody is entirely consistent with someone who is cooperating.
We're not sure which hotel Zarrab is holed up in with those nice FBI fellas, but we're sure it's nicer than Rikers Island. We have seen Law & Order, that place looks terrible!
So Happy Thanksgiving, Michael Flynn! And you, too, Junior! Maybe Grandma Flynn wants to start defrosting that turkey today, though? Seems like you might not be home to celebrate next Thursday. Gobble gobble!
[ NBC / The Daily Beast / NBC, again / Just Security ]
Ah, the hoar of babble on, just what this shit show is missing...
Sessions goes back to his senate seat to scoot Moore out of the picture, and Sarah is appointed AG? Dare we dream so large?