The news of former National Security Adviser Michale Flynn pleading guilty to lying to the FBI has been making a lot of rounds, especially on the very liberal media circuits.
On Friday, a producer for “The View” interrupted co-host Joy Behar on air to deliver some breaking news. Behar read from a notecard the producer handed to her, sharing the news that President Donald Trump’s former security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
It should come as no shock, except I kinda am?, that the ladies of The View took the opportunity to speak out about the revelation, saying “LOCK HIM UP!” as their audience cheered.
The audience cheered as Behar said. “Yay. He goes to jail! He goes to jail! He goes to jail! Lock him up!”
Co-host Meghan McCain said, “Take this moment, Joy, take this moment. I give this to you.”
https://youtu.be/6gsCIJpWv5w?t=12
Behar continued, “On election night, I had to wear a veil, I was in mourning. So this is like the antithesis of that hideous night, and that is why I am happy.”
She added, “It should lead to resignation. I remember Richard Nixon, and Richard Nixon stepped down, and so should Donald Trump.”
Behar declared, “It’s a happy day, come on. If he is going to be taken down for what he did and this country can start to heal, and parties can work together like Meghan wants it to, then that is a happy day.”
Donald Trump isn’t sweating this.
As reported by The Washington Times:
Flynn, who had been one of Trump’s closest and most-trusted aides during the campaign and transition, admitted lying to the FBI about pre-inauguration communications with Sergey Kislyak, then the Russian ambassador, regarding efforts to blunt the Obama administration’s Russia sanctions and a U.N. resolution on Israel — potential violations of a rarely enforced law.
[…]
In the president’s Saturday afternoon tweet, he also added to his previously stated rationale for firing Flynn. Trump said that Flynn had been dismissed not only for misleading Vice President Pence about the nature of his conversations with Kislyak but also for lying to the FBI.
“I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI,” Trump said in the tweet.
Trump lawyer John Dowd drafted the president’s tweet, according to two people familiar with the message. Its authorship could reduce how significantly it communicates anything about when the president knew that Flynn had lied to the FBI, but it also raises questions about the public relations strategy of the president’s chief lawyer.
Two people close to the administration described the tweet simply as sloppy and unfortunate.
Several legal observers suggested that the tweet could add to Trump’s legal exposure in a potential obstruction-of-justice investigation.
The day after Trump fired Flynn, Trump urged then-FBI Director James B. Comey to be lenient with his former national security adviser, according to Comey’s notes at the time.
If Trump knew at that point that Flynn had lied to the FBI and was under investigation, the observers said, his appeal to Comey could constitute an attempt by Trump to obstruct that investigation.
“Are you ADMITTING you knew Flynn had lied to the FBI when you asked Comey to back off Flynn?” Walter Shaub, the former head of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, said in a tweet Saturday afternoon.