Art of the dealing?

It’s a bit of a legal twist with which lawyers everywhere can identify. A person subject to an investigation along with other people suddenly quits communicating, through his or her lawyers, with attorneys for those with a common interest. It makes those others nervous, because it signals that one person, the one who’s stopped that communication, may be seeking a deal on his or her own.

Michael Flynn, the retired general who was briefly President Trump’s national security adviser, is a name of interest in a probe from special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. What Flynn—who’s had a multitude of foreign contacts through his consulting firm—knows that might pertain to that investigation is mysterious at this point, but the fact that his lawyers have quit communicating with President Trump’s lawyers could be a sign that Flynn may be ready to cooperate with Mueller. To cut a deal, in other words.

Considering the tweets that have come from Trump over the last months, it’s unlikely he’d see Flynn’s cooperation as helpful to his desire to have all the Russian meddling stuff go away. On the contrary, Flynn (whose son works with him) was a Trump supporter who encouraged cheers of “Lock her up” in campaign crowds, referring to Hillary Clinton.

When Donald Trump wrote The Art of the Deal, this isn’t what he had in mind.