Just simpler to tell truth

Federal authorities regularly put prominent suspicious people in their investigatory and prosecutorial crosshairs, and those prominent suspicious people routinely cry out about unfairness and abuse.

What the feds do is draw a bead on a trophy scalp based on juicy alle- gations, perhaps arising in the media. Then they tend to want the charges to bear out, because it would reward their hard work as virtue-seekers.

They raid that target’s office and strew file drawers and take computers. A guy takes on a certain guilty aura when the FBI has left his office and home a mess.

Then the targeted one says it’s all so horribly unjust, especially when the feds start threatening his friends and associates if they don’t provide something good on the target.

Whether the targets deserve the vigorous investigation is one thing, and debatable, which is what trials are for. That the feds’ tactics are heavy-handed based on pre-conceived and hopedfor notions—that’s another thing, and often, it seems, not altogether wrong.

The only thing different about Donald Trump is that he cries louder than most. His infantility serves him well as a whiner.

And one other thing in Trump’s benefit: He happens to have an attorney general who will do his bidding, which is what any self-styled emperor expects from a government lawyer.

That’s what the Michael Flynn matter is all about.

Flynn, a key Trump campaign supporter, was deemed by federal prosecutors to be at least peripheral to the established fact of Russian intervention in the American presidential election of 2016 to try to help Trump.

The FBI asked Flynn questions about a conversation he had with the Russian ambassador—this after pretty much abandoning any other angle through him—and he didn’t tell the truth in his answers.

Flynn was the national security adviser-designee. One of his lies was that he hadn’t asked the Russians to vote a certain way on a UN Security Council resolution. The other was that he hadn’t discussed with the Russian ambassador the Obama administration’s new sanctions against Russia for interfering in our election. He had, in fact, asked the Russians to respond only proportionally and not to accelerate tensions beyond that.

The feds charged him on the falsehoods, looking to use him anew to plow deeper into any Russian collusion that might have occurred.

Flynn offered little cooperation and pleaded guilty to lying. He said in court that he was guilty, and remorseful, and that God would be his future guide.

But Trump’s personal attorney general, Bill Barr, last week announced that Flynn’s lies were white ones of no consequence to a central charge that turned out false—active collusion by Trump and his campaign with Russians—and that the case against Flynn would not be further pursued.

Flynn’s pleading guilty in a federal courtroom will vaporize now, presumably.

All those under federal investigation should be so lucky.

I’ll tell you about a lie that was not material to a case that turned out to be bogus, and it, too, had to do with a president.

Bill Clinton received oral sex in the White House from an intern, and falsely denied it, which had nothing remotely to do with a long-before failed land development venture in rural Arkansas that a smarmy Republican operative named Ken Starr first started investigating.

Starr had long since drawn a blank on the land deal, but he kept his expensive operation in place in case Clinton did something he could make a case of. He knew, as many did, that Clinton might be prone to embarrassing behavior in the carnal context and that he very well would deny it if asked, because that’s what people do,

Clinton especially.

“Couldn’t agree more,” Bud Cummins replied Monday when I went on Twitter to make the point for historical context that receiving oral sex was not material to a belly-up rural land development deal.

I quote Cummins for two reasons. He was Trump’s main campaign guy in Arkansas. And he was the Little Rockbased U.S. attorney during some of the George W. Bush presidential years.

“Why,” he continued, “can’t you condemn federal overreach and politicized law enforcement on a similar nonpartisan basis?”

I could, if needed, such as if Robert Mueller had presumed to bastardize a Russia-collusion investigation into recommending impeachment of Trump for engaging in sex and not confessing it to the Church Lady.

In Trump’s case, Mueller acknowledged he had not found a collusion case and walked right up to, but not to, an obstruction of justice charge.

Trump didn’t get impeached for sex. He got impeached entirely separately from Mueller’s investigation. It was for trying to sic the Ukrainians on Joe Biden.

All of that came to nothing except the tired whining of Trump and polarized partisanship, and a few opportunities for reform.

Presidents ought to behave better. Voters ought to demand it. Federal authorities ought to smear less on the periphery and investigate more objectively and less prejudicially at the center.

And one more: People ought to tell the truth, even to scary feds and even if the feds’ questions are unfair or embarrassing.

It’s just simpler all the way around to say, for example:

“I’m not sure you have any business asking, but, since you asked and you have the badge, regrettably, then yes, I had sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. And I didn’t encourage anybody to lie because I ain’t even lying about it myself. Now, if we could take a brief break, I need to go tell my wife what the hell I’ve just had to admit.”

And, “I don’t know what it has to do with my supposedly conspiring with Russians to elect President Trump, which I did not do, but, yes, since you’re asking and you have the badge, regrettably, the Russian ambassador and I did discuss the sanctions against Russia that the Obama administration had imposed. I’m the national security adviser-designee, after all, at least until you guys manage to send me up the river for something I can’t begin to imagine.”

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