Another view: Time to move on from Russia collusion fantasy

On Friday, President Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about a perfectly legal conversation he had during the presidential transition with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Flynn should not have lied, but the substance of the single-count indictment against Flynn shows that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has strayed far from its purpose.

We have come down quite a way from the hyperventilation about Russia “hacking the election” a year ago. What happened to Democratic Sen. Mark Warner’s claim, later promoted by Hillary Clinton, that there were 1,000 Russian agents planting anti-Hillary fake news stories in key swing states? Or that the Russians delivered Wisconsin to Trump? All the conspiracy theorists have so far are a few Facebook ads.

Flynn was fully in his rights making the call to Kislyak. Even Democratic former CIA director and Defense secretary Leon Panetta said it was a “stretch” to say these contacts broke the law.

The dust-up seems mainly to be about the decorum of presidential transitions. Days after the 2016 election, the Trump team cautioned the Obama administration against pursuing new and damaging foreign policy initiatives that did not align with Trump’s priorities.

“I don’t think it’s in keeping with the spirit of the transition,” one of president-elect Trump’s national security advisers told Politico on Nov. 10, 2016, “to try to push through agenda items that are contrary to the presidentelect’s positions.”

The phone call to Kislyak should be viewed in that context. This was not, for example, on the level of colluding with shadowy Russian intelligence contacts to create disinformation to try to swing the election, as the authors of the Clinton-connected Trump smear dossier did.

If this process crime that Flynn was nailed for is all the Mueller team can come up with, it is time to move on.

James S. Robbins was a special assistant in the office of the secretary of Defense in the George W. Bush administration.