Jeff Carter

Bob, not only are you arguing now irrelevant procedural issues, you are adopting a talking point that an organized crime technique such as threatening family members with harm if a subject doesn't bend to the will of the prosecutors is fair practice. Exculpatory evidence was produced. The revised reasoning of the DOJ - based on its review - appears in the M2D. I have yet to see a counter analysis which takes this new information into account. All I see are ad hominem attacks, and a blind insistence that the original plea deal stands as the final word. Defence attorneys are uniform in stating that innocent people plead guilty through plea deals everyday all across the country. To try and frame these situations in the context of "perjury" is infantilizing the complex and troubling questions which arise.

To be “exonerated” means being absolved from blame or wrongdoing. The C/I investigation was unable to uncover anything that could lead to blame or wrongdoing, and so there was nothing to "absolve". You are flipping US legal standards on their head. The full weight of US investigatory and surveillance capabilities are not supposed to be directed at US citizens based solely on innuendo and rumour. The continued FBI surveillance and disruption tactics directed at MLK are case in point, and were (once long ago) roundly condemned. In this case, the astonishing fact that fully five individuals connected to the Trump campaign - including the campaign manager and prospective National Security Advisor - were subject to active Counter-Intelligence investigations during the presidential campaign and following into the transition and administration periods, is completely unprecedented in US history. The predicates for these investigations have not risen much above rumour and innuendo, but an IG investigation has confirmed this low bar is entirely acceptable. Under these circumstances, I can’t see how any political challenge to the establishment status quo can ever be successful.

OK. You guys are on the side of the prosecutors. That's been obvious for a long time. You are invested in a deeply partisan way, which triggers your emotions. You are both very very angry that Flynn expressed "material falsehoods and omissions" when discussing UN Security Council votes on Israel with FBI agents, and feel very strongly he should face criminal sanction for that. Fair enough. And you get even angrier when others wonder if justice is actually being done here. OK.

The Washington Post also the same day published an op-ed by a longtime Defence Attorney, who made arguments in favour of the DOJ’s motion to dismiss. There seems to be disagreement - approving or disapproving - based on experiences as a defence attorney rather than a prosecutor. I find the arguments associated with the defence attorneys far more persuasive. Those offering prosecutor’s briefs hit the same notes - he lied / he admitted his guilt - without allowing that neither premise is anywhere near absolute in the details. And there’s a tendency to fundamentally misrepresent the proceedings. Gleeson, for example, portrays the late release of required exculpatory evidence as rather some kind of special benefit or gift: “To help Flynn, the department has made public documents it jealously guards in almost every other case, including confidential memos and internal deliberations.” “To help Flynn” - that is so arrogant. The documents are important exculpatory evidence and were required by law to be shared with the defence at the start of proceedings. As late as this past December, the Mueller prosecutor Van Grack insisted to the court that these documents did not exist. The only reason they are now available is the DOJ felt compelled to appoint a special counsel to review the Flynn prosecution, after the sentencing phase stalled when Sullivan began interrogating the material relevance of the “falsehoods and omissions” and Flynn secured new counsel. This late arriving exculpatory evidence fundamentally changed the understanding of the facts behind the case. Gleeson is covering for the “career prosecutor” who buried this exculpatory evidence while exercising an aggressive and threatening posture when shaping the plea deal.

Yes but nothing you listed was found to be relevant to the predicate of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. No criminal charges directly related to the predicate of the CH investigation were ever filed, and Mueller concluded there was no evidence of collusion to effect the 2016 election. So you are welcome to be very very angry over activity you disapprove of, but none of it ever amounted to what you think it did.

The Findlaw article that David Andrews linked previously does a good job in explaining how someone can end up in serious legal jeopardy while also holding opinion they did nothing wrong. There’s a bit of confusion - the Motion To Dismiss is not seeking to dismiss or challenge the counter-intelligence operation the FBI ran against Flynn. It is dismissing the single count of “materially false statements and omissions” after finding the statements and omissions in question were not materially relevant to the predicate of the C/I operation, which is a key test for “material false statements” being indictable. This motion occurred in context of the release of important and relevant exculpatory information which had previously been denied to Flynn’s counsel. Cliff’s endorsement of the original C/I operation is fair enough, but it is also true that “no derogatory information” to suggest that Flynn was compromised turned up after a four month investigation by an FBI Field Office team, and no such information was developed after his contacts with Kisylak - I.e. he had been entirely cleared of suspicion. The “materially false statements and omissions” had no bearing on the conclusions of the C/I team, and so were deemed materially irrelevant, meaning the charge against Flynn should not have been pursued in the first place.

You are taking the position that the FBI and other players in the Crossfire Hurricane umbrella investigation - i.e. Steele dossier, Halper, Mueller, FISA malfeasance, deliberate leaks to the press, false representations by Schiff, etc - have operated an entirely good faith operation sincerely predicated on national security grounds. You are trying to justify a nasty little perjury trap which has been exposed. The dilemma Flynn found himself in - leading to his signing a plea agreement despite his expressed opinion he had done nothing wrong - is well described in the Findlaw link https://corporate.findlaw.com/litigation-disputes/how-to-avoid-going-to-jail-under-18-u-s-c-section-1001-for-lying.html

Cliff, it is apparent you have only a superficial understanding of these matters because you are making common cause with law enforcement procedures which were roundly condemned back in the 1970s.

Sorry - rights as US citizen. You need to take this up with Sally Yates. It was the position of the DOJ through January 2017. One of the press leaks, which sourced to either FBI or DNI, appeared in Washington Post on Jan 23/17, the day before the Flynn interview. In an article titled "FBI reviewed Flynn's Calls With Russian Ambassador, But Found Nothing Illicit", there is the following false information: “Although Flynn’s contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak were listened to, Flynn himself is not the active target of an investigation, U.S. officials said.” Flynn referred to this article during that conversation with McCabe. This is the type of thing I refer to when suggesting that FBI were not acting in good faith. I'm not sure what you are referring to.

The Lawfare blogger does not share relevant information. First, the conversations with Kisylak did not reveal a quid pro quo or any kind of “deal”, and were not in themselves inappropriate or illegal, or relevant to Flynn’s counter-intelligence probe - which had uncovered “no derogatory information” whatsoever. The contact with the chief Russian diplomat was not in itself a reasonable source of suspicion. As the FBI in concert with the office of DNI conceded when they grasped at the Logan Act straw. Second, the Logan Act was a non-starter because, as part of a presidential transition team, Flynn was not a “private citizen” under the terms of the Act. Third, the controversy with Pence had no influence on the McCabe/Comey decision to not close the CI file as it occurred a full ten days later. Keeping the file open was justified solely by the Logan Act. Fourth, the Motion to Dismiss specifically rejected the “counter-intelligence purpose” of the Flynn interview, rather than “ignore” it as the author claims. Fifth, the FBI defied clear instruction that Flynn, as national security advisor, needed to be informed of a C/I investigation, and any interview with him had to be arranged through the White House Counsel. All of the above inform the central arguments of the Motion To Dismiss.

The FBI did have the transcripts, according to the DNI office. The FBI was not reacting to a leak, the leaks came later. There was no articulable reason to delay closing the counter-intelligence file based on 1001 or 951, because Flynn had already been entirely cleared. Nothing about the Kisylak convos invoked 1001 or 951.The Logan Act was entirely separate matter. The Logan Act was a pretext, not a serious proposition. This was shared on another thread and is entirely relevant to this discussion: https://corporate.findlaw.com/litigation-disputes/how-to-avoid-going-to-jail-under-18-u-s-c-section-1001-for-lying.html The Motion To Dismiss takes pains to note the ongoing discussions re: Flynn between DOJ officials and FBI top guns McCabe and Comey. The discussion is germane because the FBI ultimately defied the articulated requirement that Flynn be informed of the investigation and that an interview be arranged through White House Counsel. Defenders of Flynn's prosecution say that the FBI was ultimately not bound by law to follow these requirements and if his legal rights as a US citizen were effectively trampled on then that's too bad. The Motion To Dismiss is in part a defence of Flynn's rights as a private citizen - which is refreshing.

I will criticize the NY Times when they publish unsupported assertions (i.e. Russia hacked DNC is “incontrovertible fact”) in their editorial section, but tend to respect their straight reporting - although Judy Miller… The article in question “Flynn’s Downfall Sprang From ‘Eroding Level of Trust’” (Feb 14, 2017). Keeping in mind that “around the same time” refers to the immediate day(s) following Kisylak-Flynn convo, here is what is said: -begin quote Around the same time, Obama advisers heard separately from the F.B.I. about Mr. Flynn’s conversation with Mr. Kislyak, whose calls were routinely monitored by American intelligence agencies that track Russian diplomats. The Obama advisers grew suspicious that perhaps there had been a secret deal between the incoming team and Moscow, which could violate the rarely enforced, two-century-old Logan Act barring private citizens from negotiating with foreign powers in disputes with the United States. The Obama officials asked the F.B.I. if a quid pro quo had been discussed on the call, and the answer came back no, according to one of the officials, who like others asked not to be named discussing delicate communications. The topic of sanctions came up, they were told, but there was no deal. end quote- The Obama advisors/officials (the same) are clearly from Clapper’s DNI office, likely Clapper or Litt. Note that it is the officials in DNI who become suspicious of “a secret deal” in context of Logan Act. There is no suggestion that the Kisylak-Flynn conversations have relevance to the FBI’s Crossfire Razor counter-intelligence investigation. The central finding of the Motion To Dismiss is that there was no “articulable” reason to interview Flynn based on the counter-intelligence file, and that no criminal investigation based on Logan Act was ever opened. The Motion says the FBI’s lack of predicate means Flynn’s technical “false statements and omissions” were immaterial.

I have to amend my previous speculation as I now understand that the “Obama officials” cited in the NY Times (Feb 14, 2017) represent the Director of National Intelligence Clapper’s office. This would indicate that the Crossfire Razor team was not in fact a part of the analysis or dissemination of the transcripts of the phone calls. After realizing there was no quid quo pro or deal or negotiation over sanctions - I.e. nothing illegal or inappropriate with the phone calls - the “7th Floor” of the FBI worked in conjunction with DNI to suggest a Logan Act predicate to DOJ, and then leak partial information to media to create pressure, which could be exploited by securing a “friendly” interview. The Motion To Dismiss is a repudiation of this effort. The complaint against the MTD is it reads as a defence rebuttal rather than a prosecutor’s brief.

“The Obama officials asked the F.B.I. if a quid pro quo had been discussed on the call, and the answer came back no… The topic of sanctions came up, they were told, but there was no deal.” (NY Times, Feb 14, 2017) This discussion occurred December 30 or 31st 2016.

The Flynn-Kislak phone calls were dealt with by the Crossfire Razor FBI team within a day of their occurrence (i.e Dec 30), and this team briefed representatives from the Obama administration at that time. They were able to confirm that no quid pro quo was discussed and no deal was struck re: sanctions. The CR team then finished their report on Flynn and started to close the file. Their finding that there was “no derogatory information” was post Flynn-Kisylak convos. The revisionist line that FBI only aware of convos on or after January 4 is simply not true - this was a CYA ploy introduced by McCabe well after the fact. The only controversy about these calls is Flynn’s alleged “lies”, and the matter is entirely equivocal and semantic. As reported at the time, Flynn’s position to other members of the administration was he discussed the “expulsions” not the sanctions (separate in his mind), while to the media, and apparently members of DOJ (McCord) the term “sanctions” referred to both the economic measures and expulsions. Trump people made a rookie mistake in not really clarifying this distinction amongst themselves before addressing the media, but the only reason Pence and Spicer even had to respond in the first place is because someone from either senior levels of FBI or from Clapper’s DNI illegally and deliberately leaked that Flynn spoke to Russian Ambassador about “sanctions” without clarifying that “no derogatory information” resulted from these calls. And the leak helped reinforce a growing atmosphere of hysteria because the ICA had been released and the Steele dossier was public. These were all dirty tricks by senior intelligence/FBI officials, coordinated with their media allies, designed to upend the incoming democratically-elected administration. All of this context is being disregarded by the people at Lawfare/emptywheel, which is why their arguments and talking points are merely a version of a prosecutor’s brief. Their concepts fall apart under examination. The idea that there are some “unredacted” transcripts of the Flynn-Kisylak convos hidden somewhere is just a completely made-up controversy. Clearly the FBI combed through these transcripts in late December, and the transcripts were with people in DOJ in early January. Nothing illegal or inappropriate ever occurred during these conversations.

Bob - you are addressing procedural issues which have been superseded. The reasoning that the Brady issues were settled in court last December has been entirely undermined by the release of highly relevant material over the past two weeks not only covered by Brady, but which served to entirely transform the understanding of what had occurred in January 2017. Van Grack resigned several hours before the release of DOJ’s Motion To Dismiss. No contempt order. The memo by the Washington Field Office team assigned to investigate Crossfire razor (Flynn) was Exhibit 1 of the Motion To Dismiss. I am almost certain this team handled the Kisylak-Flynn telephone transcripts on the day after the call, and served as liaisons to representatives of the Obama administration at that time. “The Obama officials asked the F.B.I. if a quid pro quo had been discussed on the call, and the answer came back no… The topic of sanctions came up, they were told, but there was no deal.” (NY Times, Feb 14, 2017) Strzok does not take over the file until a week later. The Crossfire Razor team ended its investigation after finding “no derogatory information” including the phone calls in question. This undermines the theory later offered by McCabe, that “senior FBI officials” only found out about the calls in early January and felt they needed to be clarified - not least because the calls had already been clarified by the designated team, nothing untoward was uncovered, and the file was being closed. Senior FBI then intervened with a Logan Act predicate, but never opened a criminal case based on that. A crucial (and illegal) media leak, followed by defiant responses to DOJ’s request to follow protocol, and evidence of the meetings strategizing the eventual interview - all combine to establish that the interview was a rogue operation untethered to a functioning counter-intelligence investigation. That’s certainly the conclusion of the Motion, and the reason the charges were withdrawn. NY Times - “Mr. Trump, while annoyed at Mr. Flynn, might not have pushed him out had the situation not attracted such attention from the news media.” The situation gained media attention solely through the deliberate use of leaks about the Flynn-Kisylak phone calls to Washington Post on Jan 9 (published Jan 12), January 23, and February 9. No evidence of Russian election meddling other than supposition centred around Internet Research Agency. Mueller Report relied entirely on Crowdstrike for Russian hacking - turns out Crowdstrike doesn’t actually know. No evidence of collusion, as the report itself clearly states.

Whatever the reason the Obama team felt it imperative to prevent Flynn from serving as National Security Advisor, once Flynn was fired they had achieved their mission. For the Mueller prosecutors to later press a legal case via a “nickel and dime” process charge, was a move both arrogant and stupid. Flynn’s “lies” were clearly equivocal and largely irrelevant, and would not have occurred at all if he had counsel with him as was tradition and protocol. Surely Flynn exhibited poor judgment by letting the FBI in the door, but the FBI’s bad faith and scheming was obvious. For the prosecutors to later use crude and heavy-handed tactics to work a plea deal, while Flynn’s downfall was celebrated in the press, this was bound to create a backlash. And it did. This was a big lose for the RussiaGate true believers, and a big lose for the D.C. people who thought it a good idea to use the federal legal apparatus to take out their political opponents. Now the momentum has swung and future revelations will be controlled by the Republicans in context of an election campaign. The Democrat’s base allowed themselves to be completely distracted for three years by an obviously phony story, and they are now stuck with a compromised leadership who can be tagged with promotion of a bogus “witch-hunt”. That can be described as an “own goal”, and it was entirely predictable as far back as the autumn of 2017 when the first rumblings of the FISA abuses were sounded.

The Kisylak-Flynn conversations were monitored and reviewed shortly after they happened. It is possible if not likely that the Crossfire Razor (Flynn) Field Office team reviewed these transcripts before closing the file after “no derogatory information” could be found (it was part of their mandate). Either that or the Field Office team was kept deliberately out of the loop for some reason. It is known that Obama administration officials consulted with FBI shortly after the Kislyak-Flynn calls specifically querying if a quid pro quo had been discussed and they were told “there was no deal”. This is one reason why the Logan Act predicate was soon introduced. Susan McCord, the Asisistant Attorney-General at the time, later told interviewers that the prospective use of the Logan Act originated in the office of DNI James Clapper, “specifically proposed by ODNI’s general counsel Bob Litt.” So Clapper, perhaps Litt, can be added to the very short list of persons in position to initiate the illegal leak of the Flynn-Kisylak conversations to WaPo Ignatius. (note that Niederhut has twice shared Ignatius’ outraged op-ed regarding the withdrawal of charges - Ignatius was a willing co-conspirator in effort to take Flynn out). Now Niederhut shares yet another partisan opinion piece which he is certain “pancakes” the oppositional position. From the Brookings Institute’s Lawfare blog we learn about “The Justice Department’s Faulty Arguments in the Flynn Case”. This has to be the final word because the author, Robert Litt, was once the General Counsel to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Oh wait… Bob Litt was the guy who “specifically proposed” the use of the Logan Act while kicking around ideas on how to screw Flynn with James Clapper. That’s okay - surely he mentions that in a disclaimer… nope, no disclaimer. Litt insists that the FBI at the time was “aware of extensive Russian interference in US politics”, but in fact all the FBI had at the time was the Steele Dossier. Flynn himself had been cleared after a 4 1/2 month thorough look-over. Litt’s own boss at the time, Clapper, would testify - also at that time - that he “never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with he Russians to meddle with the election.” Yet Litt, at the time, was actively participating in an effort to disrupt the incoming administration in general and remove the incoming National Security Advisor in particular. And yet, according to mainstream opinion, what all Americans should be very very angry about is that Flynn misremembered phone calls about a UN Security Council vote on Israel while speaking to FBI agents during an ambush interview in January 2017. Got it.

Your argument relies entirely on a portrayal of the FBI as good faith actors, but this position is undermined and contradicted by the timeline of events in January 2017: January 4 - FBI Washington Field Office Crossfire Razor (Flynn) team announces closure of 4 1/2 month investigation due to lack of “derogatory information”. Within 20 minutes, Strzok responds with request to keep file open based on redacted predicate, probably Logan Act, based on Flynn-Kisylak intercepts. Notably, the Crossfire Razor team is from this point not involved with the counter-intelligence investigation, and Comey/McCabe/Strzok assume control. January 5 - Comey meets with Obama and DOJ’s Yates to discuss Flynn. Comey refers to Logan Act. January 12 - Flynn-Kisylak conversations leaked to Washington Post. Possible sources are limited to Obama, Yates of DOJ or her deputy, or Comey or his deputy McCabe of FBI. References in article to Logan Act indicates the source was FBI. This leak is directly responsible for media questions to VP Pence and presidential spokesperson Spence which are said to initiate renewed concern within DOJ and FBI over Flynn’s presumed compromised position. Jan 13-23 - A debate ensues between the DOJ and FBI over procedure with informing the incoming Trump administration of inconsistencies in the Flynn record. The FBI refuses to accede to established protocol, insisting on keeping Flynn in dark that he is subject to C/I investigation. The C/I investigation is at this point predicated on the Logan Act. January 24 - The FBI openly defy the DOJ and send agents to an interview arranged by McCabe, following his active discouragement of Flynn accessing counsel. Long established protocol held that the Flynn interview should have been arranged through White House Counsel. The interviewing agents engage a perjury trap as discussed and anticipated in FBI records from the two days previous.

Flynn’s entreaties to Kisylak consisted of requesting that the Russian Federation not escalate its response to Obama’s punitive and unprecedented expulsion of 35 Russian diplomatic personnel, a provocative action based on uncertain and unproven allegations of Russian coordination with Wikileaks. The terms of discussion, as featured in FBI 302, were “not to escalate the situation”, keep “response reciprocal”, and not engage in “tit-for-tat”. It matters not who may have first broached the issue, as it was the singular major new event in relations between the two countries and was unavoidably a topic of conversation, At the time of the phone call Flynn was apparently entirely unaware of the scope of the punitive action, as he had been effectively off-the-grid in the Dominican Republic. The FBI’s 302 on the interview confirms this, and establishes that Flynn was entirely equivocal on the issues which he later was subject to legal jeopardy. If you want to split hairs, which the prosecution of Flynn evidently did, discussion of “sanctions” does not specifically occur, as the discussion as described is limited to the expulsion of diplomats. As the exhibits attached to the Motion To Dismiss show, interested persons from the Obama administration expressed a heightened interest in monitoring the reaction of both Russia and the Trump transition team to the sanctions / expulsions and had in fact not only anticipated a harsh escalatory reaction but desired such reaction. Considering that the allegations of election interference still remain contested more than three years later, this only highlights the irresponsibility of the Obama administration’s reckless attempt to increase international friction for domestic political reasons.

The well-known legal analyst Jonathan Turley believes the Motion To Dismiss is the right decision. He finds precedent in case law, and has appeared before the same judge on similar issues. https://jonathanturley.org This discussion has been ongoing in the Zaid thread in the JFK DeepPolitics section. The issue of the guilty plea is not relevant to the Motion, which found that the indictment had no basis to begin with, as the alleged “lies” were not materially relevant to the FBI’s counter-intelligence investigation.

What the Motion To Dismiss is saying is that the question of whether Flynn was “being directed and controlled” etc by the Russian Federation had already been settled by an FBI investigation team, and that the phone calls to Kisylak had legitimate purpose and so had no relevance to the 951 investigation. The FBI were well aware of this, and so tried to create a predicate based on the Logan Act.

But clearly there was no ongoing effort to facilitate Putin exerting influence, certainly not on behalf of Flynn ("no derogatory information"). The transcripts of the phone calls were available - known to Obama even by January 5 - and they did not reveal an influence campaign or any quid pro quo. Nothing illegal or inappropriate occurred because of or during the phone calls. It's also clear that the FBI could not, in fact, do whatever they wanted, let alone to members of the incoming elected government. This is part of the reason why McCabe and Comey, for example, are now themselves subject to investigation. The leak of classified information to WaPo's Ignatius re: the Kisylak/Flynn phone calls certainly puts one or both of these gentlemen in their own legal jeopardy, if they were responsible.

A review of Flynn’s prosecution for the DOJ by an appointed counsel had been underway since January. This is from the Motion To Dismiss: The Government has concluded that the interview of Mr Flynn was untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn—a no longer justifiably predicated investigation that the FBI had, in the Bureau’s own words, prepared to close because it had yielded an “absence of any derogatory information.” -end quote The conclusions reflect that the FBI’s intervention to keep the counterintelligence file open was predicated on the Logan Act, which was an entirely separate legal matter - i.e. investigating Flynn over possible Logan Act violations would require opening a criminal investigation, not piggy-backing onto a counter-intelligence investigation. This distinction is reflected in contemporaneous communications where it is noted the FBI is “morphing” its rationales between a criminal and counter-intelligence investigation. The draft memo describing the closing of Flynn’s counter-intelligence file would have revealed this distinction, and thereby greatly assist Flynn’s Defence. This also relates to the finding that the alleged misrepresentations themselves had no material relevance to the counter-intelligence investigation - that is, inaccurate or not, Flynn’s conversations about sanctions and UN Security Council votes had nothing whatsoever to do with the specific predicates of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. (However, if Flynn had in fact been pursued via the Logan Act, then they would have been relevant). The Logan Act had no chance of success against Flynn, not only because it had never been used in 160 years and was believed to be unconstitutional, but also because he was, in his position as advisor to incoming president during a transition phase, not considered a “private citizen”. (Barr: “he was the designated national security adviser for President-Elect Trump, and was part of the transition, which is recognized by the government and funded by the government as an important function to bring in a new administration.”)

The exculpatory information was the long buried revelation that the FBI’s Washington Field Office had concluded its extensive investigation of Flynn under the Crossfire Hurricane umbrella and found “no derogatory information” and were closing his file. The means by which the file was instead kept open, and the means and methods by which Flynn was afterwards targeted has now been determined as something like “egregious government misconduct”. The FBI’s questionable motivations, in light of the apparent conflict with other agencies including particularly the DOJ, and flagrant and deliberate defiance of established protocol which exposed Flynn to legal jeopardy, as they had intended, has been exposed. The extent to which Flynn “volunteered” for his interview is not exactly relevant. But Flynn is not a mob boss or drug kingpin. He was the National Security Advisor for the president of the United States. He had been entirely cleared by a months long FBI investigation just weeks earlier, The FBI predicated the interview, and the ensuing indictment, on the Logan Act, and that predicate has now been repudiated. A presumed Logan Act violation was a criminal rather than a counter-intelligence matter and the FBI never opened a criminal investigation based on the Logan Act. In any case, the DOJ would never pursue a prosecution based on the Logan Act. The matters to which Flynn was accused of lying, or making material misrepresentations, were only relevant to presumed Logan Act violations. This is the reason for the exoneration.