"Show me the man and I'll show you the crime." —Lavrentiy Beria

"Sentence first — verdict afterward." —The Red Queen, Alice in Wonderland

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Thanks to the dogged efforts of Gen. Michael Flynn's new attorneys, we're learning that Flynn was subject to the type of justice that would be found in a courtroom in the Soviet Union or Alice's Wonderland.  The Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI engaged in blatantly illegal, dishonest, and immoral conduct to railroad Flynn — and they got away with this by turning Flynn's attorneys against him.

Sidney Powell became Flynn's attorney after Flynn had already signed a plea agreement with the DOJ.  Since then, she and Flynn have been doggedly challenging that agreement, saying Flynn entered into it because the FBI and DOJ lied to him about the case against him.  Additionally, there were strong rumors that Flynn ultimately agreed because the government, having already destroyed his finances and his reputation, threatened to do the same to his son.  We now know that these rumors were true.

Powell has filed a motion before Judge Emmett Sullivan, a Clinton appointee, seeking to withdraw his guilty plea under a plea deal, but Sullivan appears reluctant to do so.  One of the bases for such a request is incompetent or corrupt counsel, and Flynn's new allegations support that charge.

On Friday, the DOJ did a huge dump of "Brady material" — that is, exculpatory material that the government possessed and was obligated to produce.  This information dump means that, at the time the FBI and DOJ were persecuting...er, prosecuting Flynn, they possessed this information and failed in their obligation to give it to him.  That in itself justifies Flynn's pending motion.

The material was produced under seal, so the public can't see it, but, immediately upon receiving this Brady material, Powell filed another motion alleging that it proves that Flynn was "deliberately set up and framed by corrupt agents."  Per Andrew McCarthy: 

Powell now contends that the new disclosures demonstrate that Mueller's prosecutors — she specifically cites Brandon Van Grack, who now runs Justice's FARA unit — did indeed promise Flynn that they would not charge his son if Flynn pled guilty. Worse, Powell avers that the prosecutors coerced Flynn and his counsel to keep this agreement secret. That is, this was to be a side deal that would not be written into the plea agreement and therefore would be kept from the court and the public.

Under federal law, all understandings that are relevant to a guilty plea must be disclosed to the judge. It would be not merely a serious ethical breach for government lawyers to fail to reveal such an arrangement. It would be a fraud on the court.

Some might wonder why Flynn's attorneys agreed to all this and counseled him to keep silent about a corrupt, extortionate deal.  The reason is that they were working with the prosecutors instead of for their client:

According to a January filing by the new defense team, what Flynn didn't know at the time was that his former lawyers were being bullied by the DOJ into believing that they were personally involved in a criminal enterprise. This fear was accompanied by the possibility of criminal prosecution for their own actions resulting from botched documents the former lawyers filed with the DOJ in Flynn's case back in 2017. Instead of notifying Flynn of the conflict at hand, the attorneys charged Flynn hundreds of thousands of dollars for attempts to fix their own mistakes. They also progressed with the representation of Flynn, in violation of court rules that require their withdrawal under such circumstances. "Mindful of their own interests, Mr. Flynn's former counsel repeatedly gave him advice that was not 'within the range of competence demanded of attorneys in criminal cases'... They did irreparable damage to Mr. Flynn," his new defense team revealed. Powell and Binnall exposed egregious attorney misconduct: in essence, the former defense team was looking out for their personal interests in trying to secure a guilty plea for Flynn, trying to avoid their own prosecution — "they worked to position themselves favorably [with the feds] at Mr. Flynn's expense." That is why "they kept from [Flynn] information they knew was crucial to his decision [of whether to plead guilty]." It was in the former counsel's personal best interest for Flynn to plead guilty — it would get them off the hook for their botched DOJ filing. 

The reason the Sixth Amendment says we have the right to counsel is that anyone going up against the vast might and police power of the government deserves to have a knowledgeable friend at his side.  In this case, unbeknownst to Flynn, his counsel was at the government's side and was setting him up to take the fall for faked allegations.  To make the corruption worse, the government agents did this to strip Trump of a valuable adviser and to taint his administration with the stench of (faked) corruption.  Everyone involved in this should be jailed.