The Atlantic

Why Michael Flynn Is Walking Free

The former national security adviser figured out that loyalty to Trump is now a better bet than loyalty to the rule of law.
Source: Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

Michael Flynn was an early, instinctive Trumpist.

The retired general was an enthusiastic backer of Donald Trump’s candidacy, leading chants of “Lock her up!” at the 2016 Republican National Convention. And his less public work bore the hallmarks of Trumpism too: brazen lying, shameless profiteering, conspiracy-mongering, and bigoted tweeting.

Nonetheless, Flynn didn’t immediately grasp how much the rules of the game changed when Trump won the 2016 election. When Flynn, the newly minted national security adviser, got in trouble with the law, he quickly took up the standard playbook of white-collar criminals in pre-Trump America. When the FBI caught him lying, Flynn copped a plea and agreed to cooperate with the government in exchange for a lesser sentence.

Only after that

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