Murmurs through the hearing room
And one more thing. (This day of the hearing is proving to be startling.) NYT reporter Carl Hulse:
Murmurs through the hearing room as Mike Flynn refuses to answer whether he believes in the peaceful transfer of power and whether the Jan. 6 violence was justified, citing his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
NYT reporter Peter Alexander:
To see a retired four-star general who swore an oath to defend the country and the Constitution plead the Fifth when asked if he believed in the peaceful transfer of power in America is another stunning moment today.
This country is in deep trouble.
Holy shit.
Right?
A True Patriot. Just as their “America” doesn’t actually include all Americans, their oaths are provisional and conditional, open to reinterpretation or modification as they see fit. They see themselves as honourably following a higher obligation, and that they’re not actually breaking their oaths. For them, the terms and conditions of their oaths are as they wish them to be, rather than what they actually are. Never mind that (as with Stonewall) this requires novel and self-serving redefintions of terms like duty, honour, and truth. What’s a little friendly redefining between Real Americans.
I haven’t been able to find the video, but was he pitching a little fit and taking that Fifth for everything they asked him as a protest against having to testify? Or was he answering most questions but truly couldn’t answer these specific questions because they’d incriminate him?
All the media seems to be implying that latter, but I suspect it’s the former. It’s the difference between being a jerk possibly in contempt of Congress and essentially admitting to treason.
Skeletor,
First of all, a blanket assertion of the Fifth Amendment is not appropriate, and certainly not “as a protest against having to testify.” Each assertion of the privilege has to meet the requirements. If Flynn refused to answer every single question, that is itself a problem.
Second, it sure doesn’t look like that happened. I don’t believe that the full video has been released. The Committee just aired a relatively brief clip showing those few questions. But in that excerpt what we saw was:
1) Cheney asks question
2) Flynn’s counsel asks for a moment to consult and they disconnect from the videoconference for over a minute and a half.
3) Counsel asks Cheney to repeat the question
4) Cheney repeats the question
5) Counsel asks for a clarification of the question
6) Cheney complies
7) Flynn asserts the 5th
8) Cheney asks several follow-ups, Flynn asserts the 5th
Now, it’s possible that Flynn and his counsel just decided to waste time by asking to go off the record and consult, and by asking for a clarification about a question even though he was intending to refuse to answer every question whatsoever, but that itself sure looks like bad faith….
@ Skeletor #4
“It’s a serious mistake to theorize in advance of the facts.”
/Sherlock Holmes
He didn’t theorize, he suspected. Completely different thing.
To be fair, it took me 16 seconds on Google to find the video excerpt,* then another 1:21 to watch the video. You can’t expect Skeletor to do a whole 1:37 of fact-checking when there’s an opportunity to “well, actually” all of us.
*– hint to Skeletor: try “Mike Flynn deposition testimony 1/6 committee”
Screechy, I’ve always been kind to you, so why do you have to come at me like that?
I searched for more than 16 seconds. Far longer. Perhaps as long as 2 minutes. The internet is ever-shifting, with new material coming online continuously. What’s there now wasn’t always there then.
I didn’t say a blanket 5th was “appropriate”. We butterflies on the wheel here are fragile enough without such calumnies being flung toward us. I in fact suggested this would be contempt of Congress, did I not? Are “appropriate” and “contempt of Congress” synonyms? I searched for less than 16 seconds and determined that in fact they were not.
And yet, despite search abilities far greater than I can apparently muster, nobody has affirmed that Flynn answered a single question without taking the Fifth.
In my next message I will use Screechy’s suggested search terms to see if I can answer this question.
I invested another 2 minutes, using Screechy’s exact search terms in the top-rated “Google” search engine and was unable to find the complete testimony, which apparently took place in March.
I did find several stories like this, which seem to imply Flynn “took the Fifth” for all his testimony:
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/10/flynn-jan-6-select-committee-pleads-the-fifth-00016401
Apologies if this constitutes a “well, actually” or, even worse, a “well ackshually”.
But, well, actually, you didn’t really offer any evidence to disagree with my suspicion. You ackshually admitted only the excerpt seems to be available. And you ak shawly only inferred from the conferring with counsel that maybe these were the only questions handled this way. But I axe showly have seen testimony where the person confers with their lawyer for every single damn question then pleads the Fifth. I’ll bet with 16 seconds of search time you could find something like that yourself.
Thanks for being fair to me. I appreciate it.
Cry more.
I am exactly as “fair” to you as your behavior here merits.