Dershowitz: Flynn lied, but the FBI acted inappropriately
by Allison Elyse Gualtieri
| December 15, 2018 01:08 PM
Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz weighed in Saturday on how federal authorities treated former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
"There are two issues: Did he lie at the time the FBI came to him? The answer is yes. Could he have told the truth? Yes. The second is: Does the fact that he pleaded guilty prove that he's guilty? Absolutely not. He pleaded guilty because of the enormous pressures on him even though I think he could have won the case," Dershowitz said in a Fox News interview Saturday.
Flynn, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general who worked on Trump's campaign before his short stint as national security adviser, pleaded guilty last December to lying to the FBI about his conversations during the campaign with Sergei Kislyak, the Russian ambassador at the time. Flynn's charge came about through special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, and Mueller cited Flynn's cooperation with the probe when he requested earlier this month that Flynn not serve time.
"It's not a proper function of law enforcement or of a grand jury to ask you a question that they know the answer to. Their function is to get new information. But if they already know the answer and ask you the question, it's for one purpose only: to test your morality, to test your truthfulness," Dershowitz said.
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