A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

"When you are given immunity, that means you have probably committed a crime." - Michael Flynn to Chuck Todd, Meet the Press, September 25, 2016 With the news that former national security adviser Michael "Mike" Flynn is offering testimony before the Congressional hearing about alleged links between the Trump campaign and Russian government officials prior to Donald J. Trump's election in exchange for immunity, cracks are beginning to open in the President's wall of denial and obfuscation. According to an Associated Press report published in MSN News, it looks like the disgraced Flynn - who was either fired or forced to resign after the revelation that he had talked about existing sanctions on Russian government figures with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak last December - is willing to talk...but only if he is granted full immunity.  "General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances pe

During the past two months, Donald J. Trump and his various spokespeople (Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway being the chief mouthpieces of the Administration) have stated that no one in the Administration has any links to Russia or its kleptocratic leader, Vladimir Putin. And, despite evidence to the contrary, they insist that there is no hint that Russian hackers with connections to Russia's military intelligence agencies planted "fake news" in U.S. social media sites and tried to sway the election in Mr. Trump's favor.  In one of Mr. Trump's rare Presidential press conferences back in February, he repeated this claim even after he had to accept then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn for allegedly misleading Vice President Mike Pence about his pre-election contacts with Russia's ambassador to the U.S.  According to a February 16 report on NPR.org  (National Public Radio's website), Mr. Trump vehemently denied any link between his camp