If you’ve followed DC Tribune‘s reporting on the ongoing Mueller investigation, you no doubt saw our piece on the possible investigation of Vice President Mike Pence by the special counsel and the confirmed investigations being carried out by the Democratic Coalition and other transparency groups.
Now, however, we have more reason than ever to believe that Pence is being scooped up by Mueller and his associates as part of the probe, and that means a number of stunning things, beginning with the fact that the removal of both Trump and Pence from office would result in the presidency of the Speaker of the House — a position that will be changing hands in just weeks.
The developments of just the last few days have seen not just Mike Flynn back in the news, but even a former aide of Flynn’s who was associated with the double-dealing with Turkey that got Flynn into trouble with the FBI in the first place. The former Lt. General lied to federal agents about his involvement in the attempted extradition of Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish citizen in America that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has accused of helping to orchestrate a coup attempt in his home country.
The fact that Flynn attempted to have Gulen extradited is almost tantamount to human sacrifice for political gain, since Turkey’s record on human rights is abysmal and an attempted coup would be looked at as treason. And the Flynn associate who was just charged in federal court, Bijan Kian, was on the hook for exactly the same thing that Flynn pled guilty to lying about.
And lest anyone forget, or perhaps think that the Gulen matter was something isolated from the Trump campaign and between Flynn, Kian, and Erdoğan alone: Two days ago, the New York Times reported that Trump himself was still considering Gulen’s extradition — the culmination of the crime that Flynn began while he was Trump’s national security adviser.
So how does Pence tie into all of this?
Flynn and Kian were both on the Trump transition team — the team that Pence was the head of. Pence was warned not just by the previous administration but by a member of Congress that Flynn was illegally coordinating with a foreign government. Pence, it is now known, knew about Flynn’s activities during his time on the transition team and did nothing about it — and lied about that knowledge after the fact.
The clue that Mueller is now coming after Pence for the crime — relatively minor in the context of the larger crimes of the Trump administration — of misleading the public about his knowledge of Flynn’s crimes is in the late, late prosecution of Kian.
The only reason to hang on to a witness or key player that you intend to charge for as long as Mueller waited to charge Kian is if you are compiling a larger case against someone higher than the fish you’re about to fry. And the fish right above Bijan Kian and Mike Flynn?
Vice President Mike Pence.
Featured image via screen capture
