I think partly Flynn’s team badly misread Sullivan, but also: Flynn has racked up massive legal bills. As of six months ago he was trying to sell his house to cover them. And he’s been relying on Trump supporters to subsidize his legal defense fund.
While it backfired pretty badly today, it’s easy to see why Flynn is trying to play both sides. Given his serious criminal exposure—for far more than telling porkies to Peter Strzok, as gov’t attorneys today acknowledged—he badly needed that extremely sweet cooperation deal.
But he’s racking up millions he doesn’t have in legal fees. He’ll be free-but-dead-broke unless he can convince Trumpworld to keep the stream of donations coming, which doesn’t seem likely if he goes full Michael Cohen in public. So he needs to keep playing martyr too.
Today’s hearing made clear what a risky balancing act that is, but the flood of sympathetic coverage from Trumpish outlets was exactly the sort of thing he needs if he doesn’t want to walk away from this ordeal in a burlap sack.
Here’s the link for Flynn selling his house—not sure whether it’s still on the market or what. abcnews.go.com/US/flynn-selli…
And here’s one of many examples of Trumpworld media promoting Flynn’s legal defense fund—enormously valuable advertising that, needless to say, depends on the perception that he’s still On the Team despite cooperating. mediamatters.org/video/2018/08/…
It’s sort of amazing he’s skated as long as he has despite Mueller’s fulsome praise for his cooperation. Keeping publicly shtum, unlike Cohen, probably helped. But I suspect he thought the SCO sentencing memo made it both safe & necessary to send up a signal.
There’s also a bit of a time crunch. As soon as his “helpfulness” to Mueller starts showing up in court documents or public reports—and for that deal, he’s the goddamn Giving Tree—those donations dry up & he’s stuck with the bill. So he needs to milk the martyr thing *now*.
