December 18, 2018

Once Again Shocking Legal Experts, Trump Wishes Flynn “Good Luck” Ahead of Sentencing

The president also appeared to pressure his former national security adviser to stay quiet.

Beowulf Sheehan/ZUMA

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President Donald Trump offered a message of “good luck” to Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials, on Tuesday morning, just hours before Flynn was scheduled to be sentenced in federal court.

Trump also openly expressed curiosity over what more Flynn may have to tell investigators—a line many interpreted as yet another stunning effort by the president to potentially tamper with a witness in the special counsel’s ongoing probe.

Citing Flynn’s valuable cooperation with prosecutors, special counsel Robert Mueller has recommended that Flynn face no prison time for his crimes.

The tweet comes amid increasing legal jeopardy for the president after his former personal attorney Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in federal prison, having implicated Trump in a hush-money scheme. (In his latest attack against Cohen, Trump on Sunday angrily branded Cohen a “rat.” In direct contrast, Trump had previously praised his longtime political adviser Roger Stone for his public statements refusing to testify against the president.)

Trump’s “good luck” message has once again shocked legal experts, many of whom denounced the tweet Tuesday:

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We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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