Washington Free Beacon senior writer Liz Harrington said former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's "only crime" appears to be the fact he worked for a Republican president.
During an appearance on Fox News' "America's Newsroom" on Thursday, host Bill Hemmer asked Harrington about the sentencing of President Donald Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen and recent news that Flynn may have been pressured by the FBI not to bring a lawyer to his interview with the agency in 2017.
"In the Russia matter, I don't think the Cohen revelation and sentencing did too much to advance the narrative. He is going to prison for tax evasion," Harrington said. "But on the Flynn matter, I think we have a lot more questions on the double standard that the FBI took in handling and going scorched earth after Trump but [using] kid gloves with Hillary Clinton. And I think Flynn's only crime here was going to work for a Republican president because you had [former FBI Deputy Director Andrew] McCabe, who himself was fired for lying to investigators, encouraging Flynn to not have a lawyer, basically setting him up."
Harrington continued to argue there is a double standard in how the investigation into Clinton was handled compared to how investigators are handling the probe into the Trump campaign.
"But here you have in the Clinton case Paul Combetta, the IT guy who used bleach-bit on the server. Investigators said they knew he was misleading them. They knew he was lying. They didn't charge him with making false statements. What did they do? They gave him immunity, and we saw throughout the Clinton case, kid gloves; [they] didn't go after anybody. But because Flynn was working for a Republican president they went after him and they got him on something," Harrington said.
Earlier this week, Flynn's legal team claimed the FBI pushed him to not bring a lawyer to his 2017 interview with the agency. Flynn later pleaded guilty to one count of lying to federal authorities during that interview.
U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered special counsel Robert Mueller to turn over all of the government's documents related to Flynn's questioning by Friday at 3 p.m. EST. The judge also ordered Flynn's team to turn over documents supporting its claim. It is possible that Sullivan could decide to throw out Flynn's guilty plea and accompanying charge if he determines the FBI interfered with Flynn's right to an attorney.