Pardoned traitor who pled guilty to federal crimes endorses Republican

Disgraced former Gen. Michael Flynn has endorsed Robert Kovic, who is one of up to a dozen Republicans hoping to challenge Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a Blue Dog Democrat who captured New Jersey’s 11th District seat in 2018 and won re-election in 2020.

“I am truly honored to have the endorsement of General Flynn,” said Kovic. “He served our nation with honor in the Army for 33 years. In private life, General Flynn continued that service as a foreign policy advisor to several Republican presidential candidates. I am proud to have him on our team.”

The facts, however, show Flynn did not serve the nation with honor. While he was national security advisor—a job he held for only 22 days—he lied to the Vice President and the FBI, leading to him twice admitting to crimes before two different federal judges.

The treasonous former general called for ‘martial law’ to keep Donald Trump in power after the Republican incumbent lost the 2020 election by 8 million votes, which resulted in his 306 to 232 defeat in the Electoral College.

Kovic completely disregarded the former general’s dishonor when it was brought to his attention.

Flynn also said at a QAnon conference that the U.S. should have a military coup similar to the one that occurred in Myanmar.

Kovic claims Flynn said, “that the the elections in the disputed states should be redone” but he actually said that Trump could declare martial law and seize the voting machines even though there was no legitimate dispute in any state.

Then-Attorney General Bill Barr, Republican election officials in key states and at least 60 court cases all confirmed that Trump is the loser but many in the GOP maintain the lie.

“Maybe they are going to call him Rob coup d’etat Kovic because he seems to be embracing the support of a former general who was forced to resign as Trump’s national security advisor for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about his secret phone call to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak,” said Democratic strategist James J. Devine.

Also hoping to score the Republican nomination are 2021 GOP gubernatorial candidate Phil Rizzo, recently registered Democrat Hillery Brotschol, Larry Casha, Paul DeGroot, Patrick Quinn, Tom Toomey, and Morris County Commissioner Tayfun Selen, who is perceived as the front runner for the GOP nomination.

Flynn indirectly took a shot at the Morris County Commissioner in his endorsement of Kovic, when he said, “In Congress, Rob Kovic will fight the radical left and any establishment Republicans hell bent on marching our country towards socialism.”

According to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, Selen raised $141,004, spent $10,562, and had $130,442 on hand as of September 30, 2021.

Toomey raised $54,790 spent $45,071 and had cash on hand of $9,719; Kovic raised $25,600 spent $8,573 and had cash on hand of $17,027; while Brotschol raised $22,905 spent $13,509 and had cash on hand of $571.

Toomey claims he served as a senior staffer at the Republican National Committee (RNC) where payroll records show he made $22,773.18 from July through November, the equivalent of $54,000 a year.

Sherrill reported cash on hand of nearly $4.6 million in her latest FEC report and Democratic mapmakers are said to be fashioning a more favorable electorate when they redraw district lines to accommodate changes reflected in the 2020 Census of Population and Housing.

Blue Dogs are Democratic members of Congress that echo the old Republican mantra of low taxes on the rich, an aggressive military posture, and ‘bipartisanship’ to describe fiscal irresponsibility, an expensive national defense establishment, and inaction on pressing problems.

The Blue Dogs like to portray progressive Democrats as ‘impractical’ when they offer common-sense solutions to budgetary imbalances, an imminent climate catastrophe, and such injustices as racial segregation, economic inequality, police brutality, and official corruption.

Flynn pleaded guilty to a felony in December 2017, admitting that he lied to FBI investigators about details of his conversations with the Russian ambassador during Trump’s presidential transition.

His plea was one of the first major courtroom victories for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who had been appointed seven months earlier largely because Trump sought to obstruct justice by asking FBI Director James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Flynn, during an Oval Office meeting in February 2017.

“I hope you can let this go,” the president told Comey, according to a memo the FBI Director wrote shortly after the meeting to document evidence that the president tried to directly influence the Justice Department and FBI investigation into links between Trump’s associates and Russia.

The special counsel probe ultimately did not establish the Trump campaign had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the Kremlin but the investigation documented how Russia interfered in the 2016 race to benefit Trump, and how Trump’s campaign welcomed the assistance.

Flynn spoke with Kislyak on December 29, 2016—the same day that President Barack Obama slapped sanctions on Russia in retaliation for its efforts to disrupt the US election.

According to two officials, Flynn allegedly spoke to Russia’s ambassador about the sanctions during the presidential transition in December and suggested that the Trump administration would be rolling them back in the near future.

Some senior U.S. officials interpreted Flynn’s communications with the Russian Ambassador as an inappropriate and potentially illegal signal to the Kremlin that it could expect a reprieve from sanctions that were being imposed by the Obama administration in late December to punish Russia for its alleged interference in the 2016 election.

Those suggestions were so significant that the FBI is launched a probe to examine those communications with Kislyak for evidence that Flynn conveyed an explicit promise to take action after the inauguration, which would have been a crime.

At the same time, U.S. intelligence agencies were concluding that Russia had waged a cyber campaign designed in part to help elect Trump; his senior adviser on national security matters was discussing the potential consequences for Moscow.

Those talks were part of a series of contacts between Flynn and Kislyak that began before the Nov. 8 election and continued during the transition, officials said. In a recent interview, Kislyak confirmed that he had communicated with Flynn by text message, by phone and in person, but declined to say whether they had discussed sanctions.

Trump pardoned Flynn on November 25, 2020, ending a three-year legal saga that included the former national security adviser’s guilty plea for lying to the FBI, his later effort to withdraw that plea, and then a controversial decision by Attorney General William P. Barr to try to drop the case altogether.

Trump’s action marked a full embrace of the retired general he had ousted from the White House after only 22 days on the job — and a final salvo against the Russia investigation that shadowed the first half of his term in office.