The exoneration of General Michael Flynn falls far short of justice being fully served. 

Make no mistake.  Provided Judge Sullivan is compelled to do the right thing, it’s a step in the right direction.  But, even if Judge Sullivan does the right thing -- allows Flynn to withdraw his coerced plea and dismisses all charges against him -- complete justice requires more than just the innocent being acquitted of false charges perpetrated to serve personal, political, or ideological purposes.  It also requires that these wrongs be recognized as the crimes they are and be officially avenged.  Only then will damages inflicted by selfish, self-aggrandizing perpetrators upon the sanctity of the rule of law in our country approach being remedied.

American citizens today would do well to consider the book of Esther, found in the Old Testament of the Bible.  This relatively short account tells of a high-level bureaucrat of the Persian empire named Haman, second only to the king himself, who abused his position of power because of personal animosity toward a Jewish man named Mordecai.  Through lies and deceit, he obtained the king’s permission to kill not only Mordecai but all other Jews throughout the Persian empire.  To achieve this hideous personal agenda, he enlisted others throughout the empire by promising them the right to plunder all the riches and possessions of any Jews they vanquished.

Thankfully, Haman’s criminal conspiracy proved flawed from the outset.  First, he failed to take into account that his intended prey was cousin to the king’s wife, Queen Esther, whom he’d raised as a daughter after the untimely deaths of her parents.  He also failed to take into account that Queen Esther was also Jewish and therefore a target of Haman’s plot.  When Mordecai learned of Haman’s evil scheme, he petitioned his adoptive daughter to do what she could to convince the king to put a stop to Haman’s scheme.  At first Esther was reluctant to help as intervening could result in her own execution.  Ultimately, she informed Mordecai she would do it even if it cost her life with the immortal words, “If I die, I die.”  Not only did she follow through with this commitment but arranged for Haman himself to be present when she made her petition to the king.  Rather than her own death, she obtained a reprieve for Mordecai, herself, and all her people.  

Like the Flynn exoneration, this point in the story is only the first installment in meting out God’s complete justice.

For his personal participation in the planned Jewish massacre, Haman had built a gallows seventy-five feet tall, from which he intended to hang Mordecai high enough to be viewed by the entire city.  When the king discovered what Haman had plotted against his queen and her people, he ordered Haman to be hung from the same gallows he’d built for Mordecai.  The king also gave the Jews who Haman had targeted permission to hold accountable all Haman’s co-conspirators throughout the empire, in addition to Haman’s ten sons who were hung on the same gallows as their father.

That’s justice.

So it should be with all conspirators who abused their powers and authority to fraudulently frame and destroy the lives of people like General Flynn and many others subjected to similar abuse of power solely because of their allegiance to a duly elected president (e.g. such as KT McFarland, George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort).

Quite simply, if the rule of law is to be restored in America, all conspirators who ruined these peoples’ lives without lawful predication must be indicted and prosecuted for the coup they attempted.  Elected officials and bureaucrats who intentionally misuse their official powers to egregiously ruin the lives and reputations of innocent American citizens just because their destruction suits some demented agenda must be acknowledged for what they are -- i.e. criminals.  Justice mandates they be indicted and prosecuted in place of those they wrongfully abused.  (Whether they are convicted, sentenced or even pardoned are separate issues to be decided later by other people applying the law, facts and equities in each particular defendant’s case -- but for that to happen they must first be indicted and prosecuted by the DOJ.)

For this predicate of their prosecution to ever occur, the former power, position, and authority of the conspirators must be set aside and considered irrelevant by the Department of Justice. Put differently, the former power, position, or authority they intentionally misused for their own unlawful ends must not be allowed now to afford them any form of unwritten and unjustifiable immunity from prosecution for the crimes they committed under the color of law.

Bottom line -- our government must put an end to allowing a former president, vice-president, first lady, U.S. senator, secretary of state, or unsuccessful presidential candidate to be insulated from being held accountable for the crimes they commit.  Consider, for example, that there exists one woman who has held several of these official positions and who knew from the outset that the Steele Dossier, upon which all this collusion delusion was based, was pure fiction -- written and paid for by her minions under her direction for the undeniable purpose of destroying the presidency of Donald Trump.  Even so, this woman never said a word to put a stop to the monstrous fraud and damage she and her campaign’s work product have foisted upon the nation she claims to love. Not one action was taken by her to stop it or even attempt to correct the record and halt the carnage.

Instead, for over three years now, this one woman has stood by and encouraged others to ruin the lives of people on the basis of a fraud she knowingly initiated and helped to perpetuate.  That she has been a former first lady, senator, secretary of state, and candidate for the presidency should not now immunize her from being held accountable for the fraud and the damage she has caused.  Like Haman, it is her malicious and malignant abuse of the powers these positions afforded her that -- at her sentencing -- should condemn her to swing from the very same gallows upon which she would have been content to see good people like General Flynn hang.

Until this happens, the service of justice will not be complete. Nor should the Esthers and Mordecais of today be content.

Justice demands accountability for wrongs done, no matter who has committed the crimes, whether it be either you or me -- or even Haman or Hillary.

For those who remain doubtful that this is true, they may want to ask Seth Rich!

Clifford C. Nichols, author of A Barrister’s Tales, is an attorney licensed in California and New Mexico, and may be contacted at cliff@cliffordnichols.com.