ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

The theme the anti-Trump camp is pushing -- again, a sweet-sounding political claim that defies real-world experience -- is that an honest person has nothing to fear from a prosecutor. If you simply answer the questions truthfully, there is no possibility of a false-statements charge. [...]

Former national-security adviser Michael Flynn was questioned about his conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. There were some discrepancies between Flynn's account of the discussions and the FBI's understanding of them (we'll come back to why). Did that necessarily mean Flynn lied? Of course not. To take the most obvious possibility, Flynn could have had an innocent failure of recollection. It happens to all of us; it would happen to you if you tried to describe this this column to someone without having a copy of it in hand.

The investigators and prosecutors had to weigh whether Flynn's discrepancies were honest mistakes or conscious misstatements. It appears that the first set of investigators gave him the benefit of the doubt, but Mueller's team drew the opposite conclusion. Yes, Flynn ultimately pled guilty, but when highly experienced investigators assess the same basic facts differently, the matter cannot be black-and-white.

Or take the George Papadopoulos case. The false-statements charge against him was largely based on misleading investigators about the timing of his conversations about Russia.

Tweet   @brothersjudd