Former President Barack Obama gave a stark warning on Friday about the national crisis that could arise after President Donald Trump’s Justice Department made the shocking decision to drop its case against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn this week.
“The news over the last 24 hours I think has been somewhat downplayed — about the Justice Department dropping charges against Michael Flynn,” Obama said during a private Obama Alumni Association virtual discussion, per an audio recording published by Yahoo News.
The former president said Flynn’s case is “the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic–not just institutional norms–but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk.”
“And when you start moving in those directions, it can accelerate pretty quickly, as we’ve seen in other places,” he warned.
Obama, whose former vice president Joe Biden is currently running for president, stressed the urgency of defeating Trump in November.
“This election that’s coming up on every level is so important because what we’re going to be battling is not just a particular individual or a political party,” he told event attendees. “What we’re fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided, and seeing others as an enemy–that has become a stronger impulse in American life.”
On Thursday, the Justice Department dropped its case against Flynn, who had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, sending shockwaves throughout the legal and political arena.
Prior to the department’s reversal, which was brought on by Attorney General Bill Barr, Trump had repeatedly trashed the investigators in Flynn’s case and bemoaned how his former adviser’s life had been “ruined.”
The President cheered the Justice Department’s decision on Thursday, calling Flynn “an innocent man” despite the adviser’s guilty plea.
Glad he is speaking out.
Hope he keeps it up.
We are at sea in a storm without a captain, in a ship full of plague-ridden rats.
Oh yeah, that’s what a real President looks like.
God, I would really like him to come off the sidelines on discrete issues like this. Or the ACA. And don’t do it on a “private video call”. Do it on a TV interview with ABC/CBS/NBC or CNN or PBS.
I know he does not want to overshaddow Joe, and wants to be above it, but his is a voice that will instantly reach much of America who - concerned with the Trump Depression and Covid-19 - don’t see these other things going on.
Evil is afoot in the land, and it is the job of an ex-head of State to make it clear to the public what that evil is, and the impact it will have.
44 > 45.
I just hope Biden holds his cards close to his chest and keeps his mouth shut and nominates Obama and ( Kamala Harris) as his next Supreme Court pick(s) AFTER expanding the court. It would give Thomas and Kavanaugh brain hemorrhages- their brain cells wouldn’t be able to keep up