MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace ridiculed Fox’s Jeanine Pirro suggestion that Michael Flynn’s guilty plea was likely to be thrown out by a federal judge today. In fact, the opposite happened.
As I previously reported, Pirro jumped on the “Flynn was hoodwinked by the FBI into lying to them” bandwagon over the weekend. She also conjured up a complete implosion of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation as a result:
PIRRO: On Tuesday, the parties will appear again before Judge Emmet Sullivan, a jurist unafraid of the swamp, a judge who has a track record of calling out prosecutorial misconduct, a man who does not tolerate injustice or abuse of power.
Judge Sullivan can throw out this guilty plea if he concludes the FBI intentionally interfered with their target Flynn’s constitutional right to counsel.
[…]
So the issue is, will this judge make a decision sua sponte, on his own, to vacate the plea which Flynn has not asked for and you know the amazing part of it is, if he does then the house of cards of Robert Mueller falls.
But, as The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake explained, Pirro’s prediction couldn’t have been further off the mark:
At Flynn’s sentencing, Sullivan made a point of making sure that Flynn stated (and restated) that he lied to the FBI, that he knew it was wrong to do so and that he accepted responsibility. Sullivan asked Flynn whether he knew that lying to the FBI was illegal, and Flynn said, “I was aware.” The judge gave Flynn several chances to withdraw his guilty plea, and Flynn opted to proceed.
Then Sullivan went big. “Arguably, you sold your country out,” he told Flynn, adding: “I’m not hiding my disgust, my disdain, for this criminal offense.” He even invoked treason, asking the government whether they considered such a charge. (The government said it had not.) Sullivan suggested Flynn was working as a foreign agent while serving in the White House — a claim which he later backed off.
Today, as Raw Story noted, Never Trumper Wallace and her guests discussed a White House press briefing earlier in which Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about Pirro’s remarks.
“I have that,” Wallace said, referring to the Pirro remarks. After joking that “words you’ve never heard” on the show are “Should we watch Jeanine Pirro?” Wallace gleefully played a clip of Pirro's comments about the judge. Then she dared Fox News to play them again, too.
“I will donate $500 to charity if that clip of Jeanine Pirro airs on Fox News in prime time,” Wallace promised.
Stay tuned!
Meanwhile, watch Wallace have some fun at Pirro’s expense below, from MSNBC’s December 18, 2018 Deadline: White House.
