When I was growing up, my father would frequently remark that “telephones were to make appointments over.”
He was a City court judge for sixteen years and I think this observation was the result of his having approved wiretap applications for the various police agencies.
They were usually utilized in bookmaking cases, which he viewed as pretty harmless and were usually resolved by a guilty plea and a fine.
He might even accompany the fine with a stern warning that might be heeded until the next Super Bowl or World Series.
During my years practicing criminal law, I would often give the same advice to clients who immediately disregarded it.
One client that remembered the warning was heard to say on a wiretapped call, “my lawyer said we probably shouldn’t talk on this phone because it might be t-a-p-p-e-d.”
As I listened to that brilliant observation with him seated next to me in court, I looked over at him and said, “I-t –w-a-s.”
With the advent of cell phones, taping calls became much easier for police agencies since the cell calls weren’t being made over a telephone wire. That, however, didn’t stop my clients from having phone calls that they shouldn’t have.
As a judge I couldn’t help but be mystified by the jail inmates that would make calls from the jail to witnesses, relatives, family members and assorted other parties to discuss both past and future criminal activity only to be interrupted every few minutes by a robotic voice that reminded them that the call was being tape recorded.
As the evangelist, Billy Sunday, once observed, “God can forgive sin, but stupid is forever.”
All of these memories came flooding back to me this week as I watched Trump’s National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn’s stunning fall from grace.
Flynn’s demise is, ostensibly, the result of having lied to Vice-President Mike Pence, when he assured the Vice-President that he did not discuss the lifting of sanctions on Russia imposed by the Obama Administration for their hacking and interference in the recent Presidential election during a pre-inauguration telephone call with the Russian Ambassador to the United States.
What seems mind boggling about Flynn’s conduct is that he apparently didn’t know that America’s intelligence agencies routinely monitor and record conversations being had with and by foreign officials on unsecured telephones, despite having held the post of Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Flynn’s legal problems aren’t likely to end any time soon.
It’s illegal for a private citizen, which Flynn was at the time of the telephone calls, to negotiate with a foreign government. While Flynn is unlikely to be prosecuted for that, he apparently lied to the FBI when confronted about the telephone calls.
Lying to the FBI is a felony carrying a prison term.
Trump, for his part, is not alarmed about any criminal conduct Flynn may have been engaged in.
Instead, he has asked the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute those inside the government and intelligence community that leaked the existence and content of Flynn’s telephone calls.
In Trump’s world that investigation is far more preferable than a full and complete investigation into which of his campaign officials knew about and were a party to the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton Campaign e-mails in the run up to the election.
The Administration is barely a month old but mark my words, not too far down the road, someone is going to ask that famous question.
What did the President know and when did he know it?
I’m betting that Trump will not like the answer.
Coupled with the farce of a “press conference” so painful to watch ~ I’m in shock that question hasn’t been asked yet. What are they waiting for? Nuclear war?
Drumpf has already cost too much in security (the whole damn family!) but this charade of a presidency has to end soon! BTW, is his cell phone also monitored since he takes important calls when he’s about the country doing “business!” Such a disaster I never imagined!