In an eye-opening investigative article on the website circa.com today, authors John Solomon and Sara Carter lay out the history of a dispute between key players at the FBI and Michael Flynn, a battle that predated the 2016 election year political assassination of Flynn by FBI leaks of classified information.

The circa piece describes how, back in 2014, then DIA Director Flynn supported the character and competence of an FBI counterterrorism expert in her sexual discrimination complaint against her superiors at the FBI. Not only did the FBI investigate its own employee when it got wind of the fact that she was preparing to file an EEOC complaint, but after her complaint was filed and went forward, the FBI lawyers took steps to exclude any external character evidence supporting her qualifications and achievements in her job performance. And that evidence included the kudos and offer of sworn witness testimony from General Flynn.

Allegedly, Flynn was a constant irritant to the FBI during this whole EEOC investigation by his unwavering and public support of the FBI employee, Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Gritz. The circa article cites a few FBI sources that a pre-Trump candidacy investigation into Flynn was a retaliatory act taken by the FBI to discredit the General for “meddling” into internal FBI affairs.

(As it happens, one of the targets of her discrimination complaint was Andrew McCabe, the number two guy at the FBI, who has fortuitously been running the Bureau since Director Comey was fired by the President this spring.)

When the dirt-seeking investigation into Flynn discovered the 2016 telephone call with the Russian Ambassador, the FBI intentionally leaked it as a political weapon to destroy Flynn.

Circa.com did a good job in putting together the history and story line of the FBI’s ongoing vendetta with Flynn, and it all sounds very “J. Edgar Hooverish.”

---

A cornerstone of American jurisprudence has historically been the concept of the presumption of innocence. It has always been the burden of the government to prove, beyond a “reasonable doubt,” before a jury of fair-minded citizens, that an accused individual has actually committed a crime. Then, and only then, may a citizen be punished under the law. The societal and legal protections afforded by the “innocent until proven guilty” baseline is an immutable individual right that has served our nation well since the infancy of the republic.

For two hundred-plus years, the citizens generally held the rights of the accused to be sacrosanct. Of course, people always have held their own personal opinions as to the probable guilt of an accused, and will certainly continue to do so, but they have honored the criminal legal process. With the exception of some rare cases of vigilante justice, it was the criminal trial that determined guilt or innocence, and those findings were respected, notwithstanding public opinions as to the culpability of the person sitting shackled in the dock.

But things have slowly changed – if not in the strict letter of the law, certainly within the mindset of the populace. Presumed innocence is no longer the baseline.

People began to make their own conclusions, and stick with them, regardless of what the juries decided. The trial of O.J. Simpson is a perfect example. Found to be legally innocent, yet half the country just “knew” that he was guilty. And they refused to budge from that position.

At some point, public conclusions of guilt began to be forthcoming even without the filing of criminal charges. People were prone to conclude that if a person was “under investigation,” they must be guilty. “Of course they did it…. Why else would they be under investigation?” Look at the Clinton email debacle as an example.

And now people have morphed into making presumptions of guilt for anyone who was is not a suspect at all. If someone happens to be designated as a “person of interest” in an investigation, then they must have done something wrong.

Amazingly, in the latest state of affairs, neither a criminal accusation or indictment is required, nor is an investigation necessary. An anonymous leak, an inference of misconduct, or a bald-faced fictional account is sufficient to cast an impenetrable shadow. Out-and-out lies, repeated often enough, will destroy a person’s personal and professional life.

In our pre-colonial history, opinion-justified executions followed literal “witch hunts,” a term that survives to this day to describe the extralegal process of establishing guilt by mere accusation. Mob rule has slowly supplanted the rule of law, and every citizen is made less secure.

Indeed, in the prescient words of Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

These are dangerous times for America.

A gunman believed to be a supporter of former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders sprayed a hail of bullets at a GOP baseball practice on June 14, 2017, critically wounding House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and injuring four others before U.S. Capitol Police took down the rifle-wielding assailant.

---

On January 8, 2011, just a week into her third term, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was a victim of an assassination attempt near Tucson, at a supermarket where she was meeting publicly with constituents.

---

Who would have ever suspected that becoming an elected state representative would result in you being shot in public by a disgruntled citizen?

Perhaps it is time to formally recognize those who are wounded or killed while serving in that combat zone otherwise known as the Congress of the United States.