Suspecting that Michael Flynn’s family members deleted documents and communications, CNN asked a federal judge to order a forensic examination of their cellphones.
It’s the latest wrinkle over the fallout of a video that former national security advisor Michael Flynn posted of himself and his family members at a July 4th barbecue on 2020.
In the footage, the Flynns raised their right hands in the style of a pledge of allegiance, reciting the words “Where we go one, we go all.” Flynn posted the video to his Twitter account with the hashtag #TakeTheOath. CNN flagged the video in a segment days later, characterizing it as a QAnon oath. The broadcasts sparked multiple federal lawsuits by Flynn family members, claiming the resemblance of the slogan and hashtag to the extremist conspiracy theories are incidental.
The lawsuit currently snaking through the Southern District of New York, filed by Flynn’s brother John “Jack” Flynn and that sibling’s wife Leslie Flynn, insisted that what CNN branded an oath was a “simple, family, July 4 statement of support for each other.”
As discovery in that case progresses, CNN claims that the Flynns have stonewalled requests for encrypted chats.
“Plaintiffs’ counsel has said he has not — and will not — search additional messaging platforms containing potentially responsive documents on his clients’ cell phones, despite confirming that his clients communicated on these platforms,” the network’s lawyer Katherine M. Bolger, from the firm Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, wrote in a filing on Thursday evening.
CNN believes that relevant messages might be lurking on Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram.
https://lawandcrime.com/qanon/cnn-suspects-michael-flynns-family-deleted-communications-demands-forensic-search-of-phones/