By Alan Dershowitz, opinion contributor
TheHill
December 31, 2018
Ever since former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn was arrested for lying to FBI agents, I have argued that he had a strong defense to that charge: namely, that his lies were not material because the FBI questioned him for an illegitimate purpose — to give him an opportunity to lie, rather than to obtain information it did not already have.
The question posed by the Flynn case is whether a lie can be material if the FBI already had indisputable evidence of the truthful answer and asked him the question for the sole purpose of giving him an opportunity to lie.