Okay, I’m a criminal defense guy at heart. Whenever I look at or think about a criminal case, my first instincts are to see it from a civil liberty/defense oriented perspective. So when I see Gen. Michael Flynn pleading guilty to a single count of making a false statement to the FBI, my immediate thought is this: This guy is in the car.

That’s an old, out-of-date term. In the car. It means to cooperate with the authorities. “Will this guy get in the car?” “Can we keep him in the car?” “Motherfucker is thinking about getting out of the car.” Like that. If somebody is in the car, he’s along for the ride.

Michael Flynn is in the car. He’s cooperating with Special Counsel Mueller and his team. The fact that he’s pleading to a single felony count also suggests (and when I say ‘suggests’ I mean ‘is pretty much definitive proof’) Mueller has a saddlebag full of other felonies with which he can charge Flynn. My guess is Mueller is also holding on to a few felonies for Flynn’s nitwit son, who is also criminally exposed (as we say in the biz).

Michael Flynn, former U.S. Army Lt. General, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, former National Security Director, felon.

So this is a good deal for Flynn, even if he ends up doing a chunk of time in some semi-pleasant federal prison. It’s a good deal for Flynn the Lesser, who may avoid criminal culpability altogether. It’s a good deal for Mueller and his team, because you can be sure Flynn is handing them incriminating information on folks higher up in the federal food chain. Maybe Jeff Sessions, maybe Pence, maybe Comrade Trump his ownself.

It’s bad news for those folks. This is the part of the movie in which we begin to hear the ominous musical theme. Sessions and Pence will probably go all tight-lipped and grim. Trump will…well, who know what the hell he’ll do? Explode, maybe. On weekends Comrade Trump likes to escape his handlers — which means he 1) can go golfing and 2) can rage-tweet. Unless, of course, his handlers wrestle his phone out of his hands. My guess is we’ll either hear nothing at all from Trump over the weekend or he’ll start flinging poo in all directions.

As a criminal defense guy, I have to admit I hate it when I hear somebody’s in the car. I do not like a snitch. As a patriotic private citizen, however, I’m glad to know Mueller has Flynn’s balls in a vise grip and is applying pressure. Mueller is a defense guy’s worst nightmare; he’s honest, he’s methodical, and he’s fucking relentless. Mueller is a patriotic private citizen’s dream for those same reasons.

I’m sad to say, though, that little attention will be given today to one of the real heroes of this story: Sally Yates. She was the acting Attorney General who informed the White House Counsel that Flynn was lying about his calls with the Russian ambassador, which made him vulnerable to blackmail by Russia. A few days later, Yates was fired (ostensibly for refusing to defend Comrade Trump’s illegal immigration order).

Tonight I’ll have a beer, and I’ll raise my glass to Sally Yates for first exposing Flynn, to Robert Mueller for his professional prosecution, to Michael Flynn’s legal team for making the best deal possible for their client, and what the hell, I’ll raise my glass to Flynn himself. He’s a rotten sumbitch who’s turning on other rotten sumbitches, but he’s the latest sumbitch in the car. And that car is moving right along.

I can drink to that.