Given everything? It's becoming a counter-intelligence thing and the facts tend to be covered in black ink and with a lot of redaction. The last big media circus counter-intelligence case back in the '50s (if I remember right) had much of the information not available to the public and (still working off memory here) still to this day.Sooo.... he was about to sentence Flynn, without being clear on the basic facts of the case? That's not good for Flynn, but it's especially bad for justice.
How can I explain this without sounding like an idiot, condescending, crazy, and/or being a general asshole...In all seriousness, you have a problem. The avarage person in the US needs to be more engaged in your country's political process if you believe the system as it is now is a failure, not just be spectators.
Ok, there are a bunch of 'unintended consequences' and ripples in US history that led up to this, one of those 'unintended consequences' is the Progressive movement turning judicial and senatorial positions into directly elected ones to counter the Trusts basically using bought state legislature seats to install their cronies in. This didn't show the unintended consequences it created for decades.
The first (but probably not the most impact) ripple is the assassination of Huey Long, who -from all appearances- was trying to pull a pre-senile Bismark (i.e. before he tried to engineer a socialist uprising just so he can crush it with the army, or so I've heard) in Louisiana and oddly enough provide much of the foundation of the New Deal and Second New Deal. This caused a major curtail of progressive politics as anything that is considered 'too far' will get you killed in US politics.
The second ripple, and the ripple we're dealing with the most, is Reagan. A lot of what made the GOP what it is today is Reagan. FOX News being what it is (and allowing for associated networks and sites to spring up over the years), the full prosecution on the War on Drugs, and a lot more (including empowering the Dixiecrats, who eventually took over the 'asylum'). If there is anyone that started the ripple effect, then it will be Reagan. He and his cronies went out of their way to demolish/severely damage as many institutions as they could before they went out.
Well, one of the reasons that the average person in the US isn't more politically engaged is time. As I found out myself the hard way, politics takes time, and that is something of a luxury in the US as business basically took as much time as they could from the vast majority of the populous. Not only that, but the unintended consequences of having so many directly elected positions is that it partially caused an information overload for the average American. That and the 'Rural' needed someone like Huey Long on occasion to drag them into modernity but the last time that happened, the man got assassinated and his opponents pretty much reversed much of Long's policies...