Trump pardon sees Flynn a free man
Move ends lengthy legal battle in which the former National Security Adviser twice admitted lying to the FBI – then recanted
PFlynn pled guilty to those lies, twice. A pardon by Trump does not erase that truth. Adam Schiff
resident Donald pardoned his national security Michael Flynn. It ends a years-long prosecution in the Russia investigation in which Flynn twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and then reversed himself.
The pardon – issued by tweet – is part of a broader effort by Trump to undo the results of a Russia investigation that shadowed his administration and yielded criminal charges against a half-dozen associates.
It comes just months after the president commuted the sentence of another associate, Roger Stone, days before he was to report to prison.
A Justice Department official said the department was not consulted on the pardon and learned yesterday of the plan.
Trump has the legal power to pardon Flynn.
The move is likely to energise supporters who rallied around the retired Army lieutenant general as the victim of what they assert is an unfair prosecution, even though Flynn twice admitted guilt.
Trump has repeatedly spoken warmly about Flynn, who was once praised by special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors as a model cooperator in their probe into ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.
Democrats lambasted the pardon,
Trump former adviser calling cipled.
House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff said the pardon wasn’t a surprise but was nonetheless crooked.
“Flynn pled guilty to those lies, twice. A pardon by Trump does not erase that truth, no matter how Trump and his allies try to suggest otherwise,” he said.
The pardon is the final step in a case defined by twists and turns. The most dramatic came in May when the Justice Department abruptly moved to dismiss the case, insisting that Flynn should have never been interviewed by the FBI in the first place, only to have US District Justice Emmet Sullivan resist the request and appoint a former judge to argue against the federal government’s position and to evaluate whether Flynn should be held in criminal contempt for perjury.
That former judge, John Gleeson, it undeserved and unprinsaid that the Justice Department’s dismissal request was an abuse of power.
As Sullivan declined to immediately dismiss the case, Flynn lawyer Sidney Powell sought to bypass the judge by asking a federal appeals court to direct him to drop the matter. A three-judge panel agreed, but the full court overturned that decision and returned the case to Sullivan.
At a hearing in September, Powell told the judge that she had discussed the Flynn case with Trump but also said she did not want a pardon — presumably because she wanted him to be vindicated in the courts.
The pardon spares Flynn the possibility of any prison sentence, which Sullivan could potentially have imposed had he ultimately decided to reject the Justice Department’s dismissal request. That request was made after a review of the case by a federal prosecutor appointed by Attorney General William Barr.
At issue in the case was an FBI interview of Flynn that took place in January 2017, days after Trump was inaugurated.
Flynn acknowledged lying during that interview by saying he had not discussed with the then-russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, sanctions that had just been imposed on Russia for election interference by the outgoing Obama administration. During that conversation, Flynn urged
Kislyak for Russia to be “even-keeled” in response to the punitive measures, and assured him “we can have a better conversation” about relations after Trump became president.
The conversation alarmed the FBI, which was investigating whether the Trump campaign and Russia had coordinated to sway the election’s outcome. White House officials were stating publicly that Flynn and Kislyak had not discussed sanctions,
which the FBI knew was untrue.
But last May, the Justice Department abruptly reversed its position in the case.
It asserted the FBI had no basis to interview Flynn about Kislyak that any statements he may have made were not relevant to the FBI’S broader counterintelligence probe. It cited internal FBI notes showing that agents had planned to close out their investigation into Flynn weeks earlier.