Flynn case boosts Trump’s push to undo Russia-probe narrative
When Michael Flynn was forced from the White House, Vice-President Mike Pence said he was disappointed the national security adviser had misled him about his talks with the Russian ambassador. President Donald Trump called the deception unacceptable.
Now Pence says he’d be happy to see Flynn back in the administration, calling him a “patriot”, as Trump pronounces him exonerated.
What a difference three years makes. The Justice Department’s move to dismiss the criminal case against Flynn marks another step in his transformation from rogue adviser to victim of runaway law enforcement.
The dismissal rewrites the narrative of the case that Trump’s own Justice Department had advanced for the past three years in a way that former law enforcement officials say downplays the legitimate national security concerns they believe Flynn posed and the consequences of the lies he pleaded guilty to telling.
It’s been swept up in a broader push by Trump and his Republican allies to reframe the Russia investigation as a “deep state” plot to sabotage his administration, setting the stage for a fresh onslaught of electionyear attacks on past and present Democratic officials and law enforcement leaders.
“His goal is that by the end of this, you’re just not really sure what happened and at some gut level enough Americans say, ‘It’s kind of messy’,” said Princeton University historian Julian Zelizer.
Scrambling to manage the coronavirus and economic crash, Trump has been eager to shift the focus elsewhere. He has repeatedly called Flynn “exonerated” and pushed the development as evidence of what he deemed “Obamagate”, an allegation the previous administration tried to undermine him during the presidential transition.
The hope is to revive some of the pre-pandemic arguments to cast Trump, even now as an incumbent, as the political outsider being attacked by the establishment.
Republicans have echoed the attacks. National intelligence director Richard Grenell on Wednesday declassified a list of names of Obama officials who asked for Flynn’s identity to be unredacted in intelligence documents, while Senator Chuck Grassley told the Senate the “rule of law is at risk if the federal government can get away with violating the Constitution to do what they did to Lieutenant General Flynn.”
Attorney General William Barr has said dropping the case against Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about having discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition, was in the interests of justice. The department says the FBI had insufficient grounds for interviewing Flynn about his “entirely appropriate” calls and that any imperfect statements he made weren’t material to the broader counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign.
But the decision stunned former law enforcement officials involved in the case, including some who say the Justice Department is rewriting history and omitting key context.
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said the FBI was obligated to interview Flynn about the Russian ambassador over sanctions imposed for election interference.
And because White House officials, including Pence, were inaccurately asserting that Flynn had never discussed sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, US officials were concerned Flynn could be vulnerable to blackmail since Russia also knew what was discussed.
Flynn’s revival in Trump’s orbit is perhaps not surprising. From the moment he took the stage at the 2016 Republican National Convention and led a “Lock her up!” chant aimed at Democrat Hillary Clinton, Flynn has been exceedingly popular among many Trump supporters. For many, his forced resignation and guilty plea only added to his stature as a martyr and cause celebre.