Former Trump advisor Flynn exonerated
WASHINGTON – The Justice Department moved Thursday to drop charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts during the presidential transition.
The unraveling of Flynn’s guilty plea marked a stunning defeat by the Justice Department and raised questions about the integrity of the former three-star Army general’s original defense team as well as of the department’s former and current leaders.
In court documents filed Thursday, the Justice Department said “after a considered review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including newly discovered and disclosed information ... the government has concluded that >Flynn’s interview by the FBI@ was untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn” and that the interview on January 24, 2017 was “conducted without any legitimate investigative basis.”
Flynn was one of the first and highest-ranking Trump aides to cooperate and be convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
But his case became one of the most bitterly contested after Mueller’s probe ended in March 2019. Flynn’s new defense lawyers began moving to void his conviction, arguing he was the victim
of a partisan conspiracy by prosecutors, federal investigators
and even his initial attorneys. His new defense team also alleged he was insufficiently represented by one of Washington’s most prominent law firms, Covington & Burling, when he entered his guilty plea.
Attorney General William Barr in January directed U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen of St. Louis to review the case’s handling by the federal prosecutor’s office in Washington, which took over Mueller cases last year, and Jensen made the final recommendation.
“Through the course of my review of General Flynn’s case, I concluded the proper and just course was to dismiss the case,” Jensen said in a statement. “I briefed Attorney General Barr on my findings, advised him on these conclusions, and he agreed.”
Flynn, 61, was a senior
Trump campaign foreign policy aide who served 24 days as national security adviser, the shortest tenure on record. He was fired from the White House in 2017 for misstating the nature of his contacts with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak to Vice President Pence, senior White House aides, federal investigators and the news media.
In his plea, Flynn admitted he was in touch with senior Trump transition officials before and after his communications with Kislyak. The pre-inauguration communications with Kislyak involved efforts to reduce tensions between the U.S. and Russia.
Flynn faced up to a five-year prison term under the charge, but in e[change for his “substantial assistance” to prosecutors investigating the Trump administration, Mueller’s team
initially recommended probation as a possible sentence.
Once Mueller’s probe ended, however, Flynn changed defense teams. He began accusing the FBI prosecutors of manufacturing the charges against him, coercing him into lying and withholding e[culpatory evidence.
The filing came one day before a Justice Department deadline to respond to defense allegations of misconduct, and coincided with the withdrawal from the case of its lead prosecutor, veteran national security prosecutor Brandon Van Grack.
In recent days, newly unsealed documents turned over by Jensen’s review to the defense showing that the FBI was about to close the investigation into Flynn in early 2017 for lack of any evidence of wrongdoing.
Also uncovered were notes turned over in the review showing FBI officials discussed in advance how to handle the January 2017 interview with Flynn. Sources said the notes were written by E.W. Priestap, the former assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division
The notes show that at least some FBI officials were concerned not with investigating Flynn’s Russian contacts, but with getting him removed from his position.
“What is our goal?” Priestap wrote in the notes. “Truth admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?”
Trump wrote and retweeted a flurry of messages sympathetic to Flynn last week, saying, “What happened to General Michael Flynn, a war hero, should never be allowed to happen to a citizen of the United States again!”
At a news conference, asked if he rehire Flynn, Trump said, “I would certainly consider it, yeah, I would,” adding, “I think he’s a fine man.”
Separately Flynn has also claimed his former attorneys were “in the grip of intractable conflicts of interest” and “irreparably tainted” his original plea. Flynn had admitted that he knowingly lied to the Justice Department in foreign lobbying disclosure filings about whether he and his former business partner, Bijan Rafiekian, had acted as agents for the Turkish government. The firm had represented Flynn in filing the Foreign Agent Registration Act forms he is accused of lying about. Flynn’s new defense claims it obscured its own errors while representing Flynn in his criminal case.