Trump praises Barr for dropping Flynn charges
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday responded to the Justice Department’s decision to drop criminal charges against Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser, by delivering his most extensive and aggrieved remarks on the Russia investigation since the coronavirus paralyzed the nation.
Speaking to Fox News, Trump praised Attorney General William Barr for the dramatic action announced Thursday, which nullified a major case prosecuted by special counsel Robert Mueller.
Trump said Barr had acted wisely in assigning a U.S. attorney to look into the case, in which Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in 2017 about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to Washington during the 2016 presidential transition.
Trump and his allies had long called Flynn’s prosecution unjust and said it should be dropped.
“Bill Barr is a man of unbelievable credibility and courage,” Trump said. “And he’s going to go down in the history books.”
Trump made the remarks in a nearly hourlong appearance on one of his favorite Fox News Channel programs, “Fox and Friends.”
The Flynn outcome was startling in multiple ways, not least because the Justice Department rarely undertakes internal reviews of its own prosecutions — let alone cases in which a defendant has pleaded guilty.
The Jan. 24, 2017, interview of Flynn came at a pivotal juncture, as the FBI scrambled to untangle potential ties between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Agents knew from a transcript of Flynn’s call with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that Flynn had discussed U.S. sanctions with Kislyak but were distressed that White House officials were publicly insisting otherwise and scheduled an interview with him.
Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, would later be ousted from the White House, with officials saying he lied to them.
But the Justice Department now says there was no basis to question Flynn, especially since agents were prepared to close their investigation into him weeks earlier after finding nothing to suggest he had committed a crime.
During his discussion of the Russia investigation, Trump also cited an unlikely historical guide in former President Richard M. Nixon, who resigned in disgrace.
“I learned a lot from Richard Nixon, don’t fire people,” Trump said. “I learned a lot. I study history.”
Trump allowed that there was “one big difference” between himself and Nixon, before offering two: “No. 1, he may have been guilty. And No. 2, he had tapes all over the place. I wasn’t guilty, I did nothing wrong. And there are no tapes.”
Trump also suggested Friday that more surprises could be afoot, saying “a lot of things are going to be told over the next couple of weeks.”
He said the “jury’s still out with regard” to FBI Director Chris Wray.