Attorney General Bill Barr’s Justice Department said today it was dropping its criminal case against fired Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn – who has pleaded guilty to numerous charges in federal court.
Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russia contacts during the Russia probe.
He also admitted to failing to register as a foreign agent due to his lucrative work for the Turkish government while serving as a campaign advisor to the Trump campaign.
The move is a sudden reversal for one of the signature cases brought by special counsel Robert Mueller.
Mueller’s prosecutors pressed the case against Flynn, which had attracted special interest from Trump since the beginning. He asked former FBI director James Comey about letting the case go, Comey testified in Congress.
According to Comey’s notes, President Trump also said of his national security advisor: ‘The guy has serious judgment issues.’
The move, which must still be approved by the judge overseeing the case, comes even though prosecutors for the last three years had maintained that Flynn had lied to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in a January 2017 interview.
The stunning turnaround drew immediate praise from Trump, who has long claimed Flynn was railroaded and had kept alive the possibility of a presidential pardon while attacking prosecutors he said were on a ‘witch hunt.’
Lead career prosecutor Brandon Van Grack today abruptly withdrew from handling the case.
Van Grack also withdrew from handling other cases for the Justice Department, according to court filings.
Van Grack’s departure comes less than three months after Attorney General William Barr said he was appointing Jensen, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, to review the Justice Department’s handling of the case.
Flynn pleaded guilty in late 2017 to lying to the FBI about interactions with Russia’s ambassador to the United States in the weeks before Trump took office, marking one of the first cases to emerge from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
‘This is outrageous!’ fumed House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jerold Nadler on Twitter. ‘Flynn PLEADED GUILTY to lying to investigators. The evidence against him is overwhelming. Now, a politicized DOJ is dropping the case.’
Tweeted former FBI director James Comey: ‘The DOJ has lost its way. But, career people: please stay because America needs you. The country is hungry for honest, competent leadership.’
According to the Mueller report, Flynn had multiple contacts with Russia’s then-ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, during the presidential transition, when the Obama administration was still steering foreign policy.
They communicated on the explosive topic of U.S. sanctions but in place over election interference and the invasion of Crimea.
‘On December 31, 2016, Kislyak called Flynn and told him that Flynn’s request had been received at the highest levels and Russia had chosen not to retaliate in response to the request,’ according to the report.
Flynn after public denied having discussed sanctions with Kislyak. According to the Mueller report, ‘Flynn repeated that claim to Vice President-Elect Michael Pence and to incoming press secretary Sean Spicer.’
It was his lie to Pence that Trump and the White House cited as the reason Trump fired him after just weeks on the job. The false statements ‘alarmed senior DOJ officials, who were aware that the statements were not true.’
‘Those officials were concerned that Flynn had lied to his colleagues—who in turn had unwittingly misled the American public—creating a compromise situation for Flynn because the Department of Justice assessed that the Russian government could prove Flynn lied,’ according to the report.