Due to Mr. Flynn’s previous ties to Russian officials, FBI agents had been examining him as part of the initial stage of the investigation into Russia’s electoral meddling and whether any associates of the Trump campaign had conspired in that interference. . But the office had decided to close its file on Mr. Flynn when his calls with the ambassador and his lies to colleagues about them raised a new reason to suspect.
The FBI decided to question Mr. Flynn about the calls to see what he would say, and on January 24, 2017, as the national security adviser to newly installed President Trump, Mr. Flynn provided two agents with a false description of their calls. Soon after, Trump kicked him out, saying it was because he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about the calls.
The office of Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel later appointed to lead the Trump-Russia investigation, finally struck a deal with Mr. Flynn’s original legal team under which he would cooperate and plead guilty to one count of Making a false statement will resolve your legal responsibility for both that interview and for not registering as a paid foreign agent from Turkey in 2016, and then signing forms in 2017 that lie about the nature of that work.
But over time, the Flynn case began to become a political cause for Trump and his supporters. Last year, Mr. Flynn changed his legal team and stopped cooperating with the Justice Department, and this year he tried to withdraw his guilty plea. Mr. Barr then ordered prosecutors to ask the judge to dismiss the case instead of sentencing him.
Mr. Barr’s new defense attorney, Sidney Powell, had privately pressured Mr. Barr to appoint a stranger to search the case file for material that could be used to accuse investigators and prosecutors of misconduct. , devising a result similar to a 2009 department’s rejection of a corruption case against a senator after his conviction.
Barr did so, and the department went to defense files showing that the FBI was aggressive when interviewing him, violating bureaucratic protocol by unilaterally sending officers to speak to him despite unsolved deliberations with Department leaders. Justice on how to do it and alert the White House lawyer.
Among other things, the department also revealed that the FBI had decided to close the investigation into Mr. Flynn before the subject of his calls and his lies to colleagues about them came up. However, because the file was still open, the FBI used it for questioning.
