[ad_1]
According to media reports, outgoing US President Donald Trump wants to pardon his former security adviser Michael Flynn. Trump is said to have told confidants that he wanted to forgive Flynn and others while he was still in office. This is reported by various media outlets, including the New York Times and CNN, citing people familiar with the matter.
Flynn was the first former member of the Trump administration to plead guilty to Trump in an investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. He had confessed to lying to the FBI in his investigation into the so-called Russia affair.
In January, however, he asked the court to withdraw his confession. With the tip, Flynn risked an open outcome, from an acquittal to a lengthy prison sentence.
Trump had already considered a pardon earlier in the year. According to him, Flynn did not violate a law. He regularly referred to the FBI investigations into the Russian affair as a “witch hunt.”
FBI Special Investigator Robert Mueller found no evidence in his investigation, which was completed about a year ago, that there had been secret deals between Trump’s campaign team and representatives of Russia prior to the 2016 election. The report, Mueller did not rule out an obstacle to Trump’s judicial investigation. However, the president was completely exonerated by Mueller’s results.
Trump had started the process of handing over the job to Joe Biden shortly before the media reported on his clemency plans. He has yet to admit defeat in the US elections.
The Flynn case was not Trump’s first pardon of the day. In the traditional Thanksgiving ceremony, in which a turkey is saved from the oven, the current president did not mention that he was voted out of office. Instead, he celebrated the new record for the leading US Dow Jones index of more than 30,000 points, again referred to the coronavirus as “China virus,” welcomed progress in developing a vaccine, and affirmed his political slogan “United States. First”.
