Donald Trump pardons Michael Flynn and targets Russia probe directly

US President Donald Trump pardoned former national security adviser Michael Flynn on Wednesday (US time), pointing directly in the final days of his administration to an investigation into Russia that he has long insisted was motivated by political prejudices.

“It is my great honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a full pardon,” Trump tweeted. “Congratulations to @GenFlynn and his wonderful family, I know you will now have a really fantastic Thanksgiving!”

Flynn is the second Trump associate convicted in the Russia investigation to receive clemency from the president. Trump commuted confidante Roger Stone’s sentence a few days before he was to appear in prison. It is part of a larger effort to undo the results of an investigation that for years has overshadowed his administration and led to criminal charges against half a dozen associates.

The action overturns the criminal case against Flynn just as a federal judge was skeptically weighing whether to grant a Justice Department request to dismiss the indictment despite Flynn pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts in Russia.

The move, which comes as Trump ends his only term, is likely to energize supporters who have taken up the case as a celebrated cause and rallied around the retired Army lieutenant general as a victim of what they say is a prosecution. unfair. Trump himself has repeatedly spoken warmly about Flynn, despite prosecutors under special counsel Robert Mueller once praising him as a model collaborator in their investigation into ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.

The clemency is the final step in a case defined by twists and turns over the past year after the Justice Department abruptly moved to dismiss the case, insisting that Flynn should never have been interviewed by the FBI in the first place, just for the US District Judge Emmet Sullivan rejects the request and appoints a former judge to argue against the federal government’s position.

In the months that followed, the decision of a three-judge panel ordering Sullivan to dismiss the case was overturned by the full appeals court, which sent the matter back to Sullivan. At a hearing in September, Flynn’s attorney, Sidney Powell, told the judge that he had discussed Flynn’s case with Trump, but also said that he did not want a pardon, presumably because he wanted him to be vindicated in court.

Powell emerged separately in recent weeks as a public face of Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of her election loss to President-elect Joe Biden, but Trump’s legal team eventually distanced themselves from her after she filed a series. of unsubstantiated conspiracy accusations.

The clemency saves Flynn the possibility of any prison sentence, which Sullivan could have imposed if he had ultimately decided to reject the Justice Department’s request for dismissal. That request was made in May after a review of the case by a St. Louis federal prosecutor who had been specially appointed by Attorney General William Barr.

Flynn admitted to having lied during the interview with the FBI, saying that he had not discussed with the then Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, the sanctions that had just been imposed on Russia for electoral interference by the outgoing Obama administration. During that conversation, Flynn urged Kislyak for Russia to be “balanced” in response to the punitive measures and assured him that “we can have a better conversation” about relations between the two countries after Trump took office.

The conversation alarmed the FBI, which at the time was investigating whether the Trump campaign and Russia had coordinated to influence the outcome of the election. Additionally, White House officials publicly stated that Flynn and Kislyak had not discussed the sanctions.

But last May, the Justice Department abruptly reversed its position in the case. He said the FBI had no basis to interview Flynn about Kislyak, then the Russian ambassador to the United States, and that any statements he might have made were not relevant to the broader FBI counterintelligence investigation. He cited internal FBI notes showing agents had planned to close their investigation into Flynn weeks earlier.

Flynn was removed from his post in February 2017 after news broke that he had indeed discussed sanctions with Kislyak, and that former Obama administration officials had warned the White House that he could be vulnerable to blackmail.

Flynn was one of the first aides to the president to admit his guilt in the Mueller investigation and cooperated extensively for months. He provided such extensive cooperation that prosecutors did not recommend any jail time and suggested they would be fine with parole.

But the morning he was to be sentenced, after a severe reprimand for his behavior by Sullivan, Flynn asked that the hearing be cut off so he could continue to cooperate and earn credit for a more lenient sentence.

After that, however, he hired new attorneys, including Powell, a conservative commentator and outspoken critic of the Mueller investigation, who took a much more confrontational stance with the government.

Attorneys accused prosecutors of withholding documents and evidence they said were favorable to the case and repeatedly noted that one of the two agents who interviewed Flynn was fired from the FBI for sending derogatory text messages about Trump during the 2016 campaign.

– AP