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Before reversing his ruling, Flynn initially cooperated with Special Counsel Robert Mueller for nearly two years, including providing evidence of a possible obstruction of justice by the president. He attended 19 interviews with prosecutors.
Trump has long been expected to forgive Flynn, hitting prosecutors and the FBI for their handling of the case, as part of a concerted attack on the investigations against him. Trump has falsely accused the FBI and the Justice Department of staging a “coup” against him in the years since his election. Trump has also repeatedly attacked prosecutors and FBI officials involved in the Flynn case, even though he fired Flynn for lying to the office and Vice President Mike Pence in early 2017.
While the pardon was a long time coming, Trump allowed Flynn’s legal drama to unfold for more than three years, waiting until after the November 3 election to issue clemency, a sign of how the case has become politically. explosive. Flynn has become a revered figure on the Trump base, and Flynn’s lawyer – conservative fire killer Sidney Powell – has recently become a prominent Trump surrogate promoting baseless conspiracy theories about electoral fraud against Trump. .
Leading Democrats have previously warned that they will view any effort by Trump to forgive his associates as an abuse of power, similar to the one the House impeached him almost a year ago. After the pardon was granted, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and House Justice Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler criticized the decision as an erosion of the state of right, intended to reward an ally for resisting an investigation involving Trump himself.
Republicans, however, celebrated the decision. White House chief of staff Mark Meadows called the day “a well-deserved day for an American patriot”.
The pardon comes as a Washington DC federal judge Emmet Sullivan considers whether to allow Trump’s Justice Department to dismiss the charge against Flynn. Attorney General William Barr authorized the dismissal amid Flynn’s ongoing legal struggle, alarming DOJ veterans fears he had twisted the process in favor of a political ally of the president.
Sullivan, however, refused to dismiss the case immediately and instead sought an outside advisor, who argued that the Justice Department’s legal argument for dismissing the case should be dismissed as a pretext to help an ally. from Trump. Sullivan has been pondering a final decision since late September, when he held a hearing and learned that Powell had been in contact with Trump about the case. Sullivan also sounded the alarm about the documents the DOJ relied on in the event that seemed to have been modified, although Department of Justice officials insisted the changes were unintentional.
It’s unclear whether Sullivan will immediately end the case or request a further investigation of his options, given fears he has raised that Flynn may have lied under oath regarding the circumstances of his plea deal.
Trump’s pardon is just his latest act of mercy for a close associate involved in the Russia investigation. He also attacked Department of Justice prosecutors, including former members of Mueller’s team, who helped secure the conviction of longtime advisor and friend Roger Stone for lying to congressional investigators and bullying a witness. In July, Trump commuted Stone’s sentence but did not grant a full pardon, although Stone has pleaded for one in recent days. Trump’s direct efforts on behalf of his associates threw the Justice Department into turmoil earlier this year, prompting Barr to launch what appeared to be a veiled threat to resign.
Nonetheless, Trump continued his attacks on the Justice Department and the FBI, and Barr remained silent.
Flynn served as Trump’s national security adviser for just 24 days after Trump took office in 2017. Trump removed him from office amid a clamor of questions about Flynn’s contacts with the ambassador from Russia to the United States in the final days of 2016, as the outgoing Obama administration stabilized. sanctions against Russia for electoral interference by the Kremlin.
Almost 10 months after Flynn left, he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about these interactions and admitted that he also lobbied on behalf of the Turkish government – while advising Trump – without disclosing it. .
But Flynn’s allies have long argued that Flynn was put in place by the FBI and made to plead guilty. And when Sullivan, the judge in Flynn’s case, appeared ready at the end of 2018 to sentence Flynn to jail, Flynn put his cooperative strategy on hold and fired his legal team.
He then fired his legal team and hired Powell, a Fox News frontrunner who once wrote favorably about Sullivan but has since attacked him relentlessly as being biased. Flynn then decided to quash his guilty plea and accused the FBI and the Justice Department of setting him up to pursue a case against Trump.
Flynn, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under Barack Obama, first caught the attention of the FBI for his December 2015 visit to Moscow, where he was seated at a table with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a dinner organized by the Russian TV channel. RT. When the FBI launched a counter-intelligence investigation into figures linked to the Trump campaign in July 2016 – a probe dubbed the Crossfire Hurricane – Flynn was one of four Trump allies specifically identified as a potential threat.
Although documents leaked amid Flynn’s efforts to close his case showed the FBI was preparing to shut down Flynn’s part of the investigation in late 2016, calls with Kislyak led the office to reverse the case. trend. On January 5, 2017, Obama discussed the matter with his national security team and asked if he should be concerned about sharing sensitive information with the incoming administration. Obama had previously warned Trump against hiring Flynn, but Trump ignored the plea.
Trump fired Flynn just weeks into his new administration after learning about Flynn’s alleged lies to the FBI and Vice President Mike Pence, who said on television that Flynn did not discuss sanctions with Kislyak.
Flynn was once expected to be a key witness in last year’s trial of his former business partner, Bijan Rafiekian – better known as Kian. Indeed, it was the expected testimony that led Sullivan to postpone his conviction to December 2018.
However, following Flynn’s change of attorney, a heated dispute arose between the new team and prosecutors over Flynn’s account. Prosecutors abruptly abandoned their plans to call Flynn, saying he appeared to be straying from the confession in his plea regarding filing false statements with the Justice Ministry about his work related to Turkey.
After a trial, the jurors quickly condemned Kian – a Californian businessman and former George W. Bush appointed – for attempting to act as an unregistered foreign agent in connection with Flynn’s project targeting a Turkish dissident in the United States, Fethullah Gulen.
However, Kian’s fortunes were reversed two months later when the judge who oversaw the trial issued a rare decision dismissing the convictions, claiming that he lacked proof of his guilt. Despite Barr’s finding that the lawsuits against Flynn were unjustified, the case against Kian continues, as prosecutors appeal the judge’s ruling dismissing the case.
Trump had long flirted with Flynn’s forgiveness. In fact, Trump’s personal attorney’s overtures in 2017 were in Mueller’s report listing a possible obstruction of justice by the president. Although Trump regularly attacked other witnesses who provided damaging information to Mueller, he never directed his fury against Flynn.
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