Donald Trump pardons former national security adviser Mike Flynn

President Donald Trump’s political enemies have erupted with anger after he pardoned his former national security adviser.

Donald Trump has pardoned his former national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI over Russia.

The President announced on Wednesday he was granting a full pardon to Michael Flynn, a retired former Army lieutenant general who briefly served in the Trump administration before being ousted for allegedly lying to Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with the Russian ambassador during the transition.

“It is my Great Honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon,” Mr Trump tweeted. “Congratulations to @GenFlynn and his wonderful family, I know you will now have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving!”

General Flynn simply tweeted “Jeremiah 1:19” – the Bible passage which reads, “‘They will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you and will rescue you,’ declares the Lord.”

It is my Great Honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon. Congratulations to @GenFlynn and his wonderful family, I know you will now have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 25, 2020

Jeremiah 1:19 🇺🇸

— General Flynn (@GenFlynn) November 25, 2020

The move brings to an end a four-year criminal case, which the Department of Justice had attempted to drop in May this year after an independent review ordered by Attorney-General Bill Barr uncovered prosecutorial misconduct.

General Flynn twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, but later reversed course after retaining defence lawyer Sidney Powell, who fought to have the charges thrown out, alleging her client was “set up” by the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team.

The case has been tied up in seemingly never-ending legal proceedings ever since, with DC Circuit Court Judge Emmett Sullivan refusing the DOJ’s request to dismiss the case and instead appointing an “amicus curiae”, or friend of the court, to argue against the government’s motion.

Last month, Ms Powell – who has recently made a series of wild allegations of election fraud against voting machine company Dominion – filed a motion to have Judge Sullivan disqualified from the case for alleged bias against her client.

Mr Trump’s move to pardon his former ally is yet another indication that he does not have confidence he will succeed in overturning the election results, despite his insistence that his long-shot legal challenges will prevail.

Ms Powell had previously indicated General Flynn did not want a pardon and rather wanted the charges dropped. She suggested Judge Sullivan was attempting to drag the case out past November 3, in the hopes an incoming Biden administration would continue the prosecution.

Speaking to Fox News on Wednesday, Ms Powell described the pardon as “bittersweet”. “It’s really bittersweet because if the justice system had worked properly, we would not have had to have gotten this pardon, but we certainly appreciate President Trump giving it to General Flynn because it has gone on far too long,” she told host Lou Dobbs.

“We now know that Judge Sullivan was just a political ploy. He’s made a political game out of all of this, and it’s just one of the most egregious injustices I’ve witnessed in American history. Enough was enough. We had passed the point of proving that General Flynn was innocent. All of the evidence we’ve gotten since I came on the case shows that, and it was high time that he be exonerated of all these charges. It was truly a pardon of innocence.”

#FLYNN family statement “grateful” to @realDonaldTrump for “removing the heavy burden of injustice off @GenFlynn’s shoulders” + “recognizing our brother’s sacrifice in this battle for truth, our constitution, our Republic + all that America stands for around the world” @CBSNews pic.twitter.com/4FmJlBCH4O

— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) November 25, 2020

Announcing its decision to drop the case in May, the DOJ said a review by US Attorney Jeff Jensen, a former FBI agent, had found the January 2017 White House interview of General Flynn was not “conducted with a legitimate investigative basis” and the government “therefore does not believe Mr Flynn’s statements were material even if untrue”.

“The government has concluded that the interview of Mr Flynn was untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Mr Flynn – a no longer justifiably predicated investigation that the FBI had, in the Bureau’s own words, prepared to close because it had yielded an ‘absence of any derogatory information’,” it said.

As part of Mr Jensen’s review, the DOJ handed over previously undisclosed emails and notes to General Flynn’s legal team, including one written by a senior FBI official describing internal deliberations about how to handle the 2017 interview. “What’s our goal? Truth/admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?” the note said.

General Flynn’s lawyers argued the prosecution had deliberately withheld this and other so-called “Brady material” – exculpatory evidence known to the prosecution that must be produced to the defence.

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a statement that Mr Trump had pardoned General Flynn “because he should never have been prosecuted”, and that it brought to an end “the relentless, partisan pursuit of an innocent man”.

“General Flynn should not require a pardon,” she said. “He is an innocent man. Even the FBI agents who interviewed General Flynn did not think he was lying. Multiple investigations have produced evidence establishing that General Flynn was the victim of partisan government officials engaged in a coordinated attempt to subvert the election of 2016.”

General Flynn pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the FBI in December 2017, making him the biggest scalp of the Mueller investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. He then became a cooperating witness in the probe, and in turn prosecutors recommended he be sentenced leniently.

In January this year, however, the month before he was scheduled to be sentenced, he requested to withdraw his guilty plea. In an extraordinary affidavit, General Flynn insisted that he still did not remember details of the pivotal phone call in 2016 with the Russian ambassador.

He claimed he had been put under “intense” pressure by the Special Counsel’s Office to plead guilty, and that they had threatened to pursue charges against his son. “I tried to ‘accept responsibility’ by admitting to offences I understood the government I love and trusted said I committed,” he wrote.

“In truth, I never lied. My guilty plea has rankled me throughout this process, and while I allowed myself to succumb to the threats from the government to save my family, I believe that I was grossly misled about what really happened. I will not confirm a plea of guilty I should never have entered.”

The Mueller report, released in April 2019, found no evidence of criminal coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016, but punted on reaching a determination on whether Mr Trump had obstructed justice in his dealings with the Special Counsel’s Office.

Michael Flynn leaves court in December 2017. Picture: Brendan Smialowski/AFP

‘CROOKED TO THE END’

Democrats reacted with fury at the announcement, with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff saying in a statement that the President “abused the pardon power to reward Michael Flynn, who chose loyalty to Trump over loyalty to his country”.

“There is no doubt that a President has broad power to confer pardons, but when they are deployed to insulate himself, his family, and his associates from criminal investigation, it is a corruption of the Framer’s intent,” Mr Schiff said. “It’s no surprise that Trump would go out just as he came in – crooked to the end.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the pardon was “an act of grave corruption and a brazen abuse of power”. “Trump is again using the pardon power to protect those who lie to cover up his wrongdoing, just as he did when he commuted the sentence of campaign adviser Roger Stone, who was convicted on seven felony counts,” she said in a statement.

“Flynn’s actions constituted a serious and dangerous breach of our national security. He must be held accountable. Yet Trump and his team continue to put the President over country, as they politicise justice to shield Flynn and Trump from the law.”

Ms Pelosi added, “Sadly, this pardon is further proof that Trump plans to use his final days in office to undermine the rule of law in the wake of his failed presidency. In the new Congress, it is imperative that we pass House and Senate Democrats’ Protecting Our Democracy Act, which prevents any President from abusing the pardon power.”

Chairman Nadler Statement on the Pardon of Michael Flynn pic.twitter.com/8wO4JMgIzA

— House Judiciary Dems (@HouseJudiciary) November 25, 2020

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler described the pardon as “undeserved, unprincipled, and one more stain on President Trump’s rapidly diminishing legacy”. “Michael Flynn was fired from the White House for lying to senior officials,” he said in a statement.

“He pleaded guilty – twice – to lying to federal investigators about his communications with a foreign adversary. Flynn’s agreement to cooperate with the government in exchange for those guilty pleas seemed light to some, given reports that Flynn and his son had engaged in far more disturbing criminal activity.”

Mr Nadler accused Mr Trump of having “dangled this pardon” to encourage General Flynn to backtrack on his cooperation with federal investigators, “cooperation that might have exposed the President‘s own wrongdoing”. “This pardon is part of a pattern,” he said.

“We may see it again before President Trump finally leaves office. These actions are an abuse of power and fundamentally undermine the rule of law. President-elect Biden will soon take office and restore a measure of honour to the Office of the President. Between now and then, we must be vigilant to additional abuses of power, even as we look with hope to days to come.”

Massachusetts Senator and former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren said, “Donald Trump is the most corrupt President in American history.”