London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Friday, Jun 20, 2025

US Justice Department: no case against Michael Flynn

US Justice Department: no case against Michael Flynn

The extraordinary move came after the former national security adviser had fought the case in court for months, a reversal after pleading guilty twice and cooperating with investigators.
After an extraordinary public campaign by President Trump and his allies, the Justice Department dropped its criminal case on Thursday against Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser.

Mr. Flynn had previously pleaded guilty twice to lying to F.B.I. agents about his conversations with a Russian diplomat during the presidential transition in late 2016.

The move was the latest example of Attorney General William P. Barr’s efforts to chisel away at the results of the Russia investigation. Documents that Mr. Flynn’s lawyers cited as evidence of prosecutorial misconduct were turned over as part of a review by an outside prosecutor whom Mr. Barr assigned to re-examine the case. Mr. Barr has cast doubt not only on some of the prosecutions in the investigation but also on its premise, assigning another independent prosecutor to scrutinize its origins.

The decision for the government to throw out a case after a defendant had already pleaded guilty was also highly unusual. Former prosecutors struggled to point to any precedent and portrayed the Justice Department’s justification as dubious.

By abandoning the case, the department undid what had been one of the first significant acts of the special counsel investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia’s 2016 election interference — the prosecution of a retired top Army general turned national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to investigators.

Though Mr. Trump fired Mr. Flynn weeks into his presidency for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations with the diplomat, he has long complained that a corrupt few at the F.B.I. mistreated Mr. Flynn and suggested he might pardon him. Law enforcement officials dropping the charges took issue with the F.B.I.’s interview of Mr. Flynn in early 2017 as part of the Russia investigation that Robert S. Mueller III later took over.

Agents’ questioning “was untethered to, and unjustified by, the F.B.I.’s counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn,” the acting United States attorney in Washington, Timothy Shea, wrote in a motion to dismiss the charges. Prosecutors said that the case fell short of the legal standard that Mr. Flynn’s lies be “materially” relevant to the matter under investigation.

“The government is not persuaded that the Jan. 24, 2017, interview was conducted with a legitimate investigative basis and therefore does not believe Mr. Flynn’s statements were material even if untrue,” Mr. Shea wrote.

Democrats condemned the move. “A politicized and thoroughly corrupt Department of Justice is going to let the president’s crony simply walk away,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. “Americans are right to be furious and worried about the continued erosion of our rule of law.”

He said he would ask the Justice Department inspector general to investigate and work to secure Mr. Barr’s testimony before his committee as soon as possible.

In dropping the charges, law enforcement officials abandoned the stance of the career prosecutors who had been on the case, who had argued that Mr. Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States at the time, Sergey I. Kislyak, “went to the heart” of the F.B.I.’s Trump-Russia investigation.

Mr. Trump told reporters on Thursday that Mr. Flynn was “an innocent man” and accused Obama administration officials of targeting him to try to “take down a president.” He angrily tore into his unnamed persecutors. “I hope a lot of people are going to pay a big price because they’re dishonest, crooked people,” Mr. Trump said. “They’re scum — and I say it a lot, they’re scum, they’re human scum. This should never have happened in this country.”

Mr. Barr explained the decision as an effort to “restore confidence in the system” and that law enforcement officials had a duty to dismiss the charges. He said he was “doing the law’s bidding,” not Mr. Trump’s, and the Justice Department said that it did not brief the White House before it dropped the charges.

“Partisan feelings are so strong that people have lost any sense of justice,” Mr. Barr said in an interview with CBS News.

Asked whether Mr. Flynn lied, Mr. Barr said that “people sometimes plead to things that turn out not to be crimes.”

Sidney Powell, Mr. Flynn’s lawyer, said on Fox Business Network that she and her client were “relieved and gratified” that Mr. Barr withdrew the case. She called the decision “a restoration of the rule of law.”

Mr. Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to the F.B.I. about his conversations with Mr. Kislyak during the presidential transition. He had also entered a guilty plea a second time in 2018 at an aborted sentencing hearing. At the time, Mr. Flynn said he knew that lying to the F.B.I. was a crime and accepted responsibility for what he had done.

The climactic move by the Justice Department appeared to be brewing in recent days after the outside prosecutors reviewing the case said they had found new documents that were possibly exculpatory, raising the hopes of Mr. Flynn’s lawyers and vocal supporters that he would be exonerated.

One of the documents showed that the F.B.I. was on the verge of closing a counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn’s ties to Russia in early January 2017. Mr. Shea, a longtime trusted adviser of Mr. Barr’s, said in the court filing that F.B.I. agents had no reason to interview Mr. Flynn at the White House weeks later.

In a possible sign of disagreement, Brandon L. Van Grack, the Justice Department lawyer who led the prosecution of Mr. Flynn, abruptly withdrew from the case on Thursday. Mr. Flynn’s lawyers have repeatedly attacked Mr. Van Grack by name in court filings, citing his “incredible malfeasance.” Other prosecutors in Mr. Shea’s office were stunned by the decision to drop the case, according to a person who spoke with several lawyers in the office.

Neither Mr. Van Grack nor other career prosecutors who have worked on the Flynn case over the past two and a half years signed their names to Mr. Shea’s court filing.

It is now up to the federal judge in Washington overseeing the case, Emmet G. Sullivan, to decide whether to dismiss it and close off the possibility that Mr. Flynn could be tried again for the same crime. If the judge wants, he could ask for written submissions and hold a hearing on that topic.

Judge Sullivan, who accepted Mr. Flynn’s original guilty plea, could also weigh in on whether he believes any of the new materials that the government has produced to Mr. Flynn’s lawyers represent a violation on the part of the Justice Department or its lawyers who worked on the case.

The White House was prepared for the possibility of Mr. Trump pardoning Mr. Flynn last week, according to two people familiar with the discussions. But some advisers urged the president to let the case play out.

Mr. Flynn, a decorated lieutenant general and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was an early supporter of Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, joining the crowd in a “lock her up” chant about Hillary Clinton, then the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, at the Republican National Convention that year.

After winning the election, Mr. Trump named Mr. Flynn his national security adviser. In late December 2016, Mr. Flynn and Mr. Kislyak spoke on the phone shortly after the Obama administration placed sanctions on Russia for interfering in the election, and Mr. Flynn advised that the Russians hold off on escalating in response, undermining that administration’s foreign policy.

The F.B.I. had been close to closing its inquiry into Mr. Flynn. But as investigators discovered the conversations in early January through routine government wiretaps of Mr. Kislyak, and as they learned in subsequent days that he had lied to other White House officials about them, they began to conclude that they had reason to suspect that Mr. Flynn constituted a national security threat.

Law enforcement officials warned the White House that Russia could have blackmailed Mr. Flynn. But seeing no move by Mr. Trump to address the issue, F.B.I. agents decided to question Mr. Flynn, where he repeatedly made false statements about his talks with Mr. Kislyak.

Yet the agents “felt like it was not clear to them that he was, you know, lying or dissembling,” Andrew G. McCabe, the F.B.I. deputy director at the time, told congressional investigators in an interview released on Thursday as part of thousands of pages of witness testimony from the House Intelligence Committee’s own Russia inquiry.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
16 Billion Login Credentials Leaked in Unprecedented Cybersecurity Breach
Senate hearing on who was 'really running' Biden White House kicks off
Iranian Military Officers Reportedly Seek Contact with Reza Pahlavi, Signal Intent to Defect
FBI and Senate Investigate Allegations of Chinese Plot to Influence the 2020 Election in Biden’s Favor Using Fake U.S. Driver’s Licenses
Vietnam Emerges as Luxury Yacht Destination for Ultra‑Rich
Plans to Sell Dutch Embassy in Bangkok Face Local Opposition
China's Iranian Oil Imports Face Disruption Amid Escalating Middle East Tensions
Trump's $5 Million 'Trump Card' Visa Program Draws Nearly 70,000 Applicants
DGCA Finds No Major Safety Concerns in Air India's Boeing 787 Fleet
Airlines Reroute Flights Amid Expanding Middle East Conflict Zones
Elon Musk's xAI Seeks $9.3 Billion in Funding Amid AI Expansion
Trump Demands Iran's Unconditional Surrender Amid Escalating Conflict
Israeli Airstrike Targets Iranian State TV in Central Tehran
President Trump is leaving the G7 summit early and has ordered the National Security Council to the Situation Room
Taiwan Imposes Export Ban on Chips to Huawei and SMIC
Israel has just announced plans to strike Tehran again, and in response, Trump has urged people to evacuate
Netanyahu Signals Potential Regime Change in Iran
Juncker Criticizes EU Inaction on Trump Tariffs
EU Proposes Ban on New Russian Gas Contracts
Analysts Warn Iran May Resort to Unconventional Warfare
Iranian Regime Faces Existential Threat Amid Conflict
Energy Infrastructure Becomes War Zone in Middle East
UK Home Secretary Apologizes Over Child Grooming Failures
Trump Organization Launches 5G Mobile Network and Golden Handset
Towcester Hosts 2025 English Greyhound Derby Amid Industry Scrutiny
Gary Oldman and David Beckham Knighted in King's Birthday Honours
Over 30,000 Lightning Strikes Recorded Across UK During Overnight Storms
Princess of Wales Returns to Public Duties at Trooping the Colour
Red Arrows Use Sustainable Fuel in Historic Trooping the Colour Flypast
Former Welsh First Minister Addresses Unionist Concerns Over Irish Language
Iran Signals Openness to Nuclear Negotiations Amid Ongoing Regional Tensions
France Bars Israeli Arms Companies from Paris Defense Expo
King Charles Leads Tribute to Air India Crash Victims at Trooping the Colour
Jack Pitchford Embarks on 200-Mile Walk to Support Stem Cell Charity
Surrey Hikers Take on Challenge of Climbing 11 Peaks in a Single Day
UK Deploys RAF Jets to Middle East Amid Israel-Iran Tensions
Two Skydivers Die in 'Tragic Accident' at Devon Airfield
Sainsbury's and Morrisons Accused of Displaying Prohibited Tobacco Ads
UK Launches National Inquiry into Grooming Gangs
Families Seek Closure After Air India Crash
Gold Emerges as Global Safe Haven Amid Uncertainty
Trump Reports $57 Million Earnings from Crypto Venture
Trump's Military Parade Sparks Concerns Over Authoritarianism
Nationwide 'No Kings' Protests Challenge Trump's Leadership
UK Deploys Jets to Middle East Amid Rising Tensions
Trump's Anti-War Stance Tested Amid Israel-Iran Conflict
Germany Holds First Veterans Celebration Since WWII
U.S. Health Secretary Dismisses CDC Vaccine Advisory Committee
Minnesota Lawmaker Melissa Hortman and Husband Killed in Targeted Attack; Senator John Hoffman and Wife Injured
Exiled Iranian Prince Reza Pahlavi Urges Overthrow of Khamenei Regime
×