U.S. wants to drop case against Trump ex-adviser Flynn, who admitted lying to FBI

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday abruptly asked a judge to drop criminal charges against Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn following mounting pressure from the Republican president and his political allies on the right.

The move drew furious criticism from congressional Democrats and others who accused the department and Attorney General William Barr of bending to Trump’s wishes and improperly protecting his friends and associates in criminal cases.

Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general who served as an adviser to Trump during the 2016 campaign, had been seeking to withdraw his 2017 guilty plea in which he admitted to lying to the FBI about his interactions with Russia’s U.S. ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the weeks before Trump took office.

The Justice Department filed a motion to dismiss the charges with U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, who has presided over the case. Sullivan now must rule on the motion.

Trump, who had publicly attacked the case against Flynn, said he was “very happy” for his former aide, adding, “Yes, he was a great warrior, and he still is a great warrior. Now in my book he’s an even greater warrior.” Trump in March said he was considering a full pardon and accused the FBI and Justice Department of having “destroyed” Flynn’s life and that of his family.

Flynn was one of several former Trump aides charged under former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that detailed Moscow’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election to boost Trump’s candidacy and contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russia. Trump’s long-time friend and adviser Roger Stone and his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort both were convicted and sentenced to multi-year prison terms.

The Justice Department said in its court filing it is no longer persuaded that the FBI’s Jan. 24, 2017 interview with Flynn that underpinned the charges was conducted with a “legitimate investigative basis” and does not think Flynn’s statements were “material even if untrue.”

It marked the latest instance of the department under Barr, a Trump political loyalist, changing course under public pressure from the president to go light on one of his allies. In February, Barr and other senior department officials abandoned a tough sentencing recommendation by their own career prosecutors in Stone’s case after Trump publicly lashed out at the prosecution team. The prosecutors quit the case in protest.

Shortly before the Flynn motion was filed on Thursday, career federal prosecutor Brandon Van Grack withdrew from the case and other related legal matters. He remains a Justice Department employee, a department spokeswoman said.

‘WITHOUT PRECEDENT’

Trump critics have accused him of becoming emboldened after being acquitted in his Senate impeachment trial in February and interfering in cases involving people close to him.

“Flynn PLEADED GUILTY to lying to investigators. The evidence against him is overwhelming,” Jerrold Nadler, the Democratic chairman of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, wrote on Twitter. “The decision to overrule the special counsel is without precedent and warrants an immediate explanation.”

Former federal prosecutors expressed concern over Barr’s conduct.

“We have to be deeply skeptical that this is anything other than a further capturing of our criminal justice system for the benefit of the president,” said Noah Bookbinder, a former prosecutor who now heads the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics advocacy group.

Seth Waxman, another former prosecutor now in private practice, added, “To have the case dismissed like this raises a lot of uncertainty for the institution of the Department of Justice.”

Barr was named by Trump as attorney general well after the case against Flynn was brought. Barr three months ago named Jeffrey Jensen, a U.S. attorney in Missouri, to review the handling of the case. Thursday’s move came after Jensen said he “concluded the proper and just course was to dismiss the case.”

Trump fired Flynn as national security adviser after only 24 days on the job when it emerged that Flynn had misled Vice President Mike Pence and the FBI about his Kislyak dealings. The charges related to Flynn’s communications with Kislyak in December 2016, after Trump won the election but before he took office.

According to the indictment, Flynn discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia and asked Kislyak to help delay a U.N. vote seen as damaging to Israel, a move that contradicted the policies of then-President Barack Obama.

Flynn was supposed to cooperate with prosecutors under his plea deal. He later switched lawyers and tactics, arguing that prosecutors had tricked him into lying about his conversations with Kislyak.

The pressure from Trump allies to drop the Flynn charges intensified last week after partially redacted documents turned over to Flynn’s defense and then made public in the court record showed more about the FBI’s thinking ahead of its interview with Flynn.

An unidentified FBI agent wrote: “What is our goal? Truth/admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?”

Flynn’s allies have argued those documents show the FBI was out to get him.

“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,” the Justice Department wrote in its filing on Thursday.

Prosecutors had asked the judge in January to sentence Flynn to up to six months in prison, arguing that “the defendant has not learned his lesson. He has behaved as though the law does not apply to him, and as if there are no consequences for his actions.”

His sentencing has been deferred several times.

Flynn previously headed the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency but he was forced out in 2014 in part due to his management style and opinions on how to combat Islamist militancy. He joined Trump’s 2016 election campaign and at the Republican National Convention led supporters in chants of “Lock her up,” referring to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.