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Trump pardons Michael Flynn, taking direct aim at Russia probe

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump pardoned his former national security adviser Michael Flynn on Wednesday, ending a yearslong prosecution in the Russia investigation that saw Flynn twice plead guilty to lying to the FBI and then reverse himself before the Justice Department stepped in to dismiss his case.

“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 truly fantastic Thanksgiving!”

The pardon, coming in
the waning weeks of Trump’s single term, is part of a broader effort by
the president to undo the results of a Russia investigation that
shadowed his administration and yielded criminal charges against a half
dozen associates. It comes just months after the president commuted the
sentence of another associate, Roger Stone, days before he was to report
to prison.

A Justice Department official said the department was
not consulted on the pardon and learned Wednesday of the plan. But the
official, who spoke on condition on anonymity to discuss internal
deliberations, noted that the president has the legal power to pardon
Flynn.

The move is likely to energize supporters who have taken
up Flynn as a cause celebre and rallied around the retired Army
lieutenant general as the victim of what they assert is an unfair
prosecution, even though Flynn twice admitted guilt. Trump has
repeatedly spoken warmly about Flynn and, in an indication of his
personal interest in his fate, asked then-FBI Director James Comey in
February 2017 to end a criminal investigation into the national security adviser.

In a statement, Flynn’s family thanked Trump “for answering our prayers and the prayers of a nation” by issuing the pardon.

Democrats
lambasted the pardon as undeserved and unprincipled. House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi called it “an act of grave corruption and a brazen abuse of
power,” while Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic chair of the House
Intelligence Committee, said a “pardon by Trump does not erase” the
truth of Flynn’s guilty plea, “no matter how Trump and his allies try to
suggest otherwise.”

“The President’s enablers have constructed an
elaborate narrative in which Trump and Flynn are victims and the
Constitution is subject to the whims of the president,” House Judiciary
Committee Chair Jerry Nadler said in a statement. “Americans soundly
rejected this nonsense when they voted out President Trump. ”

The pardon is the final step in a case defined by twists and turns. The most dramatic came in May when the Justice Department abruptly moved to dismiss the case,
insisting that Flynn should not have been interviewed by the FBI in the
first place, only to have U.S. District Justice Emmet Sullivan resist
the request and appoint a former judge to argue against the federal
government’s position and to evaluate whether Flynn should be held in
criminal contempt for perjury.

That former judge, John Gleeson,
called the Justice Department’s dismissal request an abuse of power and
said its grounds for dropping the case were ever-evolving and “patently pretextual.”

As
Sullivan declined to immediately dismiss the prosecution, Flynn lawyer
Sidney Powell sought to bypass the judge by asking a federal appeals
court to direct him to drop the matter. A three-judge panel did exactly
that, but the full court overturned that decision and sent case back to
Sullivan.

At a hearing in September, Powell told Sullivan that she
had discussed Flynn’s case with Trump but also said she did not want a
pardon — presumably because she wanted him to be vindicated in the
courts.

Powell emerged separately in recent weeks as a public face
of the Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of his election loss to
President-elect Joe Biden, but the Trump legal team distanced itself
from her after she advanced a series of uncorroborated conspiracy
claims.

The pardon spares Flynn the possibility of any prison
sentence, which Sullivan could potentially have imposed had he
ultimately rejected the Justice Department’s dismissal request. That
request was made after a review of the case by a federal prosecutor from
St. Louis who had been specially appointed by Attorney General William
Barr.

At issue in the prosecution was an FBI interview of Flynn,
days after Trump’s inauguration, about a conversation he had during the
presidential transition period with the then-Russian ambassador.

Flynn
acknowledged lying during that interview by saying he had not discussed
with the diplomat, Sergey Kislyak, sanctions that had just been imposed
on Russia for election interference by the outgoing Obama
administration. During that conversation, Flynn urged Kislyak for Russia
to be “even-keeled” in response to the punitive measures, and assured
him “we can have a better conversation” about relations between the
countries after Trump became president.

The conversation alarmed
the FBI, which at the time was investigating whether the Trump campaign
and Russia had coordinated to sway the election. In addition, White
House officials were stating publicly that Flynn and Kislyak had not
discussed sanctions, which the FBI knew was untrue.

Flynn was
ousted from his position in February 2017 after news broke that Obama
administration officials had warned the White House that Flynn had
indeed discussed sanctions with Kislyak and was vulnerable to being
blackmailed. He pleaded guilty months later to a false statement charge.

But last May, after years of defending the prosecution, the Justice Department abruptly reversed its position.

It
asserted the FBI had no basis to interview Flynn about Kislyak and that
any statements he made during the interview were not material to the
FBI’s broader counterintelligence probe. The department also pointed to
internal FBI notes showing agents had planned to close out the
investigation weeks before interviewing Kislyak.

Flynn, of
Middletown, Rhode Island, was among the first people charged in
Mueller’s investigation and provided such extensive cooperation that prosecutors did not recommend any prison time, leaving open the possibility of probation.

But
the morning he was to have been sentenced, after a stern rebuke about
his behavior from Sullivan, Flynn asked for the hearing to be cut short
so that he could continue cooperating and earn credit toward a more
lenient sentence.

After that, he hired new attorneys — including
Powell, a conservative commentator and outspoken critic of Mueller’s
investigation — who took a far more confrontational stance to the
government and had tried to withdraw his guilty plea.