“I know you will now have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving!” Trump said on his Twitter account at the time of the announcement. The official pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials before the current president’s inauguration.
WASHINGTON D.C. (Times Media Mexico) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday pardoned his former national security adviser Michael Flynn. The latter pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials before the current president’s inauguration.
“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!” Trump said on his Twitter account at the time of the announcement.
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
Flynn’s secret talks with the Russian ambassador in Washington in December 2016, before Trump took office in June of the following year, were the cornerstone of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s extensive investigation into Russian interference in U.S. elections that brought the Republicans to the White House.
Trump fired Flynn 22 days after he began serving in his administration. However, the president has always argued that this investigation was a political “witch-hunt” and that Flynn, a former Army general who headed the Defense Intelligence Agency, was a “good man”.
Along these lines, and in a rarely seen move, the Justice Department dropped its case against Flynn in May of this year, claiming that the alleged lies to the FBI were not significant. Attorney General and agency head William Barr has been accused of giving up the impartiality required by his position to become an ally of the president.
In June, a federal appeals court ordered a judge to immediately dismiss the criminal case against Flynn. Specifically, a three-judge appeals panel denied Federal District Judge Emmet Sullivan the authority to examine whether the government’s surprise motion to dismiss the case, in which Flynn pleaded guilty twice to lying to the FBI, was part of a corrupt effort to aid one of Trump’s political allies.
The appeals court said that such an investigation would damage the executive branch’s exclusive procedural power. “The procedures likely contemplated would require the Executive to disclose the internal deliberative process behind its exercise of procedural discretion, which interferes with Article II prosecutorial authority,” the ruling added.
The ruling was a victory for Trump, who has repeatedly criticized the case against Flynn, indicating that it is part of a larger conspiracy by the Democrats to undermine him and his administration.
This is not the first time that Trump has used the presidency’s powers to decide these issues. In July of this year, he commuted the prison sentence of his friend Roger Stone, who was sentenced in February to 40 months in prison for obstructing a congressional investigation into the Russian plot.
“Roger Stone is now a free man,” the White House said in a statement, days before Trump’s longtime Republican political consultant and confidant appeared at a federal prison to begin serving his sentence.
