May 7, 2020
By: Staff Report
The Justice Department on Thursday said it is dropping the criminal case against President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser, General Michael Flynn.
“The Government is not persuaded that the January 24, 2017 interview was conducted with a legitimate investigative basis and therefore does not believe Mr. Flynn’s statements were material even if untrue,” the department said in its motion. “Moreover, we [do] not believe that the Government can prove either the relevant false statements or their materiality beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Jeffrey Jensen, the U.S. attorney in St. Louis who Attorney General William Barr had chosen to review Flynn’s case, said he had recommended dropping the charges.
“Through the course of my review of General Flynn’s case, I concluded the proper and just course was to dismiss the case,” Jensen said in a statement. “I briefed Attorney General Barr on my findings, advised him on these conclusions, and he agreed.”
The DOJ said it believed the FBI investigation into Flynn had been conducted improperly after uncovering new internal bureau communications.
Last week, a stack of new internal FBI documents unsealed Wednesday show that top FBI officials discussed their motivations for interviewing then-national security adviser Michael Flynn in the White House in January 2017 — and openly indicated that their “goal” was “to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired.”
“What is our goal?” one of the notes read. “Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?”
“If we get him to admit to breaking the Logan Act, give facts to DOJ + have them decide,” another note read. Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley called the document’s implications “chilling.”
Michael Flynn, a 33-year, 3-star war hero, was accused of willfully and knowingly uttering false statements to the FBI regarding two different conversations that transpired between himself and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. General Flynn would later come to state that he was coerced into making these false statements, and claims his innocence, stating no wrongdoing on his part.