Flynn Pardoned
Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2020 11:56 pm
The man who chanted "Lock her up!" at the GOP convention is himself pardoned.
by the way, Flynn was represented by Sydney Powell.CNN wrote:President Donald Trump announced in a tweet Wednesday that he has granted his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, a "full pardon," wiping away the guilty plea of the intelligence official, lobbyist and conservative fringe darling for lying to the FBI.
The pardon, coming as Trump enters his last days as President, bookends his four years in office and his supporters' revisionist take on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Since January 2017, the Flynn case has been among the defining scandals and sagas of Trump's presidency and Attorney General William Barr's leadership of the Justice Department.
Flynn's criminal charge had hung over the Trump presidency and shaded nearly every major scandal Trump faced, because Flynn's lies to the FBI had occurred days into the new administration and were about his transition-time contacts with Russia, which opened the door for warmer relations with a country that had just meddled in the US presidential election.
The pardon also ends a three-year legal saga where, most recently, Flynn's charge hung in an appeals court in a fight over separation of powers, while the Justice Department was trying to drop the case. The trial-court judge overseeing the case had not taken action since the appeals fight, and was considering whether to dismiss the case or to sentence Flynn. The Justice Department has said Flynn never should have been investigated by the FBI and that his lies to them in January 2017 were immaterial, while Flynn recanted his admissions of guilt.