On Tuesday, the Department of Justice released FBI documents that completely exonerate former Trump administration national security advisor Michael Flynn. Flynn pled guilty to a procedural crime after the FBI agents handling his case improperly threatened lengthy and expensive legal procedures against him and his son. Flynn had spoken with the Russian Ambassador as part of the transition process to the incoming Trump administration, as is routine. High-level Obama-era officials, afraid of the corruption that Flynn would uncover, pressed to convict him under the never-used Logan Act even after the FBI found no evidence of wrongdoing.
Flynn update – the DOJ has produced more evidence.
A page of notes from Peter Strzok, taken possibly between January 3 and January 5, 2017.
This is when the FBI Washington Field Office wanted to drop the Flynn case.
"Additional documents may be forthcoming" pic.twitter.com/eyZZbZUY6q
— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) June 23, 2020
Clear evidence of FBI misconduct
during this investigation, michael flynn, trump's former head of the NSA, announced to twitter that wieners laptop had been found to contain evidence accusing clinton of sex crimes against minors. these tweets have, of course, since been deleted. pic.twitter.com/L3zeEMyc2W
— ᕲᐺ✵ ✵ ✵ (@dankassdonnie) June 21, 2020
The documents released are the handwritten notes of now-disgraced ex-FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was running the Flynn case. The notes, which were taken in the early days of 2017, were released to Flynn’s legal team by acting US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Michael R. Sherwin. The notes would not have come to light had they not been discovered by a federal prosecutor tasked with reviewing the Flynn case.
On May 7, the DOJ dropped the charges against Flynn. Flynn had retracted his guilty plea on January 29 citing FBI coercion in extracting the original plea. Given the mounting evidence of misconduct, Attorney General Bill Barr appointed US attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri Jeffrey Jensen to review the case. Jensen has already released significant documents and is expected to release more soon.
Case against Flynn totally falls apart
Documents released earlier show that the FBI had moved to dismiss the Flynn case in early 2017 as there was no evidence of wrongdoing. Strzok insisted that the case stay open, with notes from another FBI official showing that they were investigating Flynn to find any pretext to get him out of the picture.
Although the FBI’s Washington Field Office recommended closing the counterintelligence investigation against Flynn on January 4, 2017, Strzok managed to force it to stay open claiming to others, honestly or not, that the top FBI officials wanted it to stay open.
Flynn’s lawyer Sidney Powell has said that “What is especially terrifying is that without the integrity of Attorney General Bill Barr and U.S. Attorney Jensen, we still would not have this clear exculpatory information as Mr. Van Grack and the prosecutors have opposed every request we have made.” Powell has also said that it appears, based on the notes and emails that the Department of Justice was determined at the time to prosecute Flynn, regardless of what they found.
