Washington, DC – US President Donald Trump expressed his happiness as he was informed of the breaking news that the Department of Justice was dropping its case against his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. The judicial organizations and justice pundits reacted in different tones and colors to this unprecedented decision against a person who had already pleaded guilty.
President Trump in the Oval Office at the White House said: I’m very happy for General Flynn. He was a great warrior and he still is a great warrior. In my book, he’s an even greater warrior.. What happened to him should never happen again and what happened to this presidency, to go through all of that and still do more than any president has ever done in the first three years.”
Expressing surprise, Trump said: “I didn’t know that was happening at this moment. I felt it was going to happen just by watching and seeing, like everybody else does. He was an innocent man. He is a great gentleman. He was targeted by the Obama administration and he was targeted in order to try and take down a president.”
“And what they’ve done is a disgrace and I hope a big price is going to be paid. A big price should be paid. There’s never been anything like this in the history of our country. What they did, what the Obama administration did, is unprecedented. It’s never happened. Never happened. A thing like this has never happened.”
“And I hope a lot of people are going to pay a big price because they’re dishonest, crooked people. They’re scum and I say it a lot, they’re scum, they’re human scum. This should never have happened in this country.”
“A duly elected president and they went after him by going after fine people and those fine people said, ‘No, I’m not going to lie, I can’t lie’. He’s not the only one. There are many of them. They could have said something like, ‘Oh, make up a lie, Trump loves somebody or something or some country’. And they said, ‘Oh, you wouldn’t have any problem.”
“That’s what they were trying to do and it’s a disgrace. The Obama administration Justice Department was a disgrace and they got caught. They got caught. Very dishonest people. But much more than dis – it’s treason, it’s treason.
“It’s pretty amazing when you think of it with what we’ve done with regulations and tax cuts and the Second Amendment and all of the things we’ve done. It’s never happened and, until two months ago, we had the greatest economy in history and unfortunately we had to close it.”
Continuing his attacks on the press, President Trump demanded that the media’s Pulitzer Prizes be taken back.
In a dramatic reversal on Thursday (May 7), the US Federal prosecutors decided to drop the criminal charges against Flynn today (May 7), saying Flynn’s admitted lies about contact with a Russian ambassador were not material and that a review found reason to doubt the investigators’ motives.
Flynn was among the ex-Trump aides convicted during the special counsel’s investigation into Russian election interference and had pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his interactions with Russia’s ambassador to the US.
Asked to comment on the decision, Paul Rosenzweig, Senior Fellow at the R Street Institute and former deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said, “This action by the Trump DOJ is another case demonstrating their disregard for the rule of law,” noting, “When the government excuses a person who has already admitted his crime under oath it calls into question all of our basic values.”
New York based Attorney Ravi Batra told IAT: “Lying to a federal agent is a felony. Indeed, perjury is a crime even if what you covered up wasn’t. The 5A is a right to be quiet, not to lie. The “entrapment notes” – better than a Hollywood script – along with Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, shame the FBI and the US Justice Department such that many a future jury will engage in charge-nullification.”
“It’s a sad and sordid affair, and with the withdrawal of the charges – despite a guilty plea (by a father to save his son) – it frees President Trump from using his pardon-power in the interest of justice,” added Batra. Earlier in March this year, Trump said he was considering pardoning Flynn.
“The Trump Justice Department disgraced itself by the politically motivated sabotage of the case against Flynn,” according to Andrew Kreig, an attorney and the director of the Washington, DC-based Justice Integrity Project, a non-partisan investigative reporting watchdog group that covered the case closely.
“The department’s action fits an overall pattern of increasing partisanship in ‘law enforcement,’” Kreig continued, “whereby allies of political leaders escape sanction despite seemingly solid evidence (in this case a guilty plea to drastically reduced charges) and opponents are threatened on the basis of highly dubious evidence.”
The case was dropped as news emerged of Flynn seeking to withdraw his plea. The decision by the US justice department also followed criticism of the case by President Donald Trump and his supporters.
Flynn, a retired Army three-star lieutenant general, lasted just 23 days as the National Security Council adviser. Trump had fired him after it emerged that he had discussed lifting sanctions on Russia with the Russian ambassador to Washington before Trump took office and had lied to the vice-president about that conversation.
Attorney General Bill Barr appointed US Attorney Jeffrey Jensen to review the handling of Flynn’s case earlier this year, after Flynn, with the help of a new legal team, accused prosecutors of misconduct, including withholding evidence. Jensen said in a statement that he “concluded the proper and just course was to dismiss the case”.
Tejinder Singh, Editor, India America Today & White House Correspondent