Michael Flynn in February 2017. The retired general was a trusted Trump surrogate on the campaign trail in 2016. Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty ImagesAdd caption
Donald Trump has pardoned Michael Flynn, his first national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with a Russian
official.
Trump
announced the long-expected pardon in a tweet on Wednesday.
“It is my Great Honor to
announce that General Michael T Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon,” Trump
wrote. “Congratulations to General Flynn and his wonderful family, I know you
will now have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving.”
Trump is expected to offer pardons
to a number of key aides before he leaves office on 20 January.
He has already commuted the sentence of Roger Stone, a longtime
ally who like Flynn, campaign manager Paul Manafort and adviser George Papadopoulos was convicted under special
counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian election interference and
links between Trump and Moscow.
Stone was sentenced to more
than three years in prison, after being found guilty of obstruction, lying to
Congress and witness intimidation. His conviction stands.
Flynn had not been sentenced. Neither have Trump’s former campaign CEO and White House strategist Steve Bannon, charged with fraud, or his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, reportedly under federal investigation for potential violations of lobbying law.
While the pardon for Flynn was widely
expected, its announcement prompted widespread criticism.
Adam Schiff, the Democratic chair of the House intelligence
committee, wrote on Twitter: “Donald Trump has repeatedly
abused the pardon power to reward friends and protect those who covered up for
him. This time he pardons Michael Flynn, who lied to hide his dealings with the
Russians. It’s no surprise that Trump would go out as he came in – Crooked to
the end.”
Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, called it “an act of grave corruption and a brazen
abuse of power”.
Noah Bookbinder, executive director of the nonprofit government
watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or Crew, said
the Flynn pardon “once again shows that to Donald Trump, ‘law
and order’ does not apply to his wealthy white allies, it was merely a racist
dog whistle meant to win him political support.”
Flynn, a retired general, was a trusted Trump surrogate on the
campaign trail in 2016. But he served just 24 days in the White House before Trump fired him for lying to Vice-President Mike
Pence about a conversation in which he told Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak
Moscow should not respond to sanctions imposed by the Obama administration.
As part of a deal with Mueller, Flynn
pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. He became a cause célèbre among Trump
supporters, who claimed he was victimised by the Obama administration and
entrapped by the bureau.
Flynn’s fate became entangled with that
of James Comey, the FBI director Trump fired in May 2017, triggering the
appointment of Mueller.
On Wednesday another former prosecutor,
Mimi Rocah, now district attorney-elect for Westchester county, New York,
tweeted that the road to Flynn’s pardon “started with Trump telling Comey, ‘I
hope you can see your way clear to letting this go’ and Comey resisted that
pressure”.
In January this year Flynn sought to withdraw his guilty plea, prompting a
drawn-out legal battle between the presiding judge and a Department of Justice
led by William Barr, a close Trump ally.
Trump repeatedly voiced his support, notwithstanding a frequently cited tweet from December 2017 in
which he wrote: “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the
Vice-President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame
because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to
hide!”
Flynn was represented by Sidney Powell, a lawyer recently
ejected from Trump’s lawsuits challenging results in his election defeat by Joe
Biden after she voiced wild conspiracy theories. In court in September, Powell said she had asked Trump not to pardon Flynn.
On Wednesday, Rocah wrote: “Henchman
Barr tried to do it and was stopped by judicial oversight. So, here we are.
Corruption from beginning to end.”
Trump has pardoned allies including the former New York
police commissioner Bernard Kerik and former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio. Debate now swirls about whether the president will try to pardon himself – a move that would be historically
unusual, and which if successful could only apply to federal issues
and not cases at state level.
In a statement on Wednesday, White House
press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Flynn “should never have been prosecuted
[and] should not require a pardon” because “he is an innocent man”.
In a statement, Flynn’s family said they were “grateful” to Trump
for “answering our prayers, and the prayers of a nation, by removing the heavy
burden of injustice off the shoulders of our brother Michael, with a full
pardon of innocence”.
In fact, as the Department of Justice points out, a presidential pardon still implies guilt.
A pardon is “granted in recognition of
the applicant’s acceptance of responsibility for the crime”, the DoJ says, “and
established good conduct for a significant period of time after conviction or
completion of sentence.
“It does not signify innocence.”
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