Wed, 25 November 2020 NEWSMAX
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn
(Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)
Trump tweeted:
"It is my Great Honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon. Congratulations to @GenFlynn and his wonderful family, I know you will now have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving!"
Before the pardon, Flynn tweeted a Bible verse, Jeremiah 1:19, which reads:
"'They will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you and will rescue you,' declares the Lord."
Flynn is the second Trump associate convicted in the Russia probe to be granted clemency by the president. Trump commuted the sentence of longtime confidant Roger Stone just days before he was to report to prison. It is part of a broader effort to undo the results of an investigation that for years has shadowed his administration and yielded criminal charges against a half dozen associates.
The action voids the criminal case against Flynn just as a federal judge was weighing, skeptically, whether to grant a Justice Department request to dismiss the prosecution despite Flynn's own guilty plea to lying to the FBI about his Russia contacts.
The move is likely to energize supporters who have taken up the case as a cause celebre and rallied around the retired Army lieutenant general as the victim of what they assert is an unfair prosecution. Trump himself has repeatedly spoken warmly about Flynn, even though special counsel Robert Mueller's prosecutors once praised him as a model cooperator in their probe into ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.
The pardon is the final step in a case defined by twists and turns over the last year after the Justice Department abruptly move to dismiss the case, insisting Flynn should have never been interviewed by the FBI in the first place, only to have U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan refuse the request and appoint a former judge to argue against the federal government's position.
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