Former President Barack Obama slammed the Justice Department for abandoning its prosecution of President Trump's ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn, saying it puts "the rule of law is at risk."

Mr. Obama's comments came Friday night while privately talking to ex-members of his administration. A tape of the conversation was ...

There is absolutely no legitimate basis in law or in fact to dismiss Flynn’s guilty plea.

WASHINGTON -- Shortly after admitting guilt to a federal judge in December 2017 for lying to the FBI, Michael Flynn issued a statement saying what he did was wrong, and "through my faith in God, I am working to set things right."It turns out that the only higher power that Flynn needed was Attorney General William Barr.Barr's extraordinary decision to drop the criminal case against Flynn shocked legal experts, won President Donald Trump's praise and prompted a career prosecutor to quit the case. It was the latest in Barr's steady effort to undo the results of the investigation by Robert Mueller, the special counsel. Barr has portrayed his effort as rectifying injustice, and the president more bluntly as an exercise in political payback.In his decisions and public comments over the past year, Barr has built an alternate narrative to the one that Mueller laid out in his voluminous report. Where the special counsel focused on Russia's expansive effort to interfere in the 2016 election, the Trump campaign's openness to it and the president's determination to impede the inquiry, Barr has focused instead on the investigators. He has suggested that they were unleashed by law enforcement and intelligence officials bent on bringing political harm to Trump.Barr has also mischaracterized the findings of the Mueller investigation, questioned why it began in the first place, used legal maneuvers to undo its courtroom successes and opened his own investigation by a hand-picked prosecutor that could bring criminal charges against former U.S. officials who played a part in setting the original inquiry into motion. Mueller and Barr, once close friends, have been like two students standing shoulder to shoulder at a blackboard: What one has diligently written down, the other has tried to steadily erase.In an interview Thursday with CBS News, Barr said he considered the Flynn case to be "part of a number of related acts -- and we're looking at the whole pattern of conduct." (The same day, Trump called it "just one piece of a very dishonest puzzle.")Recent disclosures about the FBI's handling of the Flynn case raise questions about why the bureau's leadership sent agents to interview Flynn without coordinating with top Justice Department officials, the latest in a series of revelations about FBI abuses in politically charged investigations in recent years. Barr, however, even suggested that a theory of the case embraced by Mueller and his team might have made them blind to the facts."One of the things you have to guard against, both as a prosecutor and I think as an investigator, is that if you get too wedded to a particular outcome and you're pursuing a particular agenda, you close your eyes to anything that sort of doesn't fit with your preconception," he said. "And I think that's probably the phenomenon we're looking at here."But when Mueller made his findings public, many criticized him for doing the opposite. His conclusions, especially about whether Trump had committed any obstruction of justice offenses by impeding the inquiry, were dense, burdened by legalese and appeared to reflect a tortured debate among the special counsel's team. They delivered no easy sound bite that the president's opponents could seize upon -- allowing Trump to distort the judgments by calling them a vindication of his behavior.The Mueller report "bends over backwards" to show that the special counsel's team considered all of the legal and political ramifications of investigating a sitting president, said Matthew J. Jacobs, a former federal prosecutor and now a partner at Vinson & Elkins."It gives the benefit of the doubt to the subject of the investigation that in any quote-unquote normal criminal case doesn't happen and wouldn't exist," said Jacobs, who once worked for Mueller at the U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco.Barr's decision to drop the charges against Flynn was "unlike anything I've seen before," Jacobs said, adding that he saw no evidence whatsoever "that Gen. Flynn was set up or entrapped."In an unsolicited memo he wrote to the White House while still a lawyer in private practice in 2018, Barr unspooled his thoughts about what he called a "fatally misconceived" obstruction of justice theory the special counsel was reportedly pursuing as part of his investigation. Trump named him attorney general months later, but during his confirmation hearing, he pledged not to interfere with the work of Mueller and his team.Barr drew criticism for the way he characterized Mueller's findings last year in a four-page letter that -- for weeks -- served as the public's only picture of Mueller's 22-month investigation. Mueller privately wrote to the attorney general, saying he had mischaracterized the findings -- a letter Barr described as "snitty" -- and over time, Barr has repeatedly tried to emphasize the harm done to the investigative targets of the FBI and the special counsel's office.Barr's handling of the Mueller findings prompted a stinging rebuke in March from a Republican-appointed federal judge, who said the attorney general put forward a "distorted" and "misleading" account of the findings and lacked credibility on the topic.Barr has long insisted that he works independently of the White House, and in February, he said that Trump's public comments about the Justice Department sometimes made it "impossible" for him to do his job. Those comments came after Barr and other top department officials intervened to try to reduce a prison sentence in another case brought during the Mueller investigation: That of Roger Stone, a longtime friend of the president's who was convicted of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstruction of justice in a bid to thwart a congressional inquiry that threatened Trump.The president has made it clear both to aides and foreign officials that he sees Barr as a crucial ally in the grinding battle against his perceived enemies. Last July, the day after Mueller's congressional testimony seemed to lower the curtain on a more than two-year drama that had imperiled the Trump presidency, Trump was on the phone with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine asking him to assist the attorney general in an investigation "to get to the bottom of" how the Russia investigation began."As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller," the president said. The requests to Zelenskiy helped form the basis of an impeachment case against Trump in the ensuing months.Weeks after that phone call, Barr was on a plane to Rome with John Durham -- the prosecutor leading the Justice Department's investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation -- to seek evidence from Italian officials that might bolster a conspiracy theory long held by Trump: That American intelligence and law enforcement officials plotted with American allies to try to prevent him from winning the presidency in 2016.They did not appear to find any evidence. It remains uncertain, however, what Durham will find over his investigation, expected to finish sometime this year, and what effect it will have on the legacy of the Mueller investigation.The president, of course, has not waited to pass judgment. He has long publicly complained that the Flynn case was a product of a cabal of former officials conspiring against him, and he seems certain to promote its collapse as he ramps up his campaign for reelectionOn Thursday, the day the Justice Department dropped the criminal charges against Flynn -- the first top White House official to have been ensnared in the Russia investigation -- Trump was on the phone with President Vladimir Putin of Russia to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.Trump boasted that the call came at an opportune time. Things are "coming in line showing what a hoax this whole investigation was -- it was a total disgrace.""I wouldn't be surprised," he said he told Putin, "if you see a lot of things happen over the next number of weeks."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

After months of wrangling following the Russia probe, prosecutors will not go ahead with the case against Michael Flynn based on the former national security adviser's false statements to the FBI.

Fate and politics have rewarded decisions made by the former national security adviser and his legal team, ultimately delivering him from legal jeopardy after a years-long odyssey.

NPR's Ron Elving talks about the historic U.S. unemployment rate, and the Justice Department's move to drop its criminal case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

The US Justice Department seeks to drop criminal charges against President Donald Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn, following mounting pressure from Mr Trump's political allies.

In an abrupt about-face, the Justice Department on Thursday said it is dropping the criminal case against President Donald Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, abandoning a prosecution that became a rallying cry...

Van Grack's withdrawal follows the release of documents in the case, which Flynn's defenders say show evidence of government wrongdoing.

The Justice Department dropped its criminal case against former national security advisor Michael Flynn, who admitted to lying to FBI agents about his conversation with a Russian diplomat.

Trump said he's not to blame after the Labor Department reported a devastating loss of more than 20 million jobs in the coronavirus crisis last month.

The Department of Justice has decided to drop the criminal case against President Trump's former national security advisor Michael Flynn. CNBC's Kayla Tausche reports.

The US Justice Department on Thursday abruptly withdrew its case against former White House national security advisor Michael Flynn following mounting pressure from President Donald Trump's political allies on the right, handing the US president a major political victory.

After the justice department dropped charges against Trump’s ex-national security adviser, Obama expressed fear the US is headed in a dangerous direction

Barack Obama has reportedly said the “rule of law is at risk” in the US, after the justice department said it would drop its case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Related: For Trump, l'etat, c'est moi. Attorney General Barr does whatever he wants | Lloyd Green

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department's decision to drop the criminal case against Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump's former national security adviser, even though he had twice pleaded guilty to lying to investigators, was extraordinary and had no obvious precedent, a range of criminal law specialists said Thursday."I've been practicing for more time than I care to admit and I've never seen anything like this," said Julie O'Sullivan, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches criminal law at Georgetown University.The move is the latest in a series that the department, under Attorney General William Barr, has taken to undermine and dismantle the work of the investigators and prosecutors who scrutinized Russia's 2016 election interference operation and its links to people associated with the Trump campaign.The case against Flynn for lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador was brought by the office of the former special counsel, Robert Mueller. It had become a political cause for Trump and his supporters, and the president had signaled that he was considering a pardon once Flynn was sentenced. But Barr instead abruptly short-circuited the case.On Thursday, Timothy Shea, the interim U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia, told the judge overseeing the case, Emmet G. Sullivan, that prosecutors were withdrawing the case. They were doing so, he said, because the department could not prove to a jury that Flynn's admitted lies to the FBI about his conversations with the ambassador were "material" ones.The move essentially erases Flynn's guilty pleas. Because he was never sentenced and the government is unwilling to pursue the matter further, the prosecution is virtually certain to end, although the judge must still decide whether to grant the department's request to dismiss it "with prejudice," meaning it could not be refiled in the future.A range of former prosecutors struggled to point to any previous instance in which the Justice Department had abandoned its own case after obtaining a guilty plea. They portrayed the justification Shea pointed to -- that it would be difficult to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the lies were material -- as dubious."A pardon would have been a lot more honest," said Samuel Buell, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches criminal law at Duke University.The law regarding what counts as "material" is extremely forgiving to the government, Buell added. The idea is that law enforcement is permitted to pursue possible theories of criminality and to interview people without having firmly established that there was a crime first.James G. McGovern, a defense lawyer at Hogan Lovells and a former federal prosecutor, said juries rarely bought a defendant's argument that a lie did not involve a material fact."If you are arguing 'materiality,' you usually lose, because there is a tacit admission that what you said was untrue, so you lose the jury," he said.No career prosecutors signed the motion. Shea is a former close aide to Barr. In January, Barr installed him as the top prosecutor in the district that encompasses the nation's capital after maneuvering out the Senate-confirmed former top prosecutor in that office, Jessie K. Liu.Soon after, in an extraordinary move, four prosecutors in the office abruptly quit the case against Trump's longtime friend Roger Stone. They did so after senior Justice Department officials intervened to recommend a more lenient prison term than standard sentencing guidelines called for in the crimes Stone was convicted of committing -- including witness intimidation and perjury -- to conceal Trump campaign interactions with WikiLeaks.It soon emerged that Barr had also appointed an outside prosecutor, Jeff Jensen, the U.S. attorney in St. Louis, to review the Flynn case files. The department then began turning over FBI documents showing internal deliberations about questioning Flynn, like what warnings to give -- even though such files are usually not provided to the defense.Flynn's defense team has mined such files for ammunition to portray the FBI as running amok in its decision to question Flynn in the first place. The questioning focused on his conversations during the transition after the 2016 election with the Russian ambassador about the Obama administration's imposition of sanctions on Russia for its interference in the American election.The FBI had already concluded that there was no evidence that Flynn, a former Trump campaign adviser, had personally conspired with Russia about the election, and it had decided to close out the counterintelligence investigation into him. Then questions arose about whether and why Flynn had lied to administration colleagues like Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with the ambassador.Because the counterintelligence investigation was still open, the bureau used it as a basis to question Flynn about the conversations and decided not to warn him at its onset that it would be a crime to lie. Notes from Bill Priestap, then the head of the FBI's counterintelligence division, show that he wrote at one point about the planned interview: "What's our goal? Truth/admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?"Barr has also appointed another outside prosecutor, John H. Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to reinvestigate the Russia investigators even though the department's independent inspector general was already scrutinizing them.And his department has intervened in a range of other ways, from seeking more comfortable prison accommodations last year for Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, to abruptly dropping charges in March against two Russian shell companies that were about to go to trial for financing schemes to interfere in the 2016 election using social media.Barr has let it be known that he does not think the FBI ever had an adequate legal basis to open its Russia investigation in the first place, contrary to the judgment of the Justice Department's inspector general.In an interview on CBS News on Thursday, Barr defended the dropping of the charges against Flynn on the grounds that the FBI "did not have a basis for a counterintelligence investigation against Flynn at that stage."Anne Milgram, a former federal prosecutor and former New Jersey attorney general who teaches criminal law at New York University, defended the FBI's decision to question Flynn in January 2017. She said that much was still a mystery about the Russian election interference operation at the time and that Flynn's lying to the vice president about his postelection interactions with a high-ranking Russian raised new questions.But, she argued, the more important frame for assessing the dropping of the case was to recognize how it fit into the larger pattern of the Barr-era department "undercutting the law enforcement officials and prosecutors who investigated the 2016 election and its aftermath," which she likened to "eating the Justice Department from the inside out."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

Democrats outraged by move to clear former national security adviser who already pleaded guilty

Pardoning cronies is offensive but precedented. Using DoJ to go after enemies is Nixonian

Former President Barack Obama (seen left with then-President-elect Donald Trump at the White House in 2017) on Friday blasted the decision to drop the case against ex-NSA Michael Flynn (right).

'The interrogation of Michael Flynn was not an inquiry. Make no mistake, it was a trap,' White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a long speech at the top of her press briefing Friday.

The head of the conservative 'Freedom Caucus' says government investigators may have 'tampered' with evidence that helped secure fired National Security Advisor Mike Flynn's guilty plea.

Former President Barack Obama excoriated Justice Department over its decision to drop its case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, during a private call with the Obama Alumni Association, Yahoo News reported."There is no precedent that anybody can find" in which "someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free," Obama said, though he misstated the crime Flynn pleaded guilty to.The former national security adviser pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to the FBI as part of the Russia probe. After initially cooperating with prosecutors, Flynn hired a more combative defense team that called for a judge to dismiss the case after alleging prosecutorial misconduct."That's the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic — not just institutional

President Trump said he would considering bringing Michael Flynn back to work at the White House and expressed confidence his former national security adviser was going to be cleared. 

Unsealed FBI documents from 2017 reveal a plan to close an investigation of former national security advisor Mike Flynn due to a lack of 'derogatory' evidence.

Obama's knowledge of Michael Flynn's (pictured) calls with the Russian Ambassador has come to light after documents were declassified in a motion to dismiss case against Flynn.

Johnny Flynn transformed into the British icon who paved the way for a new generation of performers and created electric sounds accompanied with a larger-than-life stage presence.

In the clip, Johnny's David doubts whether his album will be a success in the US seeking reassurance from his publicist Ron Oberman, as the film depicts the birth of his alter-ego Ziggy Stardust.

Former President Barack Obama (seen left with then-President-elect Donald Trump at the White House in 2017) on Friday blasted the decision to drop the case against ex-NSA Michael Flynn (right).

The bombshell notes reveal the bureau discussed how to approach its investigation into Michael Flynn's involvement with Russia.

Potomac Watch: New documents shock the conscience and demonstrate the need for accountability. Images: AFP via Getty Images Composite: Mark Kelly

The decision by close Trump ally Attorney General Bill Barr effectively reversed 18 months of work by the department and FBI under Barr's predecessors.

The action on Thursday was a stunning reversal for one of the signature cases brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. It comes even though prosecutors for the past three years have maintained that Flynn lied to the FBI in a January 2017 interview about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

President Trump, who had publicly attacked the case against Flynn and has frequently castigated the FBI, said he was "very happy" for his former aide.

U.S. President Donald Trump described his former national security adviser Michael Flynn as an 'innocent man' after learning that the U.S. Justice Department on Thursday abruptly sought to drop the criminal charges against Flynn.

White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany on Friday said it appears that the FBI 'manufactured' a crime in the case of President Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn, after the Department of Justice moved to drop the case on Thursday.

U.S. President Donald Trump described his former national security adviser Michael Flynn as an 'innocent man' after learning that the U.S. Justice Department on Thursday abruptly sought to drop the criminal charges against Flynn.

White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany on Friday said it appears that the FBI 'manufactured' a crime in the case of President Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn, after the Department of Justice moved to drop the case on Thursday.

Hains, Brigid, 1969-

‘His contact with Russian envoy was entirely appropriate’

Barker Library - TF550.B35 2019

Rotch Library - BV3030.F59 2016