The Justice Department on Thursday dropped its prosecution of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who had pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents about his conversations with a Russian diplomat in the weeks before President Donald Trump's inauguration.
The bombshell move, which was granted promptly by the federal judge in the case, comes more than two years after Flynn's guilty plea and agreement to cooperate with the then-ongoing investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
But it also comes as Flynn was trying to withdraw that plea on the claim that federal prosecutors had withheld potentially exculpatory material from him and his lawyers.
Trump lauded the move to drop the case against Flynn, a retired U.S. Army lieutnant general. The president had strongly criticized Flynn's prosecution in the past.
"He was an innocent man," Trump told reporters at the White House. "Now in my book he's an even greater warrior."
In court documents filed in U.S. District Court in Wasington, the Justice Department said it is abandoining the prosecution of Flynn after "a considered review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including newly discovered and disclosed information."
"The Government has concluded that the interview of Mr. Flynn was untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn — a no longer justifiably predicated investigation that the FBI had, in the Bureau's own words, prepared to close because it had yielded an 'absence of any derogatory information,' " the filing said.
"The Government is not persuaded that the January 24, 2017 interview was conducted with a legitimate investigative basis and therefore does not believe Mr. Flynn's statements were material even if untrue. Moreover, we not believe that the Government can prove either the relevant false statements or their materiality beyond a reasonable doubt."
Timothy Shea, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, said in the filing that although Flynn had pleaded guilty to making false statements, "in the Government's assessment, however, he did so without full awareness of the circumstances of the newly discovered, disclosed, or declassified information as to the FBI's investigation of him."
Shea wrote, "Mr. Flynn stipulated to the essential element of materiality without cause to dispute it insofar as it concerned not his course of conduct but rather that of the agency investigating him, and insofar as it has been further illuminated by new information in discovery."
Flynn's lawyer, Sidney Powell, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Shortly before the news broke, a top prosecutor in Flynn's case had withdrawn from that case, according to a filing in federal court.
Flynn had spent just a handful of weeks of Trump's national security advisor. He resigned after admitting to lying to Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of his talks with Russia's ambassador to the United States.
Flynn's criminal sentencing had been repeatedly postponed.
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