Michael Flynn, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, has obtained several documents from the Justice Department (DOJ) that further prove his innocence, his lawyer Sidney Powell says.
The documents, not released publicly due to the court’s protective order, were discovered by U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Jensen, who was tasked in January by Attorney General William Barr to review the case of the retired Army three-star general.
“The new production by Mr. Jensen includes 14 pages of notes and portions of a draft DOJ document—further exonerating General Flynn not only on the point of materiality but also of any intent to deceive or knowing false statement,” Powell, a former federal prosecutor, told The Epoch Times via email.
“It corroborates some information we already had—but from new sources—and it reveals some new information that has been withheld for three years.”
Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency under the Obama administration and former national security adviser to Trump, pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to the FBI in an interview almost a year earlier.
In January, he moved to withdraw his plea. In May, the DOJ moved to dismiss the case after Jensen’s review uncovered documents suggesting the FBI questioned Flynn to elicit false statements from him, which isn’t a proper investigative purpose.
District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is presiding over the case, took the unusual step of holding back his approval of the motion to dismiss, and even appointed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) to argue against the dismissal.
Backed by the DOJ, Flynn asked the District of Columbia appeals court for an extraordinary intervention (writ of mandamus), arguing that Sullivan doesn’t have the authority to delay or question the DOJ’s motion in these circumstances.
In the meantime, the Jensen review continues and as long as the case is open, Flynn is still slated to obtain the findings.
The DOJ’s most recent court filing says that “additional documents may be forthcoming.“
Flynn was originally a focus of the FBI in August 2016 because of alleged ties to Russia. After four months, the FBI moved to close the case, saying it found no derogatory information on Flynn.
Strzok intervened in January 2017 to keep the case open at the behest of FBI leadership, contemporaneous text messages show.
The Logan Act is an obscure 18th-century law prohibiting private citizens from conducting diplomacy with foreign nations without White House approval. Nobody has ever been successfully prosecuted under the statute and its constitutionality has been questioned, given the emphasis on First Amendment rights in recent decades.
According to the DOJ’s motion to dismiss, the FBI kept the case open using the justification that Flynn violated the Logan Act in his calls with Sergey Kislyak, who was the Russian ambassador to the United States at the time.
After Strzok and Supervisory Special Agent Joe Pientka interviewed Flynn on Jan. 24, 2017, Strzok said in a report from the interview that Flynn denied he made such a request to Kislyak.
Powell has said Flynn didn’t lie and, at most, didn’t remember.
