US Attorney Whose Findings Helped Spur Flynn Pardon Resigns

Retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn speaks among President Donald Trump supporters who rally in Washington, on Dec. 12, 2020. Yong Wang/The Epoch Times

The U.S. attorney whose investigation into the FBI probe of former national security adviser Michael Flynn led to the Department of Justice dropping charges against him announced his resignation on Thursday.

Jeff Jensen, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, is resigning effective midnight Dec. 30, according to a press release from his office. He plans on joining a private law firm.

Jensen didn’t issue a statement but his office shared one from Attorney General William Barr, who said that the attorney “was always willing to serve” and do “whatever requested of him.”

“He did so admirably and was the epitome of professionalism. The Department benefited greatly from his sound judgment and broad perspective. It is my pleasure to call him my colleague and friend. I wish him the best moving forward,” said Barr, who is also departing the Department of Justice soon.

Jensen was nominated by Trump on July 14, 2017, and confirmed by the Senate in October of that year.

Barr in January directed Jensen to review the probe of Flynn, which led the one-time national security adviser into pleading guilty to a count of lying to the FBI.

But Jensen ended up recommending the department drop the charge against Flynn.

U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen. Department of Justice

“Through the course of my review of General Flynn’s case, I concluded the proper and just course was to dismiss the case. I briefed Attorney General Barr on my findings, advised him on these conclusions, and he agreed,” Jensen said in a statement in May when the department moved to drop the case.

In an unusual move, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, a Clinton appointee, refused to accept the action, and the case continued until this month when President Donald Trump pardoned Flynn and Sullivan subsequently dismissed the case.

Trump has said Flynn was “an innocent man” who was targeted by President Barack Obama’s administration to try to take him down.

Flynn told The Epoch Times that “the Deep State buried me six feet under the ground, wanted me to die.”

“Somehow, somebody stuck a straw up through that, or a straw was allowed to be stuck up to the air, and I laid down there for four years breathing through that straw. But that straw became wider, and wider, and wider over the years because the American people came to my family’s aid,” he added.