Attorney General William Barr has ordered an outside prosecutor to review the criminal case against Gen. Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser for President Donald Trump, according to reports now breaking.
Flynn had pled guilty and was awaiting sentence when he made a motion to withdraw his guilty plea and has raised questions about FBI and prosecutorial misconduct in the case.
Barr has appointed the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, Jeffrey Jensen, to look into the FBI interview that caused controversy, according to the reports.
From NBC:
Jensen, who was nominated by Trump in 2017, is a former FBI agent. He is tasked with looking into how the FBI’s interview of Flynn took place, as well as how the department handled it afterward, the people familiar with the inquiry said. They said they did not know the timeline for completing the inquiry. Flynn’s sentencing hearing, which had been scheduled for this month, was postponed to allow time to sort through the latest motions by the defense and prosecution. No new date has been set.
This comes in the middle of media efforts to paint Barr and the DOJ as agents of Trump after Barr and DOJ officials pulled back a sentencing recommendation that prosecutors made for Roger Stone. But as Barr explained, the leadership had been given to understand that the prosecutors would be asking for less than what they ultimately did ask for and leadership has a right to decide what to recommend in the interests of justice and they didn’t think a 7-9 year sentence was right.
This also comes on the same day as the DOJ said they would not be prosecuting Andrew McCabe for the lying that the IG said he did in the IG report, disappointing many who anticipated a prosecution. It should be noted however, that the DOJ letter making that announcement specifically referenced the IG report. It does not pertain to the pending Durham investigation into the Russia probe.
But sounds like good news to finally look into the many questions surrounding the Flynn matter.
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