President Trump said he would welcome the return of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn to the White House.
“I would. I think he’s a great gentleman,” Trump said in an interview with CBS News published on Wednesday. “He’s been in the military for many, many decades actually — highly respected.”
Trump ousted his first national security adviser for lying to FBI investigators about a conversation with a Russian envoy in December 2016 during the Trump transition, to which Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017. After switching legal teams, Flynn claimed he was set up by the FBI. In May, the Justice Department said they would move to drop the case, with the motion now underway in the courts.
Trump said on Monday that he has not ruled out a pardon for his former adviser and would await the result of efforts to dismiss his case. Trump has previously said that Flynn was “targeted in order to try and take down a president.”
Some Trump allies are pushing for Flynn’s return to the fold. “He’s the perfect example of deep-state victimization,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told Politico in discussing Flynn’s potential to stump for the president on the campaign trail, as he did in 2016. “Great surrogate — lots of people would come to see him.”
