Barack Obama told former members of his administration he is disturbed by the Justice Department’s move to dismiss its criminal case against retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
A tape of the former president’s private warning Friday to members of the Obama Alumni Association was obtained and reported by Yahoo News after newly released documents raised questions about the extent to which Obama was privy to the actions taken by the FBI in its investigation of Flynn.
“The news over the last 24 hours I think has been somewhat downplayed — about the Justice Department dropping charges against Michael Flynn,” Obama said.
“And the fact that there is no precedent that anybody can find for somebody who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free. That’s the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic, not just institutional norms, but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk. And when you start moving in those directions, it can accelerate pretty quickly as we’ve seen in other places,” he added, misstating that Flynn was charged with perjury. Flynn was charged with false statements to the FBI about his conversations with a Russian envoy.
Obama highlighted the Flynn case as an urgent reason for former Obama administration officials to support Joe Biden, Obama’s vice president who is now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to take on President Trump in this year’s election. An “anemic and spotty” response to the coronavirus pandemic also served as a catalyst for Obama to commit to backing Biden.
“It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset, of ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘to heck with everybody else,’ when that mindset is operationalized in our government,” Obama said. “So that’s why, I, by the way, am going to be spending as much time as necessary and campaigning as hard as I can for Joe Biden.”
Flynn pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his conversations with Russia’s then-ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, during the transition period, but he later declared his innocence and argued he was set up by the FBI.
The Justice Department filed to dismiss criminal charges against Flynn on Thursday, leaving it up to a federal judge overseeing the case to make the final determination on whether to dismiss it. The move has been criticized by some law enforcement officials and Democrats as a sign that the Justice Department under Attorney General William Barr has caved to political pressure from the administration.
Timothy Shea, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said in his 20-page court filing that the FBI lacked proper justification to interview Flynn. Also included in the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss was an exhibit including notes from an interview that special counsel Robert Mueller’s team conducted with former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. These declassified notes show Yates expressing how she was shocked to learn details about Flynn’s intercepted phone calls with Kislyak from Obama while former FBI Director James Comey appeared to be giving his superior at the time the run-around.
Flynn was picked by Obama to serve as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2012, but he was pushed out of the position after clashing with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and others. He retired from the Army in 2014, a year before his stint was supposed to end.
Former Obama administration officials told the New York Times that Obama warned Trump against hiring Flynn when the two met in the Oval Office after the November 2016 election. Then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer said in May 2017 the report shouldn’t be surprising because Flynn was a critic of Obama by the end of his administration.
Trump did not heed Obama’s warning and brought Flynn on as his first national security adviser. But Flynn was relieved of his post within a matter of weeks in February 2017 as it was believed he misled Vice President Mike Pence and other top White House officials about conversations he had with Kislyak. Upon the recent release of FBI notes dislodged in a review of the Flynn case by a U.S. attorney, Pence said he was “inclined” to believe Flynn never meant to mislead him intentionally.
After the Justice Department moved to dismiss the Flynn case, Trump insisted the effort to investigate his former national security adviser was “treason.” He has also signaled an openness to inviting Flynn back into his administration.
Flynn’s lead attorney, former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell, argued that federal agents “set up” her client because they feared that as the incoming national security adviser, he was prepared to “audit” officials who served under Obama in the U.S. intelligence community.
The Russia investigation is being examined by U.S. Attorney John Durham. Barr, who appointed the Connecticut prosecutor to the task, has not dismissed the possibility of criminal prosecutions.
