Attorney General William Barr said the Justice Department dropped charges against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn to restore a proper standard of justice.
During an interview with CBS on Thursday, Barr addressed the DOJ’s decision, denying the president had any influence on the matter.
“When the special counsel report was released last year, you were accused by critics of putting your thumb on the scale in the president’s favor. Are you doing the president’s bidding in Gen. Flynn’s case?” CBS’s Catherine Herridge asked Barr.
“I’m doing the law’s bidding. I’m doing my duty under the law, as I see it,” Barr said in response.
The federal judge tasked with overseeing the case will now make a final determination as to whether the charges will be dismissed.
In 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with a Russian diplomat prior to Donald Trump’s inauguration as president. However, unearthed notes between top FBI agents reveal plans to interview Flynn with the intent to have him either prosecuted or fired from his position at the White House.
Barr addressed the legal understanding of false statements in the interview, saying that a lie needs to be “material to a legitimate investigation.”
“To constitute a false statement, you need two things. One, you need a false statement, lie. And then, it has to be material to a legitimate investigation. And I think on the question of lying, it’s as Comey, Director Comey, said just a few months after this episode, he said it was a closed question. And that, while you might make that argument, it was a very closed question,” Barr said.
“But it’s on the question of materiality that we feel really that a crime cannot be established here because there was not, in our view, a legitimate investigation going on. They did not have a basis for a counterintelligence investigation against Flynn at that stage, based on a perfectly legitimate and appropriate call he made as a member of the transition.”
Barr also said the DOJ’s decision to drop criminal charges against Flynn was part of his mission to restore confidence in a single standard of justice to the judicial system.
“One of the reasons I came back is because I was concerned that people were feeling there were two standards of justice in this country. And that the political and that the justice, or the law enforcement process, was being used to play political games. And I wanted to make sure that we restore confidence in the system. There’s only one standard of justice. And I believe that this case, that justice in this case requires dismissing the charges against Gen. Flynn,” said Barr.
