The Justice Department has agreed to pay President Donald Trump‘s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, $1.25 million to resolve his lawsuit alleging he was wrongfully prosecuted during the Russia investigation, according to a person familiar with the matter.
A court filing submitted jointly on Wednesday by Flynn’s legal team and attorneys for the Trump DOJ stated the parties reached an agreement to dismiss the case in exchange for “settlement funds.” Additional terms of the settlement have not been publicly disclosed.
The settlement marks a significant turn in one of the most politically charged legal sagas stemming from the Trump-Russia investigation during the president’s first term. Flynn had sought at least $50 million in damages, arguing that federal investigators and prosecutors engaged in misconduct that led to a baseless criminal case against him, although the actual amount received is likely to be far lower.
An attorney for Flynn did not respond to a request for comment.
In his original 2023 complaint, Flynn alleged that FBI and DOJ officials left over from the Obama administration, shortly after Trump’s 2016 election victory, pursued a politically motivated investigation tied to the broader Crossfire Hurricane inquiry into discredited allegations of Trump campaign ties to Russia. He claimed key Obama holdovers kept the inquiry open despite lacking evidence, and FBI agents orchestrated an interview designed to elicit statements that could be used against him.
Flynn’s lawsuit said senior Obama administration officials took actions just before President Donald Trump’s first inauguration that aimed to undermine the incoming Trump administration, including pursuing Flynn in a way that could lead to his removal as NSA and limit the incoming administration’s ability to shape national security policy.
Flynn’s lawsuit also pointed to the DOJ’s own 2020 motion to dismiss his criminal case, in which then-Attorney General Bill Barr concluded that prosecutors could not prove that Flynn’s statements to the FBI were material to any legitimate investigation, a key requirement for a charge of false statements. Trump later granted Flynn a full pardon.
Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, had originally pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about conversations he had had with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the transition between the Obama and Trump administrations. But Flynn later moved to withdraw his plea, arguing there was prosecutorial misconduct and an effort to coerce him into pleading guilty to something he did not do.
This newly reached settlement avoids a possibly lengthy legal battle that could have forced the government to defend the conduct of FBI agents and prosecutors involved in the early stages of the investigation into whether Russia acted to interfere to help Trump during his 2016 campaign. That investigation has since been largely discredited.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report ultimately concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election but failed to establish a criminal conspiracy link between the Trump campaign and Moscow, which had been the basis of Mueller’s investigative assignment.
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Additionally, subsequent reviews of the now-deceased former prosecutor’s work, including findings by the DOJ’s inspector general and later inquiries, identified investigative errors surrounding how Mueller’s inquiry was started and conducted.
Other errors traced back to the FBI under former Director James Comey, which initially relied on the politically motivated and discredited Steele dossier to justify opening applications for FISA surveillance warrants during the Crossfire Hurricane phase.
