DOJ finally releases memo that concluded Flynn was innocent

FPI / July 13, 2020

The Department of Justice on Friday provided Michael Flynn’s lawyers with a memo which shows that FBI officials did not believe Flynn lied in his Jan. 24, 2017 White House interview with FBI agents and also determined that he was "not acting as an agent of Russia."

Flynn's legal team had sought the Jan. 30, 2017 memo for more than a year.

FBI agents Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka interviewed Flynn on Jan. 24, 2017 regarding his phone calls weeks earlier with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

The memo said that Strzok and Pientka believed that Flynn’s statements regarding his conversation with Kislyak were inconsistent with a transcript that the FBI had of the phone call. The bureau was monitoring Kislyak’s communications under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

According to the memo, Strzok and Pientka did not believe that Flynn believed he was lying during the White House interview.

“FBI also advised that although they recognized the statements were inconsistent with the FISA collection, they believed that Flynn believed what he was telling them,” the memo said.

“FBI advised that they believed Flynn believed what he was saying was true,” the memo continues. “FBI recognized the discrepancy between the statements and the actual calls, but determined that Flynn was not acting as an agent of Russia.”

Another document released by the DOJ was a Jan. 4, 2017 FBI memo which recommended closing a counterintelligence investigation into whether Flynn was acting as an agent of Russia. The memo said that investigators did not have evidence that Flynn was working with Russia. Strzok, the then-deputy chief of FBI counterintelligence, intervened at the last minute to keep the investigation going, according to documents provided to Flynn’s lawyers.

Flynn’s legal team, led by Sidney Powell, said that the new documents further support the need to dismiss charges against Flynn.

“These documents provide even more compelling evidence requiring the court to grant General Flynn’s Consent to and the Government’s Motion to Dismiss,” Powell and her team wrote in a court filing Friday.

“In short, there was no crime for many reasons. These documents were known to exist at the highest levels of the Justice Department and by Special Counsel, yet they were hidden from the defense for three years.”

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is presiding over Flynn’s case, has fought to hold hearings on whether he must drop the charges. A federal appeals court ordered Sullivan on June 24 to comply with the DOJ’s request, but he successfully applied for an appeal of that decision Thursday.

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