President Donald Trump announced on Twitter Wednesday that he will pardon his former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Flynn pleaded guilty in 2017 on charges of lying to the FBI. The guilty plea came months after he stepped down from his post as national security adviser after it was revealed that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about his connections to Russian ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak.
The guilty plea came directly out of Robert Mueller's probe into the 2016 election.
Flynn stepped down from the Trump administration less than a month after Trump was inaugurated.
Flynn’s sentence has been delayed on multiple occasions. In 2020, Attorney General Bill Barr announced that Department of Justice was looking to drop all charges. Barr and the DOJ have since been battling in federal court over the unprecedented move to drop the charges after a guilty plea was entered.
Trump’s pardon will now make the case moot.
“It is my Great Honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon,” Trump tweeted. “Congratulations to @GenFlynn and his wonderful family, I know you will now have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving!”
On January 26, 2017, then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates met with Trump informing him that Flynn had been in communications with Russia over sanctions, and that Flynn had lied to Pence.
On February 13, 2017, after reports surfaced that Flynn had lied to Pence, Trump asked Flynn to step down as national security adviser.