Appeals court orders charges dropped against ex-Trump aide

WASHINGTON: Democrats in Congress accused the Trump administration of politicising the Justice Department Wednesday after Washington’s federal appeals court ordered criminal charges dropped against former White House national security advisor Michael Flynn.

In a triumph for President Donald Trump’s three-year effort to overcome the taint of the Russia election meddling investigation, the court endorsed Attorney-General Bill Barr’s extraordinary decision to withdraw Flynn’s prosecution, even though Flynn had already twice pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators about his Russian contacts.

The White House and Justice Department declared victory even as Democrats added the Flynn case to a list of examples they alleged showed Barr corrupting the judicial process to aid Trump politically.

White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany called the decision, which can still be appealed, a “victory for justice and truth,” while Trump said his former campaign advisor had been “persecuted.”

“I’m very happy about General Flynn. He was treated horribly,” Trump told reporters.

But House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler said in a hearing that it was just another in a skein of cases in which Barr interfered to help Trump and his associates.

He cited Barr’s recent intervention against his own department’s prosecutors to secure a low prison sentence for another Trump advisor, Roger Stone; Barr’s removal Saturday of the department’s top prosecutor in New York who was investigating Trump associates; and other alleged efforts by the attorney general to protect the president.

“He is the president’s fixer. He has shown us that there is one set of rules for the president’s friends, and another set of rules for the rest of us,” Nadler said.

The appeals court decision in the Flynn case overruled a lower court judge who was poised to sentence the former Pentagon intelligence chief to prison.

Flynn agreed in December 2017 to plead guilty over his secret contacts with Russia’s Washington envoy in a deal that formed the cornerstone to special counsel Robert Mueller’s sprawling probe into whether Trump’s election campaign colluded with Moscow.

But on May 7 Barr intervened and asked the court to drop the case completely, saying there was never any legitimate basis for the counterintelligence investigation against Flynn, which began under Trump’s predecessor president Barack Obama.

Barr’s intervention in the case pleased Trump, who had already hinted he could pardon Flynn.

But it opened a deep rift in the Justice Department, with the resignation of the federal attorneys who had prosecuted the case; and sparked outrage within the broader justice community.