US President Donald Trump pardoned his former adviser General Michael Flynn, who is accused, inter alia, of for making false statements about contacts with the Russian ambassador.
Donald Trump i Michael Flynn w 2016 r.
/AFP
“I am very honored to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has received a full pardon. Congratulations to General Flynn and his lovely family, I know you are going to have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving!” – the US leader wrote on Twitter.
The District of Columbia appeals court granted the motion of the US Department of Justice in June and ordered the charges against Flynn, accused, for making false statements about contacts with the Russian ambassador to the US.
The court ordered the dismissal of the charges despite the fact that in 2017 Flynn twice confessed to making false statements about his contacts with Ambassador Sergey Kislak.
According to the accusers, they were supposed to concern efforts by Trump’s team, then the president-elect, to soften the Kremlin’s reaction to the expulsion of Russian diplomats from the US by the Barack Obama administration before the handover of power to Trump, and to influence Russia to postpone or block a vote by the UN Security Council.
The justice ministry asked a Washington court in May to dismiss the criminal charges. Trump then called Flynn a “hero.”
In the application, the ministry stressed that further proceedings in this case are not in the interest of the judiciary. It also stressed that the proceedings against Flynn had no “reasonable basis” and that his testimony in the investigation “, even if false, was irrelevant”.
In February 2017, Flynn was forced by Trump to resign from his 24-day position as national security advisor and stripped of his safety certification. This was due to concealing from Vice President Mike Pence the true nature of his relationship with Kislak.
In the course of the investigation, Flynn was also charged with failing to register with the Ministry of Justice as an agent of a foreign country.
The investigation showed, among other things, that in 2015 Flynn received at least 33,000 from the Russian TV Russia Today. dollars, and during Donald Trump’s election campaign, he was a paid lobbyist working for the interests of Turkey.
In January of this year, Flynn demanded that his earlier testimony be withdrawn. A retired military officer claims that he pleaded guilty under pressure from prosecutors.
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