Flynn saga adds to ‘political cases’ uproar

Bloomberg

Attorney General William Barr has ordered a review of the prosecution against Donald Trump’s former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, adding to a series of interventions this week in politically sensitive cases tied to the president.
Barr has appointed US Attorney Jeffrey Jensen to examine the case against Flynn and potentially other matters, according to a person familiar with the decision.
Flynn, who stepped down after less than a month as national security adviser, pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to FBI agents about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador.
He’s since accused prosecutors of “egregious misconduct” and sought to have the charges dismissed.
Barr’s move on the Flynn case, reported earlier by the New York Times, comes after the attorney general intervened to reduce his department’s recommended jail time for Roger Stone, a Trump associate who the president said has been treated unfairly, and announced a special legal channel for Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani to report his findings on Ukraine.
Barr and Trump have rejected accusations that they are politicising the Justice Department. But Barr issued a remarkable public rebuke of Trump, saying in an ABC News interview that the president’s constant tweets on matters before the Justice Department made it “impossible” for him to do his job.
While Barr said he was pleased “the president has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case,” Trump responded on Twitter: “This doesn’t mean that I do not have, as President, the legal right to do so, I do, but I have so far chosen not to!”
In a move sure to displease the president, the Justice Department closed its criminal investigation of Andrew McCabe, the former FBI deputy director who was dismissed after an internal review of his role in disclosing a Clinton Foundation probe to the media. Trump has frequently tweeted denunciations of McCabe, who he’s described as a “disgraced” official who was “fired for lying.”
The Justice Department’s week of controversies began last week, when Barr announced the special channel for Giuliani to funnel information he’s obtained in Ukraine. Giuliani has said he’s collecting information about the activities of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter in the eastern European nation.