Yahoo News Trump says he’d welcome disgraced former aide Michael Flynn back to the White House
President Donald Trump has said that he would welcome his former national security adviser Michael Flynn back to the White House and has not ruled out pardoning him if he is convicted of lying to the FBI.
The president asked Mr Flynn to leave his role in the White House in 2017, when The Washington Post revealed that he lied to vice-president Mike Pence about conversations he had with Russian diplomat Sergey Kislyak.
The retired US Army lieutenant general has been embroiled in legal proceedings ever since and in 2017 pleaded guilty to “willfully and knowingly” making “false, fictitious and fraudulent statements” to the FBI regarding the conversations.
However, earlier this year, after Mr Flynn attempted to withdraw his plea, the Justice Department led by attorney general William Barr dropped the case against him and a federal appeals court panel ordered Judge Emmet Sullivan to dismiss it.
Mr Sullivan has asked the Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider the decision and has so far not ruled on dismissing the Justice Department’s case against Mr Flynn.
On Tuesday, when asked by CBS News’ senior investigative correspondent Catherine Herridge if he would welcome Mr Flynn back to the White House if the case is dismissed, the president replied: “I would. I think he’s a great gentleman.
“He’s a great — he’s been in the military for many, many decades, actually. Highly respected. What general Flynn went through is so unfair.”
Mr Trump added that Mr Flynn “has gone through hell, he’s been destroyed – but he’ll make a comeback, he’s gonna make a great comeback.”
The president told reporters on Monday that he has also not ruled out pardoning Mr Flynn, after he commuted the 40-month prison sentence of his former adviser Roger Stone on Friday.
Mr Stone was convicted of witness tampering and lying to Congress and was arrested alongside Mr Flynn by Robert Mueller, the Justice Department special counsel who investigated Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Mr Trump said that at the moment he does not “have a decision to make” about pardoning Mr Flynn “until I find out what’s going to happen.”
He said that he thinks that the former adviser is “doing very well with respect to his case,” and added: “I hope that he’s going to be able to win it.”
The president has long defended Mr Flynn and told CBS that “I think he was persecuted,” and claimed that the FBI “treated him very unfairly, as they have many people on this side.”
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