The Justice Department shot down claims by former Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn’s lawyers that former FBI agent Peter Strzok and others at the bureau “set up” their client in a court filing.
Flynn’s attorneys alleged in a filing last week their client was trapped by Obama administration holdovers such as former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe in an effort to hobble newly elected President Trump, that Strzok and the other agent “ambushed” Flynn, and that Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page manipulated the FBI interview notes so they could claim Flynn had lied when he hadn’t.
“Each contention is divorced from the facts,” federal prosecutors said in a 46-page filing Friday.
The dispute, which has long simmered in pro-Trump circles, centers around an interview of Flynn by Strzok and an unnamed FBI investigator at the White House during the chaotic first days of the Trump administration in which Flynn allegedly misrepresented conversations he’d had with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about Russian sanctions and a vote at the United Nations. Flynn pleaded guilty later that year to lying to investigators during special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and had cooperated with the government until June, when he fired the legal team who cut his plea deal. Flynn’s new attorneys include conservative former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell, who said the DOJ “extorted” Flynn’s plea.
“The interviewing agents repeatedly sought to prompt the defendant to provide a truthful response,” wrote U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu, who detailed the interaction in the filing.
“Such conduct demonstrates that the agents were not in search of a crime, but the truth about what had happened and why — which the defendant failed to provide,” she wrote. “Had they wanted to ‘trap’ the defendant into a false statement charge, they would not have prompted him repeatedly to correct his statements.”
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Watch:
The Deep State still lives and even thrives inside the DOJ, FBI and CIA. But they are going to learn the hard way that Sidney Powell is nobody’s fool.
Powell told the Washington Examiner on Friday that “the prosecutors dwell in an imaginary alternative universe” and that “nothing excuses their conduct in this case — and apparently there indeed was an earlier 302.”
“Stay tuned for our reply,” Powell added.