President Trump has pardoned his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who spent years enmeshed in an often bizarre legal war with the government that sprang from the Russia investigation.
Trump announced the news Wednesday on Twitter as Americans prepared to observe the Thanksgiving holiday this week.
The pardon brings an end to a long-running legal odyssey for Flynn, who was the only member of the Trump administration to be charged as part of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
Flynn pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador and then cooperated extensively with prosecutors. But he ultimately reversed course and accused the government of trying to frame him.
Flynn went so far as to withdraw his first plea of guilty and substitute a second plea of not guilty, even though he'd acknowledged the underlying conduct that was against the law and been close to receiving a sentence.
The pardon drew condemnations from critics who've said Trump's actions to help his friends interfere with the justice system. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., for example, who helped prosecute Trump at his impeachment, called the president's actions obviously corrupt.
Flynn, about an hour and a half ahead of Trump's announcement, tweeted a Bible verse alluding to a holy rescue.
Trump's action on Wednesday may open the door to possible clemency for other former advisers who were indicted as part of the Russia investigation, including Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman.
Justice Department not consulted
The Justice Department was not consulted about the Flynn pardon in the way it often takes part in the preparation of presidential pardons, a department official said on Wednesday. The official described the situation on the condition that the person not be identified.
The Justice Department did get a "heads-up" on Wednesday, the official said, and the person said that "this is obviously an appropriate use of the president's pardon power."
Justice Department leaders would have preferred, however, for Flynn's case to have been resolved in court, where federal Judge Emmet Sullivan still had not ruled on the government's request to abandon its prosecution.
Justice Department leaders were "confident in the likelihood of our success in the case," the official said Wednesday.
Longtime military spy boss
Flynn is a retired Army lieutenant general who once led the Defense Intelligence Agency.
He became a security and geopolitical consultant in private life and took tens of thousands of dollars in payments from Russian entities. In 2015, Russia's state-backed TV network RT paid him $45,000 to attend a dinner in Moscow, where he sat at the right arm of President Vladimir Putin.
Back in the United States, Flynn became a vocal supporter of Trump's outsider campaign in the 2016 presidential race. At the Republican National Convention that year, Flynn led the crowd in chants of "lock her up" about Trump's rival, Hillary Clinton.
When Trump took office in January 2017, Flynn was rewarded for his loyalty with the job of national security adviser, a post that put him in the White House at the president's side.
But questions already were swirling about Flynn's Russian contacts, including with Russia's then-ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. Flynn was forced to resign after less than a month on the job for allegedly misleading the vice president about his conversations with the Russian envoy.
