Of all the White House allies who have received lucrative settlements from the Trump Justice Department in response to highly dubious civil lawsuits, the DOJ’s deal with former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn is among the most outrageous.

It also has a sequel. Bloomberg News reported:

The US Justice Department settled a second lawsuit against the government brought by Michael Flynn, agreeing to pay the conservative activist and ally of President Donald Trump to resolve his claim that the US Army wrongly withheld approximately $38,000 from his retirement pay several years ago.

The settlement was finalized and “executed” in recent weeks, according to a public court filing in late June, but it did not specify the terms. The agreement included paying Flynn a sum below $75,000, according to a person familiar who asked for anonymity to discuss a matter that’s not yet public.

Court documents filed in April said the DOJ and Flynn had “agreed to a settlement in principle,” though they’d “need more time to finalize and implement the agreed-upon settlement.” Though Bloomberg’s report has not been independently verified by MS NOW, that work is apparently now complete.

These developments come on the heels of an earlier settlement agreement worth $1.25 million, and the fact that Flynn is walking away with any taxpayer money at all is awfully tough to defend under the circumstances.

Indeed, in the recent past, the very idea of a payout to Flynn was difficult to imagine.

After Flynn was first charged by federal prosecutors — he was accused of lying to the FBI about conversations with the Russian government, lying to investigators about being a paid foreign agent and acting illegally as an unregistered foreign agent while working on Trump’s 2016 campaign — he admitted he lied, pleaded guilty twice in open court and became a cooperating witness with then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Flynn later changed lawyers, however, at which point he stopped helping the Mueller probe and decided he was no longer guilty of the crimes to which he had already pleaded guilty. Soon after, then-Attorney General Bill Barr took an interest in the case, and the DOJ announced it was dropping all of the charges against Trump’s former aide.

As difficult as it was to believe, Barr’s DOJ concluded it could not prove Flynn was guilty of crimes to which Flynn himself had already pleaded guilty. (A retired judge examined what transpired and ultimately accused the DOJ of exercising a “gross abuse of prosecutorial power.”)

Late on a Wednesday afternoon, the day before Thanksgiving 2020, Trump quietly pardoned Flynn. It was among the most corrupt moves the president made in his first term.

The pardon, however, apparently wasn’t enough. Flynn also wanted a payout, claiming that federal law enforcement had subjected him to malicious prosecution when it charged him with crimes — and I can’t emphasize this enough — he had twice pleaded guilty to. Trump’s hyperpoliticized Justice Department agreed in a development that Mary B. McCord, an MS NOW legal and national security contributor, described as “a miscarriage of justice.”

The second settlement in a separate but related case now adds insult to injury.

There was a point between Trump’s first and second terms when he suggested that, should he return to power, he might very well bring Flynn back to the White House. It increasingly appears, however, that Flynn doesn’t need a job, since the president’s team keeps agreeing to send him taxpayer money.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post Trump’s Justice Department finalizes second settlement with Michael Flynn appeared first on MS NOW.

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