Ex-F.B.I. Official Is Said to Undercut Justice Dept. Effort to Drop Flynn Case

[Judi Lynn]

Adam Goldman and Katie Benner 5 hrs ago

The New York Times

WASHINGTON — A key former F.B.I. official cast doubt on the Justice Department’s case for dropping a criminal charge against President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn during an interview with investigators last week, according to people familiar with the investigation.

Department officials reviewing the Flynn case interviewed Bill Priestap, the former head of F.B.I. counterintelligence, two days before making their extraordinary request to drop the case to Judge Emmet G. Sullivan. They did not tell Judge Sullivan about Mr. Priestap’s interview. A Justice Department official said that they were in the process of writing up a report on the interview and that it would soon be filed with the court.

The department’s motion referred to notes that Mr. Priestap wrote around the bureau’s 2017 questioning of Mr. Flynn, who later pleaded guilty to lying to investigators during that interview. His lawyers said Mr. Priestap’s notes — recently uncovered during a review of the case — suggested that the F.B.I. was trying to entrap Mr. Flynn, and Attorney General William P. Barr said investigators were trying to “lay a perjury trap.”

That interpretation was wrong, Mr. Priestap told the prosecutors reviewing the case. He said that F.B.I. officials were trying to do the right thing in questioning Mr. Flynn and that he knew of no effort to set him up. Media reports about his notes misconstrued them, he said, according to the people familiar with the investigation.

More:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ex-fbi-official-is-said-to-undercut-justice-dept-effort-to-drop-flynn-case/ar-BB142Lmm?li=BBnb7Kz

[scarletwoman]

1. I like this news. Thank you! (nt)

[Ford_Prefect]

2. "Just the facts, Ma'am"...

[stopdiggin]

3. Mr. Priestaps recollections (and interpretations) are not only predictable

but are to entirely expected in defense of his own and his subordinates actions. (what else?)
What will be much more telling and to the point, is what outside opinion and reading of those actions and motive are.

I think the verdict on the propriety of the Flynn investigation has long been in, from a variety of directions. This particular interview ... Basically a case of the cops saying "cop" things.

[empedocles]

4. Good. 'The Process' grinds on in the right direction. Pushing back on the 'cons and their

manipulations.