Mike Flynn fires back at FBI, DOJ: ‘I've seen corruption up close and personal’

Newly pardoned, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn says his four-year legal odyssey in the Russia case exposed the widespread corruption of intelligence, law enforcement and judicial institutions where politics was allowed to overrule the law.

“I've seen corruption up close and personal,” the retired three-star general told Just the News in a wide-ranging interview Thursday with the John Solomon Reports podcast. “And I see it as it's playing out in our current election. I mean, real corruption is really now publicly known. And we should still find it unacceptable.

“This corruption in our institutions — justice, intelligence community, senior law enforcement — it didn't happen overnight. This had to happen over, you know, probably decades, certainly a decade of a shift in the culture of acceptable bad behavior.”

Asked whether he was frustrated that Attorney General William Barr and special prosecutor John Durham had not done more to bring accountability to the misconduct identified in his case, Flynn urged patience.

“I actually think that, you know, the attorney general we just need to give him some space, because there's some elements inside that block and tackle the truth, even from the attorney general,” Flynn said. “But I would say there are moments in time and now is one of them.”

Flynn was pardoned by President Trump the day before Thanksgiving, ending a four-year legal odyssey that began when the FBI opened a criminal case against him in summer 2016 on the now-debunked suspicions he was helping Trump collude with Russia.

He said he was deeply grateful for Trump’s clemency but had hoped all along it would be unnecessary if the judge in his case, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, had simply dismissed the charge of lying to the FBI as the Justice Department had asked.

“The judge, in my case should have, you know, made the right decision, followed the law,” Flynn said.

The former three-star general said when Trump called to inform him of the pardon, it was like old times when they worked together on the 2016 campaign.

“The conversation that I had with the President was a terrific one,” he said. “And it was like, you know, like the phrase old home week? I mean, it was like, we never left each other.”

Flynn also reacted to a memorandum that Sullivan released earlier this week in which the judge finally dismissed the case as moot, but suggested he wouldn’t have done so if Trump had not pardoned the former national security adviser. The judge argued that Flynn had pled guilty to lying to the FBI and should not have been allowed to withdraw that plea.

“We trust in our judiciary, that they will follow the law,” Flynn responded. “So I think that is what the American people witnessed through my case, is maybe a breakdown in that. But I also sort of point a finger at the Department of Justice, and others that were part of this whole system of injustice."

Flynn said he views the current legal battles over the November election as a continuation of a paradigm in which institutions have been failing the American people through corruption, ineptitude, untruthfulness or an unwillingness to follow the law.

“You’re up against the biggest institutions in the world, and you're up against people inside of them that are corrupted. I mean, they're corrupted. And they are incentivized for the wrong reasons,” he said.

“And what you're fighting for, is you're fighting for honesty from them, you're fighting for truth from them. So what is the matter right now with fighting for truth from the election fraud that clearly happened?”