Report: Obama claims 'rule of law is at risk' in Flynn ruling

Barack Obama on Friday claimed that the "rule of law is at risk" with the Justice Department's dropping its charges against former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Those claims came in a phone call between Obama and former members of his administration, a tape of which was obtained by Yahoo News. The call came one day after the Justice Department recommended that the charges against Michael Flynn---which claimed he had lied to F.B.I. agents during an investigatory interview---be dropped, and his conviction be reversed. 

The Justice Department argued that the F.B.I.'s 2017 interview of Flynn was "untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation" into him, and thus that the statements he made in them were not "material even if untrue." On Thursday, Attorney General William Barr said bluntly that federal officials at the time had sought to "lay a perjury trap" for the general. 

In the Friday phone call, Obama said the news of the Justice Department's decision had been "downplayed."

"And the fact that there is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free. That’s the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic — not just institutional norms — but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk. And when you start moving in those directions, it can accelerate pretty quickly as we’ve seen in other places," he said, according to Yahoo. 

Obama was notably incorrect in his assessment of the charges against Flynn: The general had entered a plea deal in which he admitted to making false statements to F.B.I. agents, a distinct charge from that of perjury. 

In the phone call, Obama used the Justice Department's decision to bolster the case for electing his own former vice president, Joe Biden, to the White House in November. 

"So I am hoping that all of you feel the same sense of urgency that I do. Whenever I campaign, I’ve always said, ‘Ah, this is the most important election.’ Especially obviously when I was on the ballot, that always feels like it's the most important election," he said.

 "This one — I’m not on the ballot — but I am pretty darn invested. We got to make this happen," he said.