27 December 2017•Update: 27 December 2017
By Safvan Allahverdi
WASHINGTON
President Donald Trump should pardon former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Flynn’s brother said Tuesday.
"About time you pardoned General Flynn, who has taken the biggest fall for all of you, given the illegitimacy of his confessed crime in the wake of all of this corruption," Joseph Flynn said on Twitter, although the tweet was deleted after 15 minutes.
Michael Flynn pleaded guilty earlier this month after being charged with lying to the FBI and is fully cooperating with an investigation into the Trump campaign's alleged Russia ties.
As part of his guilty plea, Flynn has agreed to fully cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into alleged Russian interference in last year's race for the White House as well as whether members of the Trump campaign colluded with what U.S. intelligence officials have described as an "influence campaign" aimed at bolstering Trump.
The tweet from Flynn’s brother came after Trump slammed Mueller’s investigation, denying that he or his campaign cooperated with Moscow.
“Dossier is bogus. Clinton Campaign, DNC funded Dossier. FBI CANNOT (after all of this time) VERIFY CLAIMS IN DOSSIER OF RUSSIA/TRUMP COLLUSION. FBI TAINTED,” Trump tweeted, referring to a dossier penned by a former British intelligence officer alleging salacious details of the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia.
"And they used this Crooked Hillary pile of garbage as the basis for going after the Trump Campaign!"
Flynn, a major Trump supporter during the campaign, left the administration in disgrace shortly after assuming his senior post amid disclosures that he lied to officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, about his contacts with Russia's U.S. envoy Sergey Kislyak.
At the time, Flynn insisted to the FBI that he did not speak with Kislyak about U.S. sanctions against Russia in the waning days of the Obama administration.
But a statement of the offense from Mueller's office said Flynn called Kislyak on Dec. 29 last year to discuss the economic penalties after reviewing the matter with "a senior official" of Trump's transition team who was with other senior officials at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort.
