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      Trump Pardons Michael Flynn

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      WASHINGTON — President Trump pardoned on Wednesday his former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, who had twice pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about his conversations with a Russian diplomat and whose prosecution Attorney General William P. Barr tried to shut down.“It is my Great Honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter.The presidential pardon appeared to bring to an end the drawn-out legal saga of Mr. Flynn. The Justice Department had moved in the spring to withdraw the charge against him after a public campaign by Mr. Trump and his allies, but the judge overseeing the case, Emmet G. Sullivan, had held up the request to scrutinize its legitimacy.Though Mr. Trump had said that he was “strongly considering” pardoning Mr. Flynn and was said this week to be planning for it, Mr. Barr’s intervention had left open the possibility that his administration could end the prosecution of a presidential favorite without requiring Mr. Trump to take explicit political responsibility for the act.But as the case lingered — delayed first by Mr. Flynn’s unsuccessful attempt to get an appeals court to block Judge Sullivan from reviewing the basis for Mr. Barr’s move, and then by further weeks of inaction from the judge — Mr. Trump ultimately moved to do so after all.Mr. Flynn was the only White House official to be convicted as part of the Trump-Russia investigation that was completed by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. Under Mr. Trump and Mr. Barr, the administration has been trying to discredit and dismantle that inquiry. Mr. Trump also commuted the sentence of his longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr. on seven felonies in a case brought by prosecutors working for Mr. Mueller.John Gleeson, a former federal judge and mafia prosecutor appointed by Judge Sullivan to critique the Justice Department’s attempt to drop the case against Mr. Flynn, argued that the claimed basis for the request made no sense and seemed to be cover for a politically motivated favor. He had said that Judge Sullivan should instead sentence Mr. Flynn — or that Mr. Trump should just pardon him.By doing so, Mr. Trump has now mooted that proceeding, meaning Judge Sullivan will most likely dismiss the matter. The pardon forecloses the possibility of a new legal confrontation over whether the judge could sentence a defendant who had pleaded guilty even though the Justice Department no longer wanted to pursue the case.Several Democratic members of Congress condemned Mr. Trump’s pardon of Mr. Flynn as an abuse of power.“Flynn lied to the F.B.I. about his communications with the Russians — efforts which undermined U.S. foreign policy after sanctions were imposed on Russia for interfering in our elections,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. “And Flynn pled guilty to those lies, twice. A pardon by Trump does not erase that truth, no matter how Trump and his allies try to suggest otherwise.”Allies of Mr. Trump celebrated the move on social media, arguing that Mr. Flynn had been treated unfairly. And the White House spokeswoman, Kayleigh McEnany, said in a statement that the pardon brought “to an end the relentless, partisan pursuit of an innocent man.”Mr. Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and a decorated lieutenant general, was an early supporter of Mr. Trump’s campaign. He was rewarded when Mr. Trump named him national security adviser shortly after winning the 2016 election, ignoring warnings from President Barack Obama, who voiced concerns about Mr. Flynn’s management of the intelligence agency.Mr. Flynn was also among a group of associates of the Trump campaign with links to Russian officials whom the F.B.I. scrutinized early in the counterintelligence investigation it opened in July 2016 to try to understand the extent of Russia’s covert interference in the campaign and whether any Trump campaign figures knew about it or were cooperating with it, wittingly or otherwise.It came to light that Mr. Flynn was lying to his colleagues about conversations he had in December 2016 with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak. In the calls, Mr. Flynn urged Moscow not to escalate in response to sanctions imposed by the departing Obama administration over Russia’s covert election interference to help Mr. Trump, and raised the possibility that the incoming Trump administration would work more closely with Russia.The pattern of lying raised new suspicions about Mr. Flynn. The F.B.I. sent agents to interview him at the White House even though deliberations with the Justice Department about whether to first tell Mr. Trump’s new White House counsel were not yet resolved. Notes from a meeting related to that interview suggest a purpose of the interview may have been to see whether Mr. Flynn would lie again to the F.B.I. agents — as he did.Despite firing Mr. Flynn, Mr. Trump asked the F.B.I. director at the time, James B. Comey, to end any investigation into Mr. Flynn. Details about the president’s request became public a few months later after Mr. Trump fired Mr. Comey and helped prompt Mr. Mueller’s appointment as special counsel.Although Mr. Trump initially distanced himself from Mr. Flynn, the president later began to disparage the Flynn case as part of his broader attacks on the Russia investigation as a “hoax,” a “witch hunt” and a deep-state plot to sabotage him.Over time, Mr. Flynn’s case became a cause for the right-wing media. Though Mr. Flynn had pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate in another criminal trial — as part of a deal to also resolve his liability related to working for Turkey without registering as a foreign agent, while also serving as a top adviser to the Trump campaign — he later hired a new lawyer, Sidney Powell, reversed course and ultimately sought to withdraw his plea.Mr. Flynn was never charged in connection with the Turkey issue. The White House did not immediately release the text of the pardon itself, so it was not clear whether it was written in a way that would foreclose any potential legal liability for Mr. Flynn on that or other matters, like making conflicting statements to Judge Sullivan as part of pleading guilty and then trying to withdraw that plea. Still, Mr. Trump described the pardon as a “full” one.Before Mr. Barr intervened in an attempt to dispose of the Flynn case, Justice Department prosecutors had portrayed his admitted guilt in both matters as a betrayal of trust by a high-ranking official who “failed to accept responsibility for his conduct” and continued to lie.“The defendant monetized his power and influence over our government, and lied to mask it,” they wrote. “When the F.B.I. and D.O.J. needed information that only the defendant could provide, because of that power and influence, he denied them that information. And so an official tasked with protecting our national security, instead compromised it.”At the start of her representation of Mr. Flynn, Ms. Powell had written to Mr. Barr, stressing the need to keep the communication secret, and counseled a strategy of replicating the model of the 2008 prosecution of a senator — also before Judge Sullivan — whose case the Justice Department sought to dismiss after conviction but before sentencing based on a finding of prosecutorial misconduct.She asked Mr. Barr to appoint an outside prosecutor to scour the case file for any material that prosecutors should have turned over to the defense. After Judge Sullivan rejected conspiracy theories about prosecutorial misconduct that Ms. Powell put forward, Mr. Barr followed her suggestion and opened a review.The reviewer Mr. Barr appointed produced documents showing that the F.B.I. had been aggressive when it decided to interview Mr. Flynn. While the Justice Department did not say the prior failure to turn over the files amounted to any misconduct, it cited them as providing a basis for Mr. Barr to abandon the prosecution.The department’s claimed rationale centered on the idea that Mr. Flynn’s lies to the F.B.I. were not crimes because they were not material to any legitimate investigation. One of the files showed that the F.B.I. had been moving to close its inquiry into whether Mr. Flynn was a Russian agent before the question arose of why he was lying to colleagues about his calls with the ambassador.That rationale for dropping the prosecution has been widely criticized by Mr. Gleeson and others since the F.B.I. legally needs little basis to conduct a voluntary interview, and because the mystery of Mr. Flynn’s lies to his colleagues about his interactions with the ambassador, in part regarding sanctions for Russia’s election interference, seemed obviously relevant to the larger Trump-Russia investigation.Mr. Gleeson argued that the department was showing special favor for Mr. Flynn because that is what Mr. Trump wanted, and urged Judge Sullivan not to permit the judiciary to be used as cover for a politically motivated intervention — that is what the pardon power is for. Ms. Powell, for her part, portrayed the case against her client as a corrupt and politically motivated conspiracy and accused Judge Sullivan of being biased.The Justice Department was not consulted on the plan to pardon Mr. Flynn but was given notice on Wednesday before the announcement, according to a department official. The department would have preferred to see whether the matter could be resolved in court, the official said.Before taking on Mr. Flynn, Ms. Powell was becoming known for her Fox News appearances bashing the Russia inquiry. She also sold T-shirts attacking Mr. Mueller and his team on her website.Ms. Powell has in recent weeks attached herself to the Trump legal team trying to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election, pushing a baseless conspiracy theory that Mr. Trump had won by a landslide but that fraudulent election software instead gave the victory to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. After she made particularly wild accusations that even Republican officials had been involved in a payoff scheme, the Trump team disavowed her.Katie Benner and Eileen Sullivan contributed reporting. More

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      Stock Trades by Senator Perdue Said to Have Prompted Justice Dept. Inquiry

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      WASHINGTON — Early this year, Senator David Perdue, Republican of Georgia, sold more than $1 million worth of stock in the financial company Cardlytics, where he once served on the board. Six weeks later, its share price tumbled when the company’s founder announced he would step down as chief executive and the firm said its future sales would be worse than expected.After the company’s stock price bottomed out in March at $29, Mr. Perdue bought back a substantial portion of the shares that he had sold. They are now trading at around $120 per share.The Cardlytics transactions drew the attention this spring of investigators at the Justice Department, who were undertaking a broad review of the senator’s prolific trading around the outset of the coronavirus pandemic for possible evidence of insider trading, according to four people with knowledge of the case who described aspects of it on the condition of anonymity. Though Mr. Perdue alluded to the federal inquiry in a campaign ad this fall, its details have not been previously reported.Investigators found that Cardlytics’ chief executive at the time, Scott Grimes, sent Mr. Perdue a personal email two days before the senator’s stock sale that made a vague mention of “upcoming changes.” The timing of the message prompted additional scrutiny from investigators in both Washington and Atlanta. But ultimately they concluded the exchange contained no meaningful nonpublic information and declined to pursue charges, closing the case this summer.The federal scrutiny, which also included attention from the Securities and Exchange Commission, is the most vivid example to date of how Mr. Perdue’s complex financial interests and frequent trading have complicated his pursuit of a second Senate term. The results of January’s two Senate runoffs in Georgia, including Mr. Perdue’s race, will determine which party controls the chamber and with it, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s ability to advance his agenda through Congress.Democrats have used details of his trades to accuse Mr. Perdue of lining his pockets when Americans were worried about their jobs and health, and in some cases, leveled corruption charges.Congress’s ethics rules do not bar lawmakers from holding or trading individual stocks, but like other Americans, they are not allowed to trade on inside information. Other lawmakers have decided it is not worth the political sweat that comes with the appearance of possible conflicts of interest and have steered their investments into diversified mutual funds. But Mr. Perdue, a former executive at Reebok and Dollar General, has been one of the most active traders on Capitol Hill.A spokesman for Mr. Perdue’s campaign confirmed the investigation in a statement, saying that investigators with the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission “quickly and independently cleared Senator Perdue of any wrongdoing — this story highlights that again.”“Senator Perdue has always followed the law,” the spokesman, John Burke, said.A Justice Department spokesman and Securities and Exchange Commission officials did not respond to requests for comment. Representatives for the U.S. attorneys’ offices in Washington and Atlanta and the F.B.I. declined to comment.A spokesman for Goldman Sachs, which handles Mr. Perdue’s portfolio, said that the bank had “fully cooperated with inquiries” about Mr. Perdue but declined to comment further, citing a policy of not commenting on its clients.Mr. Grimes and officials at Cardlytics did not respond to requests for comment.The inquiry into Mr. Perdue roughly coincided with an unusual blitz of federal scrutiny on senators and their financial transactions, but it appears to have taken a somewhat different track.In the other cases, the Justice Department’s public corruption unit focused on stock sales around the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, when markets dropped precipitously, by Senators Richard Burr of North Carolina, Dianne Feinstein of California, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma and Kelly Loeffler of Georgia. Ms. Loeffler is competing in the state’s other runoff election.Investigators scrutinized whether the senators had dumped stocks and bought others in key sectors after receiving nonpublic briefings on the virus from experts and ahead of the market drop. The cases were closed on all of them except for Mr. Burr.The investigation into Mr. Perdue appears to have started in a similar fashion, but came to focus more intensely on the Cardlytics transactions.F.B.I. agents in Washington spoke with Mr. Perdue in June, asking him questions about his financial transactions. The extent of the conversation was unclear, according to two people with knowledge of the conversation.Mr. Perdue’s lawyers turned over hundreds of pages of information, including the emails with Mr. Grimes, in response to a subpoena from a grand jury.During the campaign, Mr. Perdue disclosed in a televised ad that a “full review of his stock trades” by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission had “cleared him completely,” but made no mention of Cardlytics or the extent of the federal scrutiny.Mr. Grimes and Mr. Perdue had known each other since at least 2010, when Mr. Perdue joined the board of Cardlytics, then a small and privately held Atlanta start-up. Mr. Perdue resigned his directorship in 2014 after his election to the Senate, but struck an unusual financial arrangement on his way out that paved the way for him to benefit from holding a stake in the company when it went public four years later.As a senator, Mr. Perdue continued to hold shares of Cardlytics, where executives said he had made valuable contributions to the company, along with scores of other stocks that he traded. In 2019, Mr. Grimes made the maximum donation of $5,600 to Mr. Perdue’s re-election efforts, in what appeared to be his only political contribution of the election cycle.The email correspondence between the two men began on Jan. 21 and took place just before Mr. Perdue placed the well-timed trades.“David, I know you are about to do a call with David Evans,” Mr. Grimes wrote from his iPad, according to a copy of the exchange reviewed by The New York Times. “As an FYI, I have not told him about the upcoming changes. Thanks, Scott.”Mr. Evans, then the chief financial officer of Cardlytics, stepped down from that role six weeks after Mr. Grimes sent the email, at the same time that Mr. Grimes announced plans to assume a new role as executive chairman. Mr. Evans said in July that he was leaving the company.Mr. Perdue responded to Mr. Grimes’s email by saying he would check with his Senate scheduler but “I don’t know about a call with David or the changes you mentioned.”Mr. Grimes wrote back the next morning to apologize.“David, Sorry. That email was not meant for you. Wrong David!” he wrote.Mr. Perdue then contacted his wealth manager at Goldman Sachs, Robert Hutchinson, and instructed him to sell a little more than $1 million worth of Cardlytics shares, or about 20 percent of his position, three of the people said. One person familiar with the inquiry into Mr. Perdue’s trades said that the conversation was memorialized in an internal Goldman Sachs record later obtained by the F.B.I.Financial disclosure forms Mr. Perdue is required to file with the Senate show a Jan. 23 sale of $1 million to $5 million in Cardlytics stock.Investigators in Washington began scrutinizing Mr. Perdue in the spring; by June, the U.S. attorney’s office in Atlanta was handling the case along with prosecutors in the department’s criminal division in Washington.Mr. Hutchinson told the F.B.I. that Mr. Perdue and his wife weighed in only on broader investing issues, like the proportion of stocks and bonds to hold in their portfolio, according to a person with knowledge of his interview. But a person familiar with the senator’s money-management arrangements with Goldman Sachs said that Mr. Perdue retained some degree of discretion over which trades were made and when.In this case, Mr. Perdue’s legal team told investigators that Mr. Hutchinson had advised their client in October 2019 that he needed to sell Cardlytics shares to balance his holdings. The shares had increased in value and the advisers argued that Mr. Perdue should take the profits from the sales and reinvest them elsewhere to limit his exposure to the fluctuation of a single stock. Mr. Perdue elected to go forward with those changes in January, his lawyers said.Mr. Hutchinson declined to comment.After conducting interviews, including with Mr. Perdue and Mr. Grimes, investigators reached their conclusion that the senator had no nonpublic information about the company’s performance when he made the Cardlytics trade. The investigation was closed later in the summer, according to the people familiar with the case.If the email from Mr. Grimes was accidental, said Tai Park, a former federal prosecutor and white-collar crime partner at the law firm White & Case, Mr. Perdue “may be on firmer ground, because that’s objective evidence that the C.E.O. was not trying to tip him. In any event, trading on the basis of information learned from a C.E.O. of a company is exceedingly risky under any scenario and could draw attention from investigators.” More