Former Trump National Security Advisor and retired three-star Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn speaks at the annual Rod of Iron Festival in Greeley, Pennsylvania, on October 11, 2024, where a showing of the documentary “Flynn” was held (Zach Roberts/NurPhoto via AP).
Michael Flynn, the first national security advisor for President Donald Trump who twice pleaded guilty to charges of lying to the FBI about his conversations with a Russian agent, is once again suing the federal government claiming he was wrongfully prosecuted. The case was initially filed in July 2023 and dismissed by a federal judge in Florida in December 2024.
Flynn in 2017 pleaded guilty to to one felony count of “willfully and knowingly making materially false statements and omissions to the Federal Bureau of Investigation” regarding conversations he had with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States.
He was pardoned by Donald Trump in November 2020.
In the 79-page amended complaint, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Flynn says he was the victim of “malicious prosecution and gross abuse of process” and claims to be seeking “accountability and damages against the United States for these wrongs” allegedly committed against him through agents of the federal government.
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“He was falsely branded as a traitor to his country, lost at least tens of millions of dollars of business opportunities and future lifetime earning potential, was maliciously prosecuted and spent substantial monies in his own defense, and has suffered and will continue to suffer mental and emotional pain for the rest of his life,” the suit states.
Through his attorneys, Flynn asserts that FBI agents and prosecutors working for special counsel Robert Mueller specifically “targeted” him as an “insurance policy” to derail a potential Trump presidency, should he win the 2016 election, because Flynn was seen as a threat to the entrenched “deep state.”
“General Flynn — who already had a reputation as a hands-on disruptor at DIA, who had publicly excoriated the politicization of the intelligence community, and who had made clear his desire to overhaul the national security structure and the ‘interagency process’ — was a direct threat, not only to the self-interest of entrenched intelligence bureaucracies and the federal officials involved, but to exposing their prior and ongoing efforts to derail and discredit President Trump,” the complaint says.
Additionally, Flynn claims that his guilty plea was the result of coercion by the special counsel’s office, asserting that prosecutors told him they would go after his son if he failed to enter into the agreement.
“When SCO [Special Counsel’s Office] prosecutors threatened General Flynn’s son — newly a father himself, and also innocent of any crime — with federal prosecution, unlawfully coercing General Flynn into a secret side-deal to plead guilty in exchange for his son’s freedom, they did so at the behest of the FBI leadership,” the amended complaint states. “They did so to provide cover for their FBI colleagues and superiors, keeping the unlawful investigation into President Trump alive, and hoping to ‘flip’ General Flynn against President Trump—or at least to create the public perception that he had.”
As Law&Crime previously reported, U.S. District Judge Mary S. Scriven, an appointee of George W. Bush, dismissed Flynn’s lawsuit last year, reasoning that the former general had failed to establish essential elements of malicious prosecution and abuse of process claims.
Regarding the malicious prosecution claim, Scriven said that because DOJ prosecutors “do not qualify as investigative or law enforcement officers” under the controlling law, Flynn was required to show that the FBI exerted pressure or influence over the special counsel’s decision to prosecute him, something he explicitly failed to do.
Regarding the abuse of process claim, the court explained that the “usual case of abuse of process is one of some form of extortion” which requires the defendant showing “an improper use of the judicial machinery.”
“Plaintiff does not allege facts to show that any FBI agents used the judicial machinery to obtain a result other than such as would be proper in the regular prosecution of the charge,” Scriven wrote.
She also found that Flynn’s claims about being coerced into taking a plea agreement could not withstand judicial scrutiny.
“Additionally, although Plaintiff alleges he was coerced into entering a plea agreement under the threat that his son would be prosecuted if he did not cooperate, as noted, Plaintiff alleges the SCO made these threats,” the judge wrote. “Actions by SCO agents are not actionable because the United States is entitled to sovereign immunity for claims based on actions by the SCO. Thus, even if these allegations were true, which the court need not determine for these purposes, the allegations do state an actionable claim.”
In the amended complaint, Flynn attempts to rectify the shortcomings of his initial filing by claiming that his prosecution was demanded by the “virulently anti-Trump leadership” at the FBI with a “complete lack of independence” from the SCO. He also alleges that “newly discovered information” shows that the FBI “concealed” exculpatory evidence” from the SCO “in a way that SCO prosecutors would not have even know.”
“Thus, even ignoring the pressure exerted by the investigative and law enforcement officers, the securing of the prosecution and the coercion exercised by the SCO, were directly linked to the actions of [the FBI],” the amended complaint says.
President Trump on Sunday took to his own social media site to say it was his “great honor” to pardon Flynn, claiming the general was “savagely attacked by the Biden/Obama deep state” and that his prosecution had since been “completely exposed for the FRAUD it is.” The president did not mention that much of the investigation into Flynn took place during Trump’s first term.
Trump in 2017 also confirmed that he “had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI,” adding, “He has pled guilty to those lies.”
