Gen. Michael Flynn’s younger brother repeatedly tweeted at President Trump on Tuesday asking him to pardon the former White House national security adviser.
“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 wrote in a tweet directed to Mr. Trump.
Mr. Flynn deleted the tweets afterwards but reiterated his stance in subsequent posts.
“Mr. President, I personally believe that a pardon is due to General Flynn, given the apparent and obvious illegitimacy of the manner in which the so called ’crimes’ he plead guilty to were extracted from him. I ask for quick action on this. Thank you and keep up the good work!” said one of the tweets.
“This is all my personal opinion and I stand by it,” he said in another.
The younger Flynn’s comments were made in response to something Mr. Trump tweeted earlier Tuesday involving the FBI’s investigation into his 2016 election.
“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,” Mr. Trump tweeted Tuesday morning, referencing something he saw on the “Fox and Friends” cable television program. “And they used this Crooked Hillary pile of garbage as the basis for going after the Trump Campaign!”
“I responded,” the younger Flynn told Newsweek with respect to his tweet. “I said it, and maybe he’s listening.”
The older Flynn, a three-star Army general, campaigned extensively for Mr. Trump in 2016 and later served briefly as the president’s national security adviser during the first few weeks of his administration.
More recently he pleaded guilty this month in connection with a criminal indictment brought by special counsel Robert Mueller, the former FBI director picked to lead a Trump-Russia investigation.
Mr. Flynn lied to FBI agents investigating the 2016 election, and he pleaded guilty Dec. 1 to a single related count and agreed to cooperate with the special counsel’s office, he said previously.
Mr. Trump was asked earlier this month about pardoning his former adviser but declined to give a definitive answer.
“I don’t want to talk about pardons for Michael Flynn yet. We’ll see what happens. Let’s see,” Mr. Trump said Dec. 15.
The younger Flynn told Newsweek earlier this month that he and a sibling recently established the Michael T. Flynn Legal Defense Fund to help finance their brother’s legal fees.
“The burden of expense of multiple investigations, which of course were not expected and no one prepares for, is financially crippling to him and his family,” he said at the time.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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