Washington, D.C. –Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) issued the following statement on President Trump's pardon of Michael Flynn:
"This pardon is undeserved, unprincipled, and one more stain on President Trump’s rapidly diminishing legacy.
"Michael Flynn was fired from the White House for lying to senior officials. He pleaded guilty—twice—to lying to federal investigators about his communications with a foreign adversary. Flynn’s agreement to cooperate with the government in exchange for those guilty pleas seemed light to some, given reports that Flynn and his son had engaged in far more disturbing criminal activity.
"It is important to talk about why the President pardoned Flynn. President Trump dangled this pardon to encourage Flynn to backtrack on his pledge to cooperate with federal investigators—cooperation that might have exposed the President’s own wrongdoing. And it worked. Flynn broke his deal, recanted his plea, received the backing of the Attorney General over the objections of career prosecutors, and now has secured a pardon from the President of the United States.
"This pardon is part of a pattern. We saw it before, in the Roger Stone case—where President Trump granted clemency to protect an individual who might have implicated the President in criminal misconduct. We may see it again before President Trump finally leaves office. These actions are an abuse of power and fundamentally undermine the rule of law.
"The President’s enablers have constructed an elaborate narrative in which Trump and Flynn are victims and the Constitution is subject to the whims of the President. Americans soundly rejected this nonsense when they voted out President Trump. President-Elect Biden will soon take office and restore a measure of honor to the Office of the President. Between now and then, we must be vigilant to additional abuses of power, even as we look with hope to days to come."
