CNN: Behind the Justice Department's split over the Flynn dismissal

[Mike 03]

By Evan Perez and David Shortell, CNN

Updated 4:47 PM ET, Fri May 15, 2020

(CNN)Before the Justice Department moved last week to drop the charges against Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump's former national security adviser, department officials and the FBI were in sharp disagreement over whether prosecutors and agents had improperly withheld documents relevant the case.

Behind the scenes, a set of documents produced late last month in a review of the case ordered by Attorney General William Barr, including notes handwritten by a senior FBI official and emails between investigators, divided the officials who handled them and argued over their importance, multiple US officials briefed on the matter said.

On one side, the documents were seen as insignificant and stale: the FBI had previously handed them over to outside inspectors, the agency said, and a federal judge had already ruled that some of them had been properly described to Flynn's legal team.

But others felt that the documents, some of which had apparently not been given to Flynn in full, should have been turned over. Some of the lawyers involved fear that by not making clear that there was no misconduct, the department has left them open to disciplinary action.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/15/politics/flynn-justice-department-prosecutors/index.html

Wolf Blitzer just broke into programming to discuss this on CNN. This is a fairly long article.