Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell has declassified a list of Obama administration officials involved in the illegal “unmasking” of Gen. Michael Flynn in wiretapping.
Attorney General William Barr is now in possession of the list and has the authority to make the document public, ABC News reported.
Grenell visited the Justice Department last week, delivering the list of Obama administration officials before AG Barr announced the dropping of the DOJ case against Flynn.
Flynn pleaded guilty to one count of lying to FBI investigators about his contacts with former Russian Amb. Sergey Kislyak, but he withdrew his plea when his legal team found evidence of potential prosecutorial and investigative abuses.
Flynn was the target of an FBI wiretapping during the 2016 presidential transition; skeptics believed in 2017 that this was legally unjustified as a result of potential Logan Act violations.
The Logan Act precludes American citizens from acting on behalf of the U.S. government overseas, but Flynn’s contacts with a Russian diplomat came in the course of just actions amid the presidential transitions, skeptics argued.
Barr now agrees.
“They did not have a basis for a counterintelligence investigation against Flynn at that stage, based on a perfectly legitimate and appropriate call he made as a member of the transition,” Barr told CBS News last week.
The Logan Act, which was written into law late in the 1700s, has not been used in criminal prosecutions, and legal expert Alan Dershowitz has told Newsmax TV it is ostensibly “off the books” as “outdated law.”
via newsmax
