SERGEY IVANOVICH KISLYAK

Testimony to Congress from Donald Trump’s former top White House lawyer has “shed new light on several troubling events.”.

“It is my Great Honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon," Trump tweeted. A Justice Department official said the department was not consulted on the pardon and learned Wednesday of the plan. But the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, noted that the president has the legal power to pardon Flynn. “Americans soundly rejected this nonsense when they voted out President Trump. But last May, after years of defending the prosecution, the Justice Department abruptly reversed its position.

But allies of the president who maintain the FBI had no reason to investigate Flynn in the first place insisted that the transcripts showed he had done nothing wrong. The transcripts are unlikely to significantly reshape public understanding of the contact between Flynn and then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, a central moment in the Russia investigation. But Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, one of the GOP senators who released the transcript, said Flynn had done nothing wrong. The nature of those intelligence reports remains unclear, and they were not among the documents released Friday. The use by U.S. officials of a routine process known as unmasking to learn Flynn's identity from those reports has become a major issue for Trump supporters.