The Justice Department has agreed to give former national security adviser Michael Flynn a payout to settle claims that he was wrongfully prosecuted as part of the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Department lawyers disclosed the deal in a court filing Wednesday that did not identify the settlement sum. Flynn had been seeking damages of up to $50 million.
The agreement is the latest instance of the Justice Department under President Donald Trump reversing course to adopt a position that benefits an ally or supporter. In Flynn’s case, the department had been successfully fighting Flynn’s suit in court before it reversed its position this year.
Neither the Justice Department nor Flynn’s attorney responded to questions Wednesday about the terms of the settlement agreement. But a department spokesperson described the agreement in a statement as “an important step in redressing [a] historic injustice.”
“This Department of Justice will continue to pursue accountability at all levels for this wrongdoing,” the statement said. “Such weaponization of the federal government must never be allowed to happen again.”
Flynn, in a statement of his own, referred to the Russia investigation as a “relentless, partisan pursuit that weaponized federal law enforcement in a brazen and unjust manner.”
“Nothing can fully compensate for the hell that my family and I have endured over these many years — the relentless attacks, the destruction of reputations, the financial ruin, and the profound personal toll inflicted upon us all,” he wrote. “No amount of money or formal resolution can erase the pain caused by a prosecution that should never have been brought.”
Flynn, a retired three-star general who served less than a month as national security adviser during Trump’s first term, had argued that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III maliciously targeted him amid his investigation of possible links between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Flynn initially pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to FBI agents about conversations he’d had with Russia’s ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, but later sought to withdraw that plea, saying it had been coerced.
The Justice Department, under then-Attorney General William P. Barr, moved to withdraw the charges, but Trump pardoned Flynn in late 2020 before the case was formally dismissed by a judge.
Flynn filed his malicious prosecution suit against the Justice Department in 2023. A federal judge in Florida initially threw out that complaint, though granted Flynn an opportunity to refile it.
Government lawyers had not yet responded to the revised version of Flynn’s suit when they first disclosed last summer that discussions of a possible settlement were underway.
Around the same time, the Justice Department agreed to a $5 million settlement to end a wrongful-death lawsuit brought by the family of Ashli Babbitt, who was fatally shot by a police officer while storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
As with Flynn’s case, the department had opposed such a deal during the Biden administration.
Since then, the department has also taken steps to undo criminal convictions the government had secured against Stephen K. Bannon and Peter Navarro, both of whom were found guilty of defying congressional subpoenas.
Trump himself has floated the idea he could be owed a payout from the Justice Department for its efforts to prosecute him under Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland.
He filed claims before his return to the White House last year, seeking more than $100 million in compensation for reputational damage he says he has suffered as a result of investigations by special counsel Jack Smith.
Trump told reporters last fall that the Justice Department “probably” owes him “a lot of money” and, as president, he could order that it pay him, though he said he would likely give any money he received to charity.
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