The Department of Justice (DOJ) gave notice to Michael Flynn’s attorneys on Tuesday that several additional discovery documents would soon be released–with the possibility of even more to come.
“As we have previously disclosed, beginning in January 2020, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri has been conducting a review of the Michael T. Flynn investigation,” the brief filing noted. “The enclosed documents were obtained and analyzed by [the U.S. Attorney’s Office] during the course of its review.”
The DOJ referred to U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Jensen’s review of the Flynn investigation. It was Jensen who initially recommended the dismissal of the prosecution. Among those forthcoming documents are “handwritten notes” penned by disgraced onetime Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent Peter Strzok and other former Obama era DOJ higher-ups.
According to the filing, former deputy assistant attorney general Tashina Gauhar’s handwritten notes from a January 25, 2017 meeting will soon be released–as well as Strzok’s notes from that same meeting. Notably, Strzok’s controversial text-exchanges with Lisa Page are believed to refer to Gauhar as “Tash.”
This isn’t the first time that discovery in the form of handwritten notes have figured prominently in the ongoing Flynn saga.
In June, Flynn’s attorneys and his conservative supporters noticed a lone–and heavily redacted—piece of paper containing Strzok’s handwriting which allegedly implicated former president Barack Obama and current Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in the “Crossfire Razor” controversy.
“[T]he Government produced further stunning and exculpatory evidence, previously withheld from General Flynn, showing that Director Comey himself and the highest levels of the Obama Administration had the transcripts of Flynn’s phone calls with officials of other countries and knew General Flynn’s calls were lawful and proper,” Flynn attorneys Jesse R. Binnall and Sidney Powell wrote in a motion to supplement their client’s consent to the DOJ’s longstanding motion to dismiss the prosecution.
The notice also described “an internal DOJ document dated January 30, 2017” and said that “handwritten notes of then Acting Attorney General Dana Boente, dated March 30, 2017″ will also be released.
Boente recently resigned from the FBI after being asked to do so by DOJ in late May; documents were released which put him at odds with Attorney General Bill Barr’s opinion that the prosecution of Flynn was not “in the interests of justice.”
President Donald Trump, Barr and Barr’s more loyal subordinates at DOJ have repeatedly characterized FBI disclosures from earlier this year as exculpatory materials which necessitated that the charges against Flynn be dropped. Per Barr, Flynn’s lies to FBI were not material to an ongoing investigation–as the federal criminal statute under which he was prosecuted demands–and prosecutors also mishandled the underlying FBI documents by keeping them secret for years.
Boente had previously argued against providing those allegedly exculpatory documents to Flynn’s attorneys, saying in a memo that they were not actually exculpatory. That memo was sent in April.
The materials released to Flynn’s attorneys are covered by a February 18 protective order, according to the filing which notes that “additional documents may be forthcoming.”
The full notice and letter is available below:
Flynn Notice and Letter by Law&Crime on Scribd
[Image via Alex Wroblewski/Getty Images]