President Trump pardoned on Wednesday his former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, who had twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with a Russian diplomat and whose prosecution attorney-general William P. Barr tried to shut down.

“It is my Great Honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon,” Trump wrote on Twitter.

The presidential pardon appeared to bring to an end the drawn-out legal saga of Flynn. The justice department had moved in the spring to withdraw the charge against him after a public campaign by Trump and his allies, but the judge overseeing the case, Emmet G. Sullivan, had held up the request to scrutinise its legitimacy.

Though Trump had said that he was “strongly considering” pardoning Flynn and was said this week to be planning for it, Barr’s intervention had left open the possibility that his administration could end the prosecution of a Presidential favourite without requiring Trump to take explicit political responsibility for the act.

But as the case lingered, Trump ultimately moved to do so after all. Flynn was the only White House official to be convicted as part of the Trump-Russia investigation.

New York Times News Service