The risible handling of the Flynn case shouldn't be a surprise given the history of Trump's White House

The move to drop charges is yet another reminder of just how important this year's presidential election is

Michael Flynn was fired by Donald Trump for lying to his vice president, Mike Pence, about discussing sanctions against Russia with the country’s ambassador.

Trump’s national security advisor admitted lying about the meeting to the FBI as well, and about paid lobbying work on behalf of the Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He was also accused of lying about who paid for a trip to Moscow where he sat beside Vladimir Putin.

The obvious question is that why should Trump, a serial liar, fire Flynn for lying? Especially over Russia when he himself is still facing investigations over his Kremlin links and may yet be impeached if he loses the coming election.

The dismissal, however, took place when the full extent of the investigations into Trump and Russia were yet to emerge, and , it was said, the White House hoped that jettisoning Flynn at that stage may head off a line of inquiry. It also took place before untruths in an industrial scale became the hallmark of this administration and thus the national security advisor’s transgression not so unusual.

Flynn, of course, was also going to face serious criminal charges. Prudently, on the advice of his lawyers, he agreed to a plea bargain, admitting to a charge of lying to the FBI to get off any others , and agreed to cooperate with the authorities. The sentence he would have received was expected to be minimal, with possibly no jail time.

That is where it would have rested in a normal judicial system. But with Trump’s appointment of William Barr as attorney general, and the subsequent replacing of senior, experienced public servants with pliant Trump loyalists and Trump’s regular castigating of the FBI, Flynn and his lawyers saw a chance to free him from legal worries and sought to withdraw his guilty plea.

That is now what has happened with the Justice Department moving to drop all charges against him.

The retired Lieutenant-General Flynn, who had previously been fired from his role as head of the Defence Intelligence Agency and who used to lead chants of “lock her up” against Hillary Clinton, will now escape any penalties for the crimes he has confessed to. This is as well as avoiding other charges via his initial confession and working with authorities.

The scenario is risible, but not unexpected, given the current state of affairs under the Trump US administration. Flynn had agreed to plead guilty to a felony count of “ wilfully and knowingly” making “ false, fictitious and fraudulent statement.” Asked about Flynn’s lying, the response from Barr, the attorney general, was: “People sometimes plead to things that turn out not to be crimes.”

Barr maintains that he is “doing the law’s bidding” and not that of the president. He insists that the White House had not been briefed before the charges were dropped. There are doubts about that. When asked last week whether he would pardon his former national security advisor Trump responded that he no longer had to do so : “ it looks to me like Michael Flynn would be exonerated based on everything I see.”

After the charges were dropped Trump described the man he had once fired for lying to his Vice President as a “ great gentleman” and a “ great warrior” before going on a rant about those who had prosecuted him as “ human scum” and threatening that they would pay a “ big price”.

There has been angry criticism of the charges being dropped. Democrat Congressman Jerry Nadler, chair of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, condemned it as “outrageous”. He would, he said, be rescheduling a meeting with Barr as soon as possible and ask the Justice Department’s Inspector General to investigate what happened.

Neither of these moves are likely to result in the case against Flynn being reopened.

Andrew McCabe, who took over as acting director of the FBI in 2017, after Trump fired James Comey – before being driven out himself a year later by Trump – described the dropping of charges as “pure politics designed to please the president”.

The FBI, he wanted to stress, had “received incontrovertible evidence” that Flynn spoke to the Russian ambassador multiple times and tried to influence Russian officials. “The [Justice] Department's position that the FBI had no reason to interview Mr Flynn pursuant to its counterintelligence investigation is patently false, and ignores the considerable national security risk his contacts raised”, said McCabe.

James Comey tweeted: “The DoJ has lost its way. But, career people: please stay because America needs you. The country is hungry for honest, competent leadership.”

It is perhaps worth remembering the part that Comey had played in the US getting the leadership it has now. It was he who, while clearing Hillary Clinton of any illegal acts over the use of emails, gave the flagging Trump campaign a huge boost by scathingly criticising her over the affair.

This was in breach of FBI protocol, ignoring a Justice Department warning that it will look like interference in the election, and will be against established bureau practice. At the same time Comey did not disclose the investigation into the Russian hacking of Democratic party emails, the contents of which had helped the Trump campaign.

Trump himself, facing defeat according to the polls until Comey’s intervention over Clinton, was exultant. “We have fantastic people at the Justice Department, fantastic people at the FBI,” he cried at a rally. A senior security official’s bemused view at the time was that for Trump it was “manna from the FBI. He must feel this has been a tremendous stroke of luck. Except it wasn’t luck, it was James Comey.”

Barr, asked on a TV interview about how history would remember his actions on Flynn, paraphrased a Churchill quote: “History is written by the winners, so it largely depends on who is writing the history” with a sly smile.

What has happened with Michael Flynn is yet another reminder of just how important the coming presidential election is for the future of governance in the United States.