Attorney General Bill Barr is speaking out after the Department of Justice announced Thursday the criminal case against General Michael Flynn, which involved FBI agents engaging in entrapment, has been dropped.
"This was not a bonafide counterintelligence investigation. They were closing the investigation in December, they started that process and on January 4 they were closing it," Barr said during an interview with CBS News. "They initially tried some theories of how they could open an investigation which didn't fly and then they found out they had technically not closed the earlier investigation and they kept it open for the express purpose of trying to catch, lay a perjury trap for General Flynn. They didn't warn him the way we would usually be required by the Department. They bypassed the Justice Department. They bypassed the protocols at the White House and so-forth."
"These were things that persuaded me that there was not a legitimate counterintelligence investigation going on," Barr continued.
As far as consequences for the agents and officials who engaged in corrupt and dishonest behavior in the Flynn case, Barr said he's waiting for the results of U.S. Attorney John Durham's investigation. He also said misconduct by government officials must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
"If we were to find wrongdoing in the sense of any criminal act obviously we would follow through on that," Barr said. "Just because something may even stink to high heaven and appear everyone to be bad we still have to apply the right standard and be convinced there's a violation of the criminal statute that we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt. The same standard applies to everybody."
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