Justice Department lawyer withdraws from Flynn case

One of the Justice Department lawyers prosecuting Michael Flynn abruptly withdrew from the case on Thursday amid President Trump’s attacks on the case against his former national security adviser.

The move was announced with a one-sentence filing to the D.C. District Court that gave no reason for the departure.

Brandon L. Van Grack, a career prosecutor with the department, has been on the case since Flynn entered into a plea agreement in 2017 over charges that he lied to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. in the months before Trump took office.

Flynn has since withdrawn from the plea agreement and is now fighting the charges.

It’s unclear why Van Grack withdrew from the case. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department did not immediately respond when asked for comment.

Earlier this year, Justice Department lawyers prosecuting Roger Stone, the longtime right-wing operative and Trump confidant, withdrew from that case after their recommendation that Stone be sentenced to up to nine years in prison was overruled by the department in favor of a more lenient sentence.

Those withdrawals came as Trump was publicly weighing in on Stone’s behalf. Trump has claimed that a key juror had been biased against Stone and prejudiced the verdict that found him guilty on seven counts of lying to Congress and witness tampering.

Trump has also been publicly attacking the case against Flynn. Lawyers for the former three-star Army general say that newly-uncovered documents showing FBI investigators debating in 2017 whether to warn Flynn of the possibility of prosecution prove that investigators sought to entrap him.

A federal judge had rejected a similar argument in December, before the new documents were released.