The US justice department is dropping its criminal case against Michael Flynn, Donald Trump’s former national security advisor, whom prosecutors accused of lying to the FBI during an investigation into ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign. 

In court documents filed on Thursday, the justice department said it was dropping the case “after a considered review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including newly discovered and disclosed information”, according to the Associated Press.

The decision represents a dramatic turnaround in the long-running case, which was one of the central prosecutions to be brought by special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his investigation into Russia meddling in the 2016 election.

It comes even though prosecutors for the last three years had maintained that Flynn had lied to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in a January 2017 interview. Mr Flynn himself admitted as much, and became a key cooperator for Mr Mueller as he investigated ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.

The justice department said in its court filing that it had concluded that Flynn’s interview by the FBI was “untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Mr Flynn” and that the interview on 24 January, 2017, was “conducted without any legitimate investigative basis”.

Mr Trump has repeatedly called for Mr Flynn’s exoneration. Following the announcement, the president told reporters he “felt it was going to happen”.

“I hope a lot of people are going to pay a big price. They’re scum,” he added, referring to the justice department and FBI officials from the Obama administration involved in investigating his former adviser.

The justice department’s action comes amid an internal review into the handling of the case and an aggressive effort by Mr Flynn’s lawyers to challenge the basis for the prosecution. The lawyers cited newly disclosed FBI emails and notes last week to allege that Flynn was entrapped into lying when agents interviewed him at the White House days after Trump’s inauguration. Though none of the documents appeared to undercut the central allegation that Flynn had lied to the FBI, Trump last week pronounced him “exonerated”.

Federal prosecutors had asked the judge in January to sentence Mr Flynn to up to six months in prison, arguing in a court filing that “the defendant has not learned his lesson. He has behaved as though the law does not apply to him, and as if there are no consequences for his actions”.

His sentencing has been deferred several times.

Mr Flynn also served as head of the Pentagon’s Defence Intelligence Agency but he was forced out in 2014 in part due to his management style and opinions on how to combat Islamist militancy.

He joined the Trump 2016 election campaign and at the Republican National Convention that year he led supporters in chants of “Lock her up”, in reference to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

—With agencies

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