Washington (CNN)A former Justice Department official says Attorney General William Barr "twisted" her words to justify the decision to drop the criminal case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Mary B. McCord, former acting assistant attorney general for national security, wrote in a New York Times op-ed Sunday that Barr cherry-picked from her 2017 testimony to special counsel Robert Mueller, which the DOJ cited more than 25 times in the motion to dismiss Flynn's case. She said her testimony is "no support for Mr. Barr's dismissal of the Flynn case."
"It does not suggest that the F.B.I. had no counterintelligence reason for investigating Mr. Flynn," she wrote. "It does not suggest that the F.B.I.'s interview of Mr. Flynn — which led to the false-statements charge — was unlawful or unjustified. It does not support that Mr. Flynn's false statements were not material."
McCord continued, "And it does not support the Justice Department's assertion that the continued prosecution of the case against Mr. Flynn, who pleaded guilty to knowingly making material false statements to the FBI, 'would not serve the interests of justice.'"
The op-ed from McCord is a blistering rebuke of Barr and the political appointees at the DOJ who took over the Flynn case from career prosecutors. McCord spent nearly 20 years at the DOJ, rising to top posts in the Obama administration and early months of the Trump administration.
In those senior roles, McCord was involved in the internal DOJ deliberations over how to handle the Flynn debacle in January 2017, when senior Trump officials were caught in a public lie about Flynn's ties with Russia.
Her comments come less than a week after the Justice Department dropped the case against Flynn, whose lies about his contacts with Russia prompted President Donald Trump to fire him three years ago. Flynn later flipped on Trump, pleaded guilty to lying, and cooperated in the Russia investigation. But he reversed course last year, started attacking the Russia investigation, and tried to undo his guilty plea.
Barr said the department had a "duty" to move to dismiss the charges against Flynn during an interview with CBS News on Thursday. He denied that he was following instruction from Trump and instead said that he was "doing the law's bidding."
"I'm doing my duty under the law, as I see it," Barr said. He echoed the legal reasoning to drop the case that was laid out in the filing, saying that "a crime cannot be established here."
Barr also said the FBI "did not have a basis for a counterintelligence investigation against Flynn at that stage," adding that "people sometimes plead to things that turn out not to be crimes."
In addition to McCord, the filing drew swift criticism from former top FBI officials who had worked on the case and supported the investigation into Flynn.
The court must still formally approve the DOJ's request to dismiss the case.
