Records Show Strzok Intervened when FBI Moved to Close Flynn Investigation Due to Lack of ‘Derogatory Information’

New unsealed FBI memos show that the Bureau found “no derogatory information” on former national security adviser Michael Flynn while investigating his alleged Russian contacts, and moved to close their investigation of him in early January 2017 before former FBI agent Peter Strzok intervened, asking to keep the case open.

The documents, which were released Thursday by the Department of Justice, show that Flynn was given the codename “Crossfire Razor” and investigated in a spinoff case predicated by the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” surveillance of the 2016 Trump campaign — a case in which the infamous Steele dossier played a “central role,” according to DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz’s December report.

Flynn, who pled guilty to lying to the FBI about Russian contacts in January 2017, has since moved to withdraw his guilty plea, saying he “never lied” to federal investigators. In February, attorney general William Barr asked an outside prosecutor from the office of the U.S. attorney in St. Louis to review the DOJ’s handling of Flynn’s prosecution. Flynn’s defense has argued that the retired Army general was “deliberately set up and framed by corrupt agents at the top of the FBI.”

But the FBI moved to close the Flynn case on January 4, 2017, after finding that Flynn had “no contact” with a Russian individual whose name is redacted from the release, and that “CROSSFIRE RAZOR was no longer a viable candidate as part of the larger CROSSFIRE HURRICANE umbrella case.”