WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced he had pardoned his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, ending a three-year legal saga that included Flynn's guilty plea for lying to the FBI, his later effort to withdraw that plea and then a controversial decision by Attorney General William Barr to try to drop the case altogether.

FLYNN-ANALYSIS: WASHINGTON - The Justice Department's decision to drop its prosecution of former national security adviser Michael Flynn on Thursday was greeted as a triumph by President Donald Trump and his allies, who have argued for years that Flynn was set up - but with dire alarm by Trump's opponents, who saw the move as an attack on the rule of law.