Trump's newly confirmed spy chief, John Ratcliffe, declassified the transcript of the conversation between Flynn and Russian ambassador to Washington Sergey Kislyak and released them to Congress in one of his first official actions in his new role.
The department said in a filing that Flynn's December 2017 guilty plea for lying to the FBI over his Russia contacts was not significant to the case, and said the FBI's original probe of him had no "legitimate investigative basis."