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Justice Department drops second case against ex-SEAL Matt Bissonnette

By Allen Cone
Matt Bissonnette, a Navy SEAL, scans an area in San Diego in 2001 as they practice a beach incursion. He later wrote a book on helping kill Osma bin Laden. Photo by Sgt. Brian Snyder/U.S. Navy
Matt Bissonnette, a Navy SEAL, scans an area in San Diego in 2001 as they practice a beach incursion. He later wrote a book on helping kill Osma bin Laden. Photo by Sgt. Brian Snyder/U.S. Navy

WASHINGTRON, D.C., May 31 (UPI) -- The Justice Department won't pursue its second criminal investigation of a former Navy SEAL who helped kill Osama bin Laden in 2011 and wrote a best-selling book about the secret operation.

Matt Bissonnette served in SEAL Team 6 and later wrote No Easy Day, a firsthand account of the 2011 operation.

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Federal authorities were checking his consulting work being done while on active duty to see if it was a conflict of interest.

His attorney, Robert D. Luskin, said the prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia agreed last month they would not prosecute Bissonnette.

"We ultimately agreed it wasn't criminal," Luskin told the Washington Post.

In August 2015, prosecutors also decided Bissonnettee should not be prosecuted for the unauthorized release of the book, written under the pseudonym Mark Owen.

Instead, Bissonnette agreed to return net proceeds he earned from the book that was released in 2012. Bissonnette's Texas-based lawyer, Randy Johnston, told the Washington Post on Tuesday that his client would have to return about $8 million in book sales and lose another $2 million in legal fees and income.

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Bissonnette sued his former attorney, Kevin Podlaski, and his law firm, alleging he was given bad legal advice to not submit the book for military review. That suit was dismissed in 2015 in New York, but Bissonnette sued again in Indiana.

As part of the investigation on work conflict, Bissonnette voluntarily provided investigators with a copy of his hard drive so he wouldn't be prosecuted for unlawfully possessing classified material. It contained an unauthorized photo of the al-Qaeda leader's body. The government doesn't want photos of bin Laden's body being released because of national security concerns.

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