Before Jeffrey Jensen was a corporate compliance partner at Husch Blackwell in Missouri, he was an FBI agent—at one time serving on a SWAT team. Even earlier he was an accountant at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Jeff Jensen Jeff Jensen. Courtesy: DOJ

"I definitely zigzagged. I started out as a CPA, because at the time I graduated from college, that was the most likely area to find employment," Jensen, now the Senate-confirmed U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Missouri, told St. Louis Magazine last year. "But then the FBI was hiring accountants, because of the savings and loan failures of the late 1980s, and I'd always wanted to be in the FBI."

Jensen has become more of a household name in national legal circles in recent days, on the news that U.S. Attorney General William Barr picked him to review the prosecution of Michael Flynn in Washington, the one-time Trump national security adviser who pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI amid the special counsel's Russia investigation. Flynn's case is pending in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The Flynn case has become a flashpoint among some conservatives who believe the FBI coaxed him into making false statements. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington has rejected Flynn's claim the FBI "ambushed" him. Flynn, with a new set of defense lawyers—he fired his Covington & Burling team—has moved to withdraw his guilty plea. Prosecutors last week filed new court papers contesting Flynn's claim that misconduct has marred his prosecution.