Michael Flynn Lawyer Assails U.S. Case Against Ex-Trump Aide
Michael Flynn Lawyer Assails U.S. Case Against Ex-Trump Aide
(Bloomberg) -- Michael Flynn’s lawyer told a U.S. judge Tuesday that prosecutors improperly withheld evidence that would fatally undermine the criminal case against the former national security adviser to President Donald Trump.
Sidney Powell made her claim during a Washington federal court hearing on whether prosecutors had met their legal obligation to provide exculpatory information to the defense and on when Flynn should be sentenced for lying to federal agents.
Over Powell’s objection, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan set what he called a target sentencing date of Dec. 18. That’s a year after Flynn’s original sentencing, which went awry amid questions about whether he had fully cooperated with prosecutors after agreeing to plead guilty in December 2017. At last year’s hearing, Flynn reiterated his guilty plea.
While Powell said Tuesday that she did not intend for her client to withdraw his plea, the evidence withheld by prosecutors would show “the entire prosecution should be dismissed for government misconduct.”
Justice Department attorney Brandon Van Grack disputed that account and told the judge the government had complied with its legal obligations.
Flynn resigned from his post as Trump’s original national security adviser just three weeks into the president’s term. He quit amid allegations he’d lied to federal agents about conversations with then-Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak. The exchanges took place after the election but before Trump took office.
In a plea deal with prosecutors, the retired U.S. Army general admitted to lying and to uncharged conduct concerning illegal lobbying in the U.S. for the government of Turkey. As part of the agreement, Flynn pledged to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election.
With Flynn’s assistance, the Justice Department indicted his former business partner, Bijan Kian, who was tried and convicted for illegal lobbying on behalf of Turkey in July.
By that time, Flynn had fired his original attorneys and replaced them with Powell, a Dallas-based conservative firebrand who’d written a book titled “Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice,” and whose hiring was cheered by Trump himself.
Powell claims prosecutors have failed to provide her with access to classified information, with the original notes from the Federal Bureau of Investigation interview of her client that led to the criminal charges against him and with some of the text messages exchanged by since-fired FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.
Strzok, an FBI deputy director, was one of the agents who questioned Flynn about his contacts with Kislyak. Powell called that interview an “ambush” and the lack of document disclosures “stunning.”
Asked by Sullivan whether she considered the anti-Trump text messages traded by Strzok and Page to have been exculpatory, the lawyer told the judge it was obvious the two “were completely impaired by bias.”
Van Grack countered that Flynn had been told about the Strzok-Page exchanges before his first guilty plea and before they’d become known publicly. The government also gave Flynn’s prior counsel copies of messages that have not otherwise been made available, the prosecutor said.
The prosecutor disputed Powell’s claim her client had been accused of being a Russian agent and told Sullivan that Flynn’s original attorneys had been given 22,000 pages of disclosures before the failed 2018 sentencing hearing.
Sullivan scheduled an Oct. 31 hearing to take up the issue of what has or hasn’t been provided and set a briefing schedule for it.
Powell opposed even setting a provisional date for the retired general’s punishment. She told the judge that had the government correctly assessed the information before it, “they never would have brought this case in the first place.”
Flynn has already pleaded guilty twice to the charge against him and accepted responsibility for his actions, Sullivan said. The classified information sought by Powell will need to be more than theoretically relevant to the defense for her to get it, the judge said. In 2009, Sullivan threw out a federal criminal case against former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens following the revelation that prosecutors had withheld exculpatory evidence.
The case is U.S. v. Flynn, 17-cr-232, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).
To contact the reporter on this story: Andrew Harris in federal court in Washington at aharris16@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Steve Stroth
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