Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 194
What Just Happened?
“Arguably, this undermines everything this flag over here stands for. Arguably, you sold your country out.”
— Judge Emmet Sullivan, quoted by Axios, blasting former national security adviser Michael Flynn from the bench during his sentencing hearing in D.C. federal court.
President Trump in an early morning tweet wished Michael Flynn “good luck” ahead of his former national security adviser’s sentencing for lying to the FBI.
He added: “Will be interesting to see what he has to say, despite tremendous pressure being put on him, about Russian Collusion in our great and, obviously, highly successful political campaign. There was no Collusion!”
“A business partner of Michael Flynn is being charged with acting as an agent of a foreign government and conspiracy for attempting to get Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen extradited from the United States,” the Washington Post reports.
“Bijan Kian made his first appearance in Alexandria federal court Monday morning.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller on Tuesday called for a sentence as low as no time in jail for Michael Flynn, the former national security advisor to President Trump, CNBC reports.
The sentencing document says Flynn “has assisted with several ongoing investigations, including its probe of coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.” He took part in 19 separate interviews.
Among the matters on which Flynn has provided assistance to the government is an unknown criminal investigation, apparently separate from the collusion probe.
However, most of the details of Flynn’s cooperation with the special counsel’s office were blacked out in the memo.
Marcy Wheeler: “The section on cooperation describes Flynn’s assistance in three investigations. The Mueller investigation is actually the second thing listed, which I take to suggest that the the Mueller investigation is just the second most important.”
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office “will make a sentencing recommendation for former national security adviser Michael Flynn on Tuesday, in a court filing that is expected to shed light on the extent of Flynn’s cooperation in the Russia probe,” Reuters reports.
“Flynn’s crime of lying to the FBI carries a statutory maximum sentence of five years in prison. However his plea agreement states he is eligible for a sentence of zero to six months and can ask the court not to impose a fine.”
CNN: “Similar filings before other Mueller defendants’ sentencings — former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, Dutch lawyer Alex Van der Zwaan and internet salesman Richard Pinedo — contained revelations about what each person did and knew in regard to Russians and members of the campaign. But none of those defendants cut a deal to cooperate with Mueller like Flynn did.”
“A veteran Republican activist whose quest to obtain Hillary Clinton’s emails from hackers dominated the final months of his life struck up a professional relationship with Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser to President Trump, as early as 2015, and told associates during the presidential campaign that he was using the retired general’s connections to help him on the email project,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The late Peter W. Smith, an Illinois financier with a long history in Republican politics, met with Mr. Flynn in 2015… At the time, Mr. Flynn had recently left his job as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and was trying to set up his own consulting firm, while Mr. Smith was looking at investment opportunities in cybersecurity.”
“A former top White House official has revised her statement to investigators about a key event in the probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, after her initial claim was contradicted by the guilty plea of former national security adviser Michael Flynn,” the Washington Post reports.
“K.T. McFarland, who briefly served as Flynn’s deputy, has now said that he may have been referring to sanctions when they spoke in late December 2016 after Flynn’s calls with Russia’s ambassador to the United States. When FBI agents first visited her at her Long Island home in the summer of 2017, McFarland denied ever talking to Flynn about any discussion of sanctions between him and the ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, in December 2016 during the presidential transition.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller “is asking a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to move forward with the sentencing of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, nearly 10 months after he pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents about his Russia contacts,” The Hill reports.
“The latest development indicates that Mueller believes he has gotten all that he can or needs from Flynn in the nearly 10 months since he admitted to lying to FBI investigators about his Russia contacts.”
Murray Waas: “In early February 2017, a senior White House attorney, John Eisenberg, reviewed highly classified intelligence intercepts of telephone conversations between then-National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and Russia’s ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, which incontrovertibly demonstrated that Flynn had misled the FBI about those conversations… It was after this information was relayed to President Trump that the president fired Flynn, and the following day allegedly pressured then-FBI Director James Comey to shut down a federal criminal investigation into whether Flynn had lied to the FBI.”
“These new disclosures … constitute the strongest evidence to date that President Trump may have obstructed justice… The president’s legal team has claimed that Trump did nothing wrong because he did not understand that Flynn was in criminal jeopardy when, according to the former FBI director’s testimony, he asked Comey to go easy on Flynn. The new information that Trump and others in the White House were aware that the intercepts revealed that Flynn had lied to the FBI directly contradicts those claims.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller “has again delayed scheduling a sentencing hearing for former national security adviser Michael Flynn,” The Hill reports.
The delay is the fourth time prosecutors have asked to delay Flynn’s sentencing as he’s been cooperating with the special counsel’s investigation.
“A pair of legal filings suggesting that special counsel Robert Mueller’s office is almost-but-not-quite ready to set a sentencing date for former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn have prompted a federal judge to order Flynn and lawyers for both sides to make an unexpected trip to court next week,” Politico reports.
“The hearing set for next Tuesday would be the first court appearance for Flynn since last December, when the former Defense Intelligence Agency chief appeared in a packed courtroom to plead guilty to one felony count of making false statements to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the U.S., about his lobbying during the presidential transition on a United Nations resolution critical of Israel, and about his lobbying work favorable to the Turkish government.”
“Friends and family of former national security adviser Michael Flynn are waging a campaign to try to exonerate the retired lieutenant general — and, possibly, land him a presidential pardon,” the Washington Post reports.
“But the largely social-media-based effort has, at times, put Flynn’s advocates, and occasionally Flynn, at odds with his own legal team, which believes that any public attention to Flynn’s case is not helpful as he awaits sentencing and has counseled that he and his family to remain quiet.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s office “wants two more months before it looks toward sentencing former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who has pleaded guilty to lying to investigators and is cooperating in the Russia probe,” CNN reports.
Prosecutors told the court: “Due to the status of the special counsel’s investigation, the parties do not believe that this matter is ready to be scheduled for a sentencing hearing at this time.”
Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn “met with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. in December 2015, shortly after Flynn first met then-presidential candidate Donald Trump,” the New York Daily News reports.
“About a week after the meeting, Flynn traveled to Moscow to hold a paid speech at a gala hosted by Russian state-owned media organization RT. Flynn was seated next to President Vladimir Putin during the gala.”
“A few months after that speech, Flynn formally joined the Trump campaign as a national security adviser.”
“A three-month Bloomberg investigation has found that Flynn… had a slew of other problematic entanglements. Previously unreported documents, including Pentagon contracts, emails and internal company papers, point to overlapping business conflicts around the world. Self-dealing is, in some ways, at the core of the Mueller inquiry.”
“Michael Flynn, the retired Army general and ex-Trump national security adviser who pleaded guilty last year to lying to FBI agents about his Russian contacts, has put his Virginia home up for sale to pay mounting legal fees,” friends and family members told ABC News.
“Attorneys for former national security adviser Michael Flynn and the special counsel’s office told a federal court on Wednesday evening they are not ready to schedule a sentencing hearing for Flynn,” CNN reports.
“I don’t want to talk about pardons for Michael Flynn yet. We will see what happens.”
— President Trump, quoted by ABC News.
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
More about Taegan Goddard →