Michael Flynn blames prosecutors and argues that he has helped them enough to avoid jail



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According to his lawyers, prosecutors, including Brandon Van Grack, who worked for special advocate Robert Mueller, have retaliated against him in recent weeks. Flynn had been preparing for months to help them during the trial of his former lobbying partner, Bijan Kian, until prosecutors filed him as a witness at the beginning of the month.

The Flynn legal team said that what he had planned to say as a witness was not what the prosecutors wanted. But prosecutors say Flynn was changing its story.

"If the case of the government failed here, it would not be because of anything that Mr. Flynn did or did not do," his lawyers wrote on Thursday.

It is part of a long tour for Flynn to be a key Mueller cooperator in a hostile charge.

When Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to investigators in December 2017, he became one of the most important defendants and cooperators in the Mueller case investigation. He faces up to five years in prison.

"Mr. Flynn cooperated even more with the government," his lawyer wrote about preparing for his trial on Thursday, "trying to dispel any misunderstanding of critical facts by prosecutors and in response to their questions and requests" at about his lobbying work abroad. "Instead of searching for and confirming the truth, prosecutors have doubled, putting the previous lawyer at odds with his former client and his partner's contemporary notes."

Judge Emmet Sullivan of Washington has not yet convicted Flynn for lying to investigators about phone calls with the former Russian ambassador and his lobbying forms. Sullivan had postponed his sentence in December, so Flynn could gain more goodwill from the police as a cooperating witness against his lobbying partner. The outcome of the relationship between Flynn and the prosecutors is a potentially explosive tactic to present to the judge.

However, prosecutors said this week that they would no longer use Flynn as a cooperator in the trial that begins next week as his legal team changed what he was going to say. Flynn's lawyers say this is not true.

Flynn said Thursday that even though he was no longer helping prosecutors, Sullivan should still consider that he did not deserve a jail sentence.

Flynn's testimony at the trial "only related to an" additional credit "that could be awarded to him by lightening his sentence, and his special advocate had already recommended probation to this court," his lawyers wrote.

They are also not ready for the delivery of his sentence, said his legal team, and they will need at least until the end of August – and probably longer – to prepare themselves, according to the file.

Prosecutors who were handling his case before Sullivan told the judge this week that they wanted to wait after Kian's trial to say what they will do about Flynn and what punishment they thought they deserved.

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