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WASHINGTON – Michael T. Flynn, the former national security advisor, has canceled his scheduled testimony in connection with a federal lawsuit against a former partner, according to undisclosed court documents Tuesday.
Mr. Flynn had previously admitted to lying on foreign lobbying disclosure forms submitted to the Department of Justice, but now blames his former lawyers, accusing them of filling out inaccurate forms without his knowledge. He did not dispute that the deposit itself contained false information.
His latest maneuver could provoke yet another dramatic and risky confrontation with the federal judge who postponed Mr. Flynn's conviction last year in a separate case so that he could continue to cooperate with the government in the hope of a less severe. And it was the last strange trick in a lawsuit that should have unfolded without much tragedy after Mr. Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to the investigators and agreed to cooperate with the investigators. special advocate.
Mr. Flynn's lawyers may scoff at what the judge will do if they think that President Trump will forgive his former National Security Advisor. Mr. Trump stated that Mr. Flynn was a good man who had been badly treated, but without specifying if he would forgive him.
Mr. Flynn suddenly changed his lawyer last month but did not explain why. In the newly sealed documents, his new lawyers seemed to contradict the former legal team, blaming them for the ranking that had helped their client to have legal trouble. The development of Mr. Flynn's situation may also have resulted in a change in representation as his previous lawyers had negotiated his plea agreement with federal prosecutors.
Following Mr. Flynn's unexpected disclosure, federal prosecutors said they would no longer ask him to testify in the trial of a former trading partner, Bijan Kian, accused of violating foreign disclosure of lobbying information. Prosecutors downplayed Mr. Flynn's testimony, saying it was not vital to the case. They wrote that "the other pieces of evidence alone are sufficient to convict the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt".
But Mr. Flynn's testimony was one of the reasons why Judge Emmet G. Sullivan allowed Flynn to delay his sentence, but his lawyers said he "could not give this testimony, because it's not true. "
Mr. Flynn's new position surprised prosecutors who had long been considering using him as a key witness against Mr. Kian at his trial scheduled to open next week in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. Mr. Kian has been indicted with another Ekim Alptekin, a man in a federal inquiry into the secret lobbying campaign being carried out by Turkey in 2016 to put pressure on the United States to 39, they expel a rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Prosecutors accused the two men of trying to conceal Turkey's leadership of the work and that senior Turkish officials had approved the project budget and that Alptekin was regularly aware of the progress of the campaign. Flynn's company – Flynn Intel Group – received a total of $ 530,000 for its work.
Following the overthrow of Mr. Flynn, federal prosecutors now claim that he is an unindicted co-conspirator rather than a cooperating witness and want to present his statements as evidence. The lawyers for MM. Kian and Flynn vigorously oppose this decision of the prosecutors.
Mr. Flynn's lawyers suggested that the new government position may be "in retaliation for Mr. Flynn's truthful testimony that the government does not like". His lawyers also stated that Mr. Flynn's testimony would remain consistent with the facts of his plea agreement finding the offense. "When Mr. Flynn agreed in his" finding of an offense "in Sullivan J.'s court that some of the information in FARA's record was false, he did so with some hindsight," he wrote. Mr. Flynn's lawyer.
Prosecutors, however, "do not necessarily agree with these characterizations," they told defense attorneys.
This could be a sign that Mr. Flynn may again be at odds with Sullivan J., the federal judge in Washington who is presiding over his trial for lying to the F.B.I.
At a sentencing hearing at the end of last year, Sullivan J. criticized Flynn for his conduct and expressed his concern over the suggestions made by former Flynn lawyers in briefing notes stating that the FBI the officers who questioned him may have cheated because they had not warned him that lying to investigators was a crime. Justice Sullivan gave Mr. Flynn a chance to withdraw but Mr. Flynn refused and told the judge that he knew that lying to F.B.I was a crime. when agents questioned him in January 2017 at the White House.
Now, Mr. Flynn's cooperation with the government seems to have ended, leaving Justice Sullivan free to condemn him. If Justice Sullivan thinks Mr. Flynn is shirking his responsibilities, he could impose a harsher sentence. Mr Flynn faces up to six months in prison.
Mr. Flynn's lawyers also distinguished David Laufman, former head of counterintelligence at the National Security Division of the Department of Justice. They claimed that Mr. Laufman had pressured Mr. Flynn's previous lawyer to submit the false papers. But Mr. Flynn's new lawyers improperly described Mr. Laufman's title at the time and improperly suggested that he had left the Department of Justice under a cloud in the middle of an internal investigation. .
"The lawyers' statements are crazy and totally unfounded," Laufman said during an interview.
Mr. Trump congratulated Flynn's new lawyer, Sidney Powell, who repeatedly attacked the special attorneys' attorneys during his appearances in Fox News. She also sells t-shirts depicting cartoons of law enforcement officers who participated in the investigation – such as Mr. Mueller and the former ex-FBI. director James B. Comey – above the hashtag #CreepsOnAMission.
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