The government does not want Michael Flynn to testify against his former partner

Michael Flynn will not testify against his former trading partner at a federal court trial in Alexandria next week, as prosecutors no longer believe his version of events, according to newly released documents.

"The government does not intend to call Flynn as a witness," the prosecutor wrote in a petition filed last week and unsealed on Tuesday.

Flynn, the former national security adviser to President Trump, was supposed to be a key witness in the trial of Bijan Rafiekian, with whom he was running a consulting business. The conviction of Flynn in his own criminal case has been suspended pending this cooperation.

An unsealed response from defense lawyers includes an email that prosecutors concluded saying that they "did not necessarily agree" with Flynn's "characterizations" on the way he had managed to make an inaccurate deposit under the law on the registration of foreign agents for an influential campaign for the benefit of the Turkish government. . According to the email, Flynn stated that he did not provide false information to his lawyers at that time, that he did not read the FARA file before signing it and that he did not know. not that it contained lies.

In their rankings, Rafiekian's lawyers said they "had interpreted the last sentence of the e-mail as a euphemism, because" we concluded [Flynn] ment & # 39;. "

The prosecutors' decision could compromise Flynn's ability to avoid incarceration for lying to the FBI unless Trump forgives him.

Flynn was to testify that Rafiekian and himself had hidden the campaign of their lobbying firm against the exiled Turkish cleric, Fethullah Gulen, had been orchestrated by the Turkish government. When he pleaded guilty in a US federal court to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russians, Flynn also admitted to making false statements about the Turkish plan to conceal the country's involvement.

Last year, in the case of the DC case, brought by the office of the special counsel, the US District Judge, Emmet G. Sullivan, insisted that Flynn be sentenced for his conviction for his entanglement with Russian and Turkish interests.

"It can be argued that you sold your country," Sullivan said, adding that he could send Flynn to jail.

Flynn's lawyers have asked that the proceedings be delayed so that Flynn can continue to cooperate with federal prosecutors in the hope of a probation sentence – a recently renewed request to testify at Rafiekian's trial.

Several weeks ago, Flynn fired the law firm that oversaw its advocacy and cooperation and hired Sidney Powell, Conservative critic for the Department of Justice.

The government will now seek admission to evidence of Flynn's earlier statements in the Rafiekian case, such as the words of a co-conspirator, prosecutors said in court documents.

In their own response Tuesday, Flynn's lawyers said he "is always ready to cooperate" and should not be considered a conspiracy, which "could have consequences beyond this lawsuit".

His attorneys say that Flynn's testimony was consistent and truthful, but that prosecutors are "adamant", claiming that he stated that he "knew and intended" to "get away with it." include false statements in his file with FARA.

"It's a complex area of ​​law about which he knew nothing," they write. When he admitted in the US federal court to have dropped a fake FARA, Flynn said he did it "with a little hindsight".

Rafiekian, who is also known as Bijan Kian, maintained his innocence, claiming that he and Flynn acted on the basis of legal advice and their own understanding of the project when they identified their client as a Dutch company called Inovo. BV rather than the Turkish government.

Prosecutors said that the company's leader, the Turkish-Dutch businessman Ekim Alptekin, had acted as an incision for the company Flynn to avoid direct links with Turkey. He is accused in the case but remains abroad.

The now-defunct Flynn Group's influence operation against Gulen culminated in a Flynn editorial published in The Hill newspaper on the eve of the 2016 presidential election, in which he described Turkey as "vital to US interests" and Gulen as "shady Islamic mullah." "

For years, the Turkish government has unsuccessfully tried to extradite Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania and is accused by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of committing a coup attempt in 2016.

It was Flynn's opinion that caught the attention of the Ministry of Justice, which led him and Rafiekian to register as foreign agents because, according to their record, the campaign anti-Gulen "could be interpreted as having mainly benefited the Republic of Turkey".

But in filing the Foreign Agents Registration Act, Flynn claimed that he had written the editorial on his own initiative, while records show that Alptekin was intimately involved. Flynn and Rafiekian also failed to disclose their contacts with members of the Turkish government.

A career military officer who helped shape the counterterrorism strategy under President Obama, Flynn was forced to step down as Defense Intelligence Agency leader in 2014 due to friction with staff. and the leaders of the Pentagon. He established his own consulting firm and became one of the first and oldest former military officials to support Trump.

Rafiekian is accused of having acted as a foreign agent without permission and to have conspired by doing so in the FARA case. His trial is to begin on July 15th.

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