Special counsel Robert Mueller recommended that former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn receive a sentence for lying to the FBI that included no prison time, in a court filing Tuesday that called Flynn’s cooperation “substantial.” The filing indicated that Flynn’s assistance was useful to two investigations besides the Russia probe, but elaboration of his assistance on those yet unknown investigations was redacted.
The filing was a sentencing memo ahead of a sentencing hearing Flynn will have before a federal judge in Washington, D.C. later this month.
Last year, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about communications he had with a Russian official about sanctions during the presidential transition, and Flynn has since been cooperating with Mueller’s probe.
Mueller, noting the credit Flynn deserves for “accepting responsibility in a timely fashion and substantially assisting the government,” is now asking the judge to hand down a sentence that “does not impose a term of incarceration.”
The filing included an addendum with some redactions that goes into more specifics about his a cooperation. According to the addendum, Flynn has assisted with two other matters — at least one of them a criminal investigation — besides Mueller’s Russia probe, but those other matters are redacted.
For the Russia investigation, the filing said Flynn provided “content and context” of interactions that the Trump transition team had with Russian officials regarding sanctions that the Obama administration sought to impose at the end of 2016, as well as a vote on a United Nations Security Council resolution about Israel. Both of those matters had been previously referenced in the court filings and hearings for Flynn’s plea last year. Three lines are redacted at the end of the paragraph discussing the sanctions-related communications.
The filing goes on to say that Flynn assisted on another front in the Russia probe, but that that section is redacted.
Flynn sat for 19 interviews with Mueller’s investigators and other offices with the Justice Department, the filing said. It notes that some of the investigations are “ongoing,” so the benefit of Flynn’s assistance “may not be fully realize.” Flynn and prosecutors, however, agreed to move forward with sentencing now because “sufficient information is available to allow the Court to determine the import of the defendant’s assistance to his sentence.”
While praising Flynn’s cooperation, Mueller also called Flynn’s initial false statements to the government “serious.” In addition to the lies he told the FBI in late January, after Trump had been inaugurated and while Flynn was serving in the administration, Flynn also made false statements on forms he submitted to the Justice Department under the Foreign Agent Registration Act about his work for Turkey. As Flynn previously admitted during his plea but was not charged for, he omitted in those March 2017 FARA forms that his Turkish lobbying work was done under the direction of officials for the Republic of Turkey.
Read the memo, which includes a redacted addendum, below:
