More than eight months after his first sentencing hearing went completely off-the-rails, the new legal team for former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn clashed with federal prosecutors Friday over whether his case is now ready for sentencing.
Flynn claims he’s still not ready, and his attorneys are asking for more time to review his case and seek additional documents they claim the government is suppressing.
The two sides were unable to agree on the next steps in the case. Flynn’s lawyers asked for three months to file another joint status report, while prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan to schedule an in-person status conference as early as next week, and listed possible sentencing dates as early as Oct. 21.
A few hours after the filing Friday, Sullivan scheduled a joint status conference for Sept. 10
The antagonism from Flynn’s team represents just the latest in a growing tension with the government since Flynn’s botched sentencing hearing led him to fire his previous lawyers and hire a new legal team.
After pleading guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians, Flynn was set to be sentenced in December 2018. But during a disastrous sentencing hearing his team asked for more time.
Flynn replaced those lawyers in June, picking new attorneys with a track record of fighting back hard against prosecutors, including members of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team.
In the new filing, Flynn’s legal team accused prosecutors of suppressing documents necessary for his defense. Echoing what they said in court in late June, prosecutors replied they weren’t aware of “any” classified information that still needs to be disclosed to Flynn’s team.
While his new team said that “cooperation is fully ongoing,” a July filing revealed that Flynn would no longer take the stand against Bijan Kian — a former business associate who was charged with unregistered foreign lobbying.
Instead, prosecutors labeled Flynn a co-conspirator, suggesting they believed that Flynn knew that the March 2017 foreign agent registration filings he belatedly submitted for his company, Flynn Intel Group, were false.
Flynn admitted to filing false forms when he pleaded guilty in 2017, but he reportedly now maintains that he didn’t know they were false at the time. Flynn’s team wrote in a July 11 filing that there were “significant issues” they needed to address.
Kian was found guilty later in July — without Flynn taking the stand.
This post has been updated.
Just a guess here, but I think that Flynn had second thoughts after the Mueller report largely landed with a thud… so he’s angling to stretch this out as long as possible in hopes that Trump pardons him (either on the way out of office or on the way to the 2nd inaugural).
It also means that he’s betting that prosecutors won’t go back and charge his idiot son under AG Barr.
"In the new filing, Flynn’s legal team accused prosecutors of suppressing documents necessary for his defense."
In the words of a famous, esteemed statesman: "No do-overs!!"
I believe that to be a really good guess- that plus Flynn just seems to be a little mentally unsound and appears to think he can have his cake (escape jail) and eat it too (continue to rail against the deep state and cite idiotic conspiracy theories as a defense).
I am not a lawyer …(crosses self)…but having pleaded guilty, can’t a judge just say FTS and sentence him?? Anyone? Justice delayed is justice denied.
There’s a stench of cheeto funk on the scales of justice here. They just want to string things along til “whatever” plus trying to get more “what they know” info from the DOJ who I can no longer trust til proven otherwise.
Sentence him to life in prison for treason and call it a day. Then go after his son and lock him up too.
You know, Benedict Arnold was Washington’s favorite “son” general, and one of his ablest leaders. Then he turned traitor. Then Washington wanted his ass on a rope (so to speak) real badly, for betraying him.
Flynn may be a respected war wager, or a psychopathic war hawk, whatever, but now he’s a traitorous greedy dick who waived his rights to respect when he started treating with our world rivals/foes/don’t like em’s.