Lawyer: Flynn will keep cooperating after co-conspirator revelations

Michael Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell said Thursday that her client doesn’t plan on ending his cooperation with the government, as federal prosecutors say they intend to argue he was a co-conspirator in charges filed against Flynn’s former business partner.

Powell told The Hill that Flynn is “continuing to cooperate.” 

“We’re doing everything we possibly can,” she added.

When asked if that could change in the future, Powell replied, “I don’t think so.”

{mosads}Flynn’s case was roiled earlier this week when unsealed court documents showed that federal prosecutors plan to argue that the former national security adviser is a co-conspirator in the case against his former business associate Bijan Kian.

Government attorneys had previously stated that they wanted to call Flynn as a witness in Kian’s trial, scheduled for next week.

But they suggested in one of the court filings that they may no longer be fully confident in Flynn’s testimony and will seek to submit statements he made to investigators as evidence in the trial rather than putting Flynn on the stand.

The court document pointed to a July 2 email from federal prosecutors that says they “do not necessarily agree” with Flynn’s characterizations on how he made a Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) filing that included false information about ties between his company’s lobbying and the Turkish government. 

The email states that Flynn’s new attorneys maintain that their client didn’t give his previous lawyers false information, didn’t knowing the FARA filing had false information and that he didn’t read the document.

Kian was charged in federal court in Virginia last year, alongside Turkish national Kamil Ekim Alptekin, with acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Turkey in relation to the now-shuttered Flynn Intel Group’s lobbying campaign against Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen.

Flynn is also set to be sentenced in D.C. after he pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador. The former Trump official agreed to cooperate with former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe as part of the deal.

Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is overseeing the D.C. case, ordered the parties in the case to make filings on how they expect the developments in Kian’s case to impact Flynn’s sentencing.

Government attorneys said in a filing Wednesday that they don’t know at this point whether the case would impact the sentencing, and that they would “reassess” after Kian’s trial.

Powell also told reporters on Thursday that she didn’t know whether the latest developments would impact the government’s prior recommendation that Flynn face little to no prison time.

“That’s purely up to the Department of Justice and what stance they want to take,” Powell said. “Our position is that he is continuing to cooperate. We have done everything humanly possible to do so. And we’re going to continue to do that.”

Powell is also set to make a filing in D.C. later Thursday afternoon responding to the court documents unsealed in Kian’s case. She declined to provide details, but characterized the upcoming filing as being “another little truth bomb.”

Powell recently joined Flynn’s legal team after he unexpectedly fired his attorneys last month.

She was on Capitol Hill on Thursday to deliver a lecture titled “What it Really Means to be a Federal Prosecutor.” The event was sponsored by The Fund for American Studies and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who attended the talk.