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With Latest Stunt, Mike Flynn May Save Bijan Kian from Prison Time But Double His Own

When Mike Flynn hired new counsel, it became clear he was … up to something. Now that something might get him — and possibly even his son (concerns about whom motivated Flynn to cooperate in the first place) — sent to prison. Or, it might spectacularly fuck over the government. We’ll find out next week, when Flynn’s former partner Bijan Kian goes on trial … or maybe sooner, given that Emmet Sullivan has demanded details on the backstory before the end of the week.

Filings unsealed in Kian’s case make it clear that, since the time Flynn replaced the very good Rob Kelner with Fox News firebreather Sidney Powell and Jesse Binnall, he reneged on a key part of his guilty plea. He newly claimed to prosecutors that that he had not knowingly lied about working for Turkey in the March 7, 2017 FARA filing that admitted Turkey might benefit — but denied they were paying for — his services. In response, the government has informed Kian they will not have Flynn testify at trial, and instead tried to name him a co-conspirator and submit one of his statements as the statements of a co-conspirator. That led to the unsealing of these documents, with Kian trying to prevent the government from upending their defense strategy, which has consisted of portraying Flynn as a liar, and Flynn trying to prevent the government from designating him a co-conspirator. Last night, Judge Anthony Trenga ruled largely for Kian on a bunch of other matters (which may have interesting effects for FARA and 951 prosecutions in EDVA); along the way Trenga ruled that the government has not sufficiently shown a conspiracy to violate 951 such that they can enter Akim Alptekin’s statements as a co-conspirator. That will also prevent them–at least as of now–from entering one exhibit involving Flynn as the statement of a co-conspirator, unless and until they submit enough evidence at trial to lay out such a conspiracy (though that exhibit will be admissible under other standards). Naming Flynn a co-conspirator might make it easier to prove a conspiracy, but they’re not there yet.

To be sure, Kian (who like Flynn hired really good lawyers but unlike Flynn did what they told him and also didn’t fire them) already stood a good chance of prevailing at trial, because Trenga is really skeptical of the way the government charged this, including their initial decision not to treat Flynn himself as a co-conspirator. But the chaos Flynn has caused by reneging on his testimony may be the final straw that sinks the government’s case.

All that said, Flynn’s decision to renege on his testimony may have short-circuited a plan to challenge his guilty plea down the road. That’s because Emmet Sullivan has ordered the parties to immediately explain how the government’s decision not to have Flynn testify will affect his sentencing, which had been delayed exclusively for that purpose.

Flynn’s motion objecting to being named a co-conspirator is what you’d expect from a firebreather. It makes a lot of allegations about Flynn being pressured to plead the way he did and invokes David Laufman, whom the frothy right has inserted into some of their hoaxes, to suggest that it was improper for DOJ to insist that the National Security Advisor disclose that he had been on Turkey’s payroll while ostensibly serving as Trump’s top national security advisor during the campaign.

A key part of this strategy appears to be to review Kelner’s prior work, and blame him for the decisions already made.

This really fucks over Kelner, who in December was on the verge of getting his client no prison time before Flynn decided to use his sentencing as an opportunity to discredit the prosecution of him for acting as an unregistered foreign agent while getting Top Secret briefings, and who might still have saved him from prison time had he simply testified in the Kian trial as planned. Kelner will be unable to rebut some of the claims Powell is making, because Flynn gets to decide what privilege to waive, not Kelner. Flynn has probably not even paid Kelner due recompense for that work! Note, too, how Kelner is exposed by Flynn’s own lies.

All that said, the case Flynn’s lawyers are making is — typical of the frothy right — better suited for seeding more conspiracies than winning a legal argument. First, they overstate the assurances the government made that Flynn had no danger of being described as a co-conspirator in this case.

The transcript all sides are relying on — the June 13 statement the government tried to correct — does not deny that Flynn was part of the conspiracy, just states that the government won’t label him as such.

THE COURT: Let me ask you this. It’s not in the indictment. Is the government alleging that Mr. Flynn was part of this conspiracy?

MR. GILLIS: We are not, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Right. So you’re not presenting any statements by him, any testimony – there would be no evidence from him as to the existence of the conspiracy?

MR. GILLIS: Well, Your Honor – no. Your Honor, as to that. There will certainly be testimony from General Flynn. And from that testimony, the jury could draw a reasonable inference that there was a conspiracy, but we are not – we do not contend that General Flynn was a part of that conspiracy.

They make it quite clear his testimony would describe actions he was involved in that amount to a conspiracy. The government just wasn’t labeling the guy who was then going to be a friendly witness a co-conspirator. Flynn points to assurances that Gillis told them the government would not charge Flynn in the conspiracy.

Not only did the prosecutors advise the Court on the record that Mr. Flynn is not a coconspirator, AUSA Gillis has stated repeatedly in interviews of Mr. Flynn and representations to counsel that Mr. Flynn was not implicated in the charged conspiracy.4

4 Mr. Gillis informed undersigned counsel and Mr. Flynn twice on June 6 alone that Mr. Flynn was not charged in this conspiracy, and they did not intend to charge him. This is one reason new counsel for Mr. Flynn understood that the government was only interested in and satisfied with Mr. Flynn’s factual testimony as given repeatedly to date–which, as Mr. Gillis put it, “would allow the jury to infer supervision and control” of the project by the Government of Turkey.

These are different things: not alleging Flynn is part of the conspiracy, not contending that he is, not charging him for it, but nevertheless being implicated in it.

Plus, the record before Judge Sullivan is quite clear: absent his cooperation agreement, Flynn could have been charged with both conspiracy and 18 USC 951 (being an Agent of a foreign power).

THE COURT: I think that’s fair. I think that’s fair. Your answer is he could have been charged in that indictment.

MR. VAN GRACK: Yes, Your Honor.

THE COURT: And that would have been — what’s the exposure in that indictment if someone is found guilty? MR. VAN GRACK: Your Honor, I believe, if you’ll give me a moment, I believe it was a conspiracy, 18 U.S.C. 371, which I believe is a five-year offense. It was a violation of 18 U.S.C. 951, which is either a five- or ten-year offense, and false statements — under those false statements, now that I think about it, Your Honor, pertain to Ekim Alptekin, and I don’t believe the defendant had exposure to the false statements of that individual.

THE COURT: Could the sentences have been run consecutive to one another?

MR. VAN GRACK: I believe so.

THE COURT: So the exposure would have been grave, then, would have been — it would have been — exposure to Mr. Flynn would have been significant had he been indicted?

In other words, as far as Sullivan is concerned, given Flynn’s changed testimony the government now reaffirms that he was part of that conspiracy, as they did in December.

Moreover, Flynn’s lawyers doesn’t seem to understand the purpose of Flynn’s FARA in March 2017, which was to fix a reliance on a commercial exception and admit Flynn that had actually been influence peddling. The March 2017 FARA filing did that. What it didn’t do is admit that Flynn was aware the Turkish government was paying for the work, not just that it might benefit from it (which is what the filing said). What the FARA filing did not do is admit Flynn knew the Turkish government was his actual client, not Inovo.

Thus, showing (as they do) that Kelner learned and expressed concern about Turkey’s role in January 2017 doesn’t prove he knew that the FARA filing was a lie in March. Nor does pointing out that Alpetkin’s lawyers lied. At one point they point to Kelner, in a recent interview with prosecutors, stating that they did not go through all of Flynn Intelligence Group emails, without realizing that that would mean any lies Flynn told to Kelner would be more significant.

In another, they make a big deal that notes of significant legal issues don’t include something — the evolution of the project from one focused on business to one focused on influence-peddling — that was already well established by that point.

Handwritten notes of 2/22/2017 meeting with Mr. Flynn were transcribed a year later and omit the crucial fact that Mr. Flynn told counsel the “business activities” reason that originated the project quickly “crystalized” down to “Gulen” which the raw notes show with a V diagram. The later transcription also omits or misinterprets the fact that the op-ed was pushed at the time for campaign reasons (in addition to for the Inovo project). Compare Ex. 8 with Ex. 9. See Ex. 8-A, transcription of handwritten notes.

But there’s abundant reason to believe Flynn’s claim here — that the op-ed in question, which was done for Turkey, was in fact really meant to benefit the campaign — was utter horseshit. And the accurate transcription of these notes reflecting that conversation …

… instead strongly suggests that in the latest document Flynn produced yesterday, his lawyers caught him lying to them about the central purpose of the op-ed, which was to help Turkey.

In other words, the documents released yesterday show that Kelner didn’t read through every FIG document, and that up until the end Flynn continued to lie to him about what the purpose of the November 8, 2016 op-ed was (as clearly shown by other records released in advance of this trial). They support the government’s claim that Flynn knowingly lied in March 2017.

Don’t get me wrong. This strategy, bolstered by months of riling of the frothy right, might well have worked like a charm. It even still may!

But Emmet Sullivan — and the government — are under no obligation to give Flynn’s Fox firebreathers time to sow these new conspiracies.

Plus, Sullivan seems to have expected something like this might ultimately happen, because the last time Flynn tried to sow conspiracies, only to walk them back, Sullivan made sure to put Flynn under oath before he stated that he was satisfied with Kelner’s representation.

THE COURT: All right. I want to focus on the plea first because I think I need to. And there are some questions that I’m going to ask Mr. Flynn, and because this is an extension, in my opinion, of the plea colloquy, I’m going to ask the courtroom deputy at that time to administer the oath, because normally when we have plea colloquies, we always require a defendant to be under oath, and that’s what I’m going to do this morning, unless there are objections.

MR. KELNER: No objection, Your Honor.

[snip]

So I’m going to invite Mr. Flynn and his attorney or attorneys to come to the podium, and I’m going to ask the courtroom deputy to administer the oath to Mr. Flynn.

(MICHAEL FLYNN, DEFENDANT IN THE CASE, SWORN)

THE COURT: All right. And I will inform you, sir, that any false answers will get you in more trouble. Do you understand that?

THE DEFENDANT: Yes.

[snip]

THE COURT: All right. Are you satisfied with the services provided by your attorneys?

THE DEFENDANT: I am.

THE COURT: In certain special circumstances, I have over the years appointed an independent attorney to speak with a defendant, review the defendant’s file, and conduct necessary research to render a second opinion for a defendant. Do you want the Court to consider appointing an independent attorney for you in this case to give you a second opinion?

THE DEFENDANT: I do not, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Do you feel that you were competent and capable of entering into a guilty plea when you pled guilty on December 1st, 2017?

THE DEFENDANT: I do, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Do you understand the nature of the charges against you and the consequences of pleading guilty?

THE DEFENDANT: I do understand, Your Honor.

THE COURT: And that was covered extensively by Judge Contreras. I’ve read the transcript. Are you continuing to accept responsibility for your false statements?

THE DEFENDANT: I am, Your Honor

As bmaz presciently wrote at the time, Sullivan was anticipating he might need to lay the groundwork for a fraud on the court.

All of which is to say, it was always going to be hard for Flynn to pull off backing out of his plea deal, even with the three months Powell asked to prepare.

But Sullivan was already fairly pissed that Flynn was getting off easy for having served the interests of Turkey while also serving as Trump’s top national security advisor. He probably had cooled off in the interim 7 months. Except now Flynn has basically taken steps to suggest he perjured himself in front of Judge Sullivan.

Which at least gives Sullivan the opportunity to sentence him immediately, and harshly.

Update: The government says that Flynn’s change of testimony does raise significant issues for Flynn’s sentencing, but they won’t be sure how until after the Kian trial.

At this time the government cannot speculate on how specifically the aforementioned records will impact the government’s sentencing position in the proceedings before this Court. Although the records raise numerous issues, the Rafiekian trial may still impact the government’s position. For example, Rafiekian could call the defendant to testify at trial. As a result, the government intends to reassess its sentencing position at the conclusion of that trial.

It sounds like they’ll want to move to sentencing shortly after trial, but they do want to wait until after it.

Update: The government just updated its witness list to add Flynn’s spawn. That should make things interesting next week, as the spawn can verify some of the things pops might otherwise do.

Timeline

June 27: Flynn reneges on part of his guilty plea

July 2: Prosecutors tell Kian’s lawyers that Flynn now claims he didn’t know about the lies being submitted in his FARA filing

July 3: Government files a correction to the record, notifying Kian that they will not call Flynn as a witness, will treat him as a co-conspirator, and in so doing, submit one of his statements as evidence

July 5: Kian asks for a hearing to force the disclosure of the correction; asks for hearing to see whether indictment was based of coerced testimony from Flynn

July 6: The government rebuts Kian’s claim that his indictment relied on false Flynn testimony, also noting that it was the defense that assumed Flynn would testify

July 8: Kian complains that his comments in November 2016 about dissolving the Flynn Intelligence Group changed when Flynn was filing fraudulent statements on FARA; Flynn tries to prevent the government from calling Flynn a co-conspirator

The Dates of Mike Flynn’s Interviews

June 27, 2019/3 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

In this post, I listed all the 302s (interview reports) from Mike Flynn reflected in the Mueller Report. This Bijan Kian filing includes a list of other dates which they have not gotten in discovery (marked as [Missing] below; h/t JG). An updated list looks like this:

May 26, 2017: Likely pre-cooperation [Missing]
November 16, 2017: Trump appoint Flynn as NSA, first call with Putin, Israel vote, communications with Kislyak, December Kislyak call
November 17, 2017: Israel vote, December Kislyak call, especially comms with Mar a Lago, re Ignatius Flynn said he had not talked sanctions, Mar a Lago with Trump, Flynn’s last meeting with Trump, “we’ll take care of you”
November 19, 2017: Why sanctions, whether he told others at MAL, comms on 12/29, re Ignatius Flynn said he had not talked sanctions, Mar a Lago with Trump
November 20, 2017: Whether he told others at MAL, response to Ignatius
November 21, 2017: Whether he told others at MAL, response to Ignatius, meeting with Trump [Missing]
November 29, 2017: Peter Smith [Missing]
January 11, 2018: November 30 meeting with Kislyak [Missing]
January 19, 2018: Flynn did not have specific recollection about telling POTUS on January 3, 2017
April 25, 2018: Peter Smith
May 1, 2018: Peter Smith
June 13, 2018: [Missing]
June 14, 2018: [Missing]
June 25, 2018: [Missing]
July 26, 2018, 2 pager
July 26, 2018, 4 pager [Missing]
September 26, 2018: Proffer response on meetings with Foresman
January 28, 2019: [Missing]
April 5, 2019: [Missing]

Here are the known topics:

Turkish influence peddling: 4 interviews, unknown dates

Transition events, 7 interviews: 11/16/17, 11/17/17, 11/19/17, 11/20/17, 11/21/17, 1/11/18, 1/19/18

Peter Smith, 3 interviews: 11/29/17, 4/25/18, 5/1/18

Robert Foresman: 1 proffer 9/26/18

Unknown topics, up to nine more interviews

As of December 18, 2018, Flynn had sat for 19 interviews (I assume, but am not certain, that the January 24, 2017 and May 26, 2017 ones are pre-cooperation and therefore don’t count). If that’s right, with the two 2019 interviews, he has now sat for 21 interviews. Of the 19 we’ve got these identified (it’s unclear whether the July 26 ones count as one or two interviews):

November 16, 2017: Trump appoint Flynn as NSA, first call with Putin, Israel vote, communications with Kislyak, December Kislyak call
November 17, 2017: Israel vote, December Kislyak call, especially comms with Mar a Lago, re Ignatius Flynn said he had not talked sanctions, Mar a Lago with Trump, Flynn’s last meeting with Trump, “we’ll take care of you”
November 19, 2017: Why sanctions, whether he told others at MAL, comms on 12/29, re Ignatius Flynn said he had not talked sanctions, Mar a Lago with Trump
November 20, 2017: Whether he told others at MAL, response to Ignatius
November 21, 2017: Whether he told others at MAL, response to Ignatius, meeting with Trump [Missing]
November 29, 2017: Peter Smith [Missing]
January 11, 2018: November 30 meeting with Kislyak [Missing]
January 19, 2018: Flynn did not have specific recollection about telling POTUS on January 3, 2017
April 25, 2018: Peter Smith
May 1, 2018: Peter Smith
June 13, 2018:Kian Trial prep [missing]
June 14, 2018: Kian Trial prep [missing]
June 25, 2018: Kian Trial prep [missing]; no time recorded
July 26, 2018, 2 pager
July 26, 2018, Kian Trial prep 4 pager [Missing]

Update, 7/14/19: Here are the additional Kian Trial meetings, per this memo (it’s unclear what the four meetings recorded as Kian Trial prep are, given that it’s unlikely the actual 302s are missing; so it’s possible the government is distinguishing between cooperation and trial prep, which would have been — but now won’t be — provided as Jencks given that the government is not calling Flynn as a witness):

January 28, 2019: Kian Trial
April 5, 2019: Kian Trial
June 6, 2019: Kian Trial (in reality, this is just a meeting where Flynn’s new lawyers meet with prosecutors)
June 25, 2019: Conversation where Flynn blows up Kian trial

On this list, it’s unclear whether Flynn’s two July 26, 2018 interviews would count as one or two. In any case, it’s virtually certain that the four interviews pertaining to Turkey are among those four not identified in this list (because the defense has already seen those). That would suggest that among those “missing” are all the ones that weren’t otherwise described in the Mueller Report.

As I disclosed last July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post.

Mike Flynn Was Renting His Name to the Highest Bidder While Ostensibly Working for Trump

May 25, 2019/28 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

In this post, I noted that for three initial subjects of the FBI’s investigation into Trump associates’ ties with Russia — Paul Manafort, Carter Page, and George Papadopoulos — the campaign gave similar reasons for firing them as the Mueller Report laid out about their behavior.

The fourth initial subject of the investigation is Mike Flynn. The campaign did not fire Flynn for his ties to Russia; in fact, according to some Flynn associates, Trump directed him to reach out to Russia during the campaign.

Nevertheless, last week, Trump complained that he hadn’t been informed that Flynn was under investigation earlier (presumably asking why he wasn’t given a defensive briefing that discussed the investigation into Flynn specifically).

Of course, as I mentioned, we know how Trump would have responded to a warning because we know how Trump responded to Obama’s warning about Flynn: he blew it off.

Still, that should in no way undermine the investigation into Flynn.

The Russian side of the investigation into Flynn, partly for his trip to Moscow where he sat with Vladimir Putin in December 2015, goes largely unmentioned in the Mueller Report, suggesting it may have become a counterintelligence investigation into Russia instead.

But we can review the Bijan Kian indictment — which is based significantly off Flynn’s cooperation — to see how sleazy Flynn was acting while ostensibly serving as one of Trump’s top advisors on the campaign trail.

After the failed coup attempt against Recep Tayyip Erdogan in July 2016 — around the same time Flynn was leading chants of “Lock her up” at the RNC — Erdogan was trying to persuade the American government to extradite Fethullah Gulen, using the coup as an excuse to crack down on a source of power that challenged his regime. After DOJ determined there was still no basis to extradite Gulen, Kian, Ekim Alptekin, and some high ranking Turkish officials reached out to Flynn’s consulting company. They asked what kind of spin Flynn and Kian could generate “on the short and mid-term,” but warned not to read anyone else in.

On July 30 — three months before the election — Kian and Flynn pitched a 3-month plan, again emphasizing the secrecy of the project. On August 2 — the same day Trump’s campaign manager got together with someone suspected of ties to Russian intelligence to talk about how to win Michigan and carve up Ukraine — Kian nudged Alptekin, again emphasizing the secrecy. On August 8, Alptekin approached the Turkish government.

This was also the period when Flynn started getting involved in an effort to find Hillary’s deleted emails from any possible source, including foreign intelligence services.

On August 11 — as the Turkish government grew closer to a deal and as Trump’s campaign manager started engaging in bigger and bigger lies to hide that he had been an Agent of Ukraine — Kian changed the name of the project, which had been “Truth” to “Project Confidence” and introduced Alptekin’s company, Inovo, as the funder as a cut-out t0 hide that Turkey was behind the plan. From that point forward, both Trump’s soon-t0-be-former campaign manager and one of his top national security advisors were engaged in subterfuge in an attempt to hide their work for foreign countries. In Flynn’s case, he was doing that work even as he campaigned for Trump.

On August 17, while negotiating a deal with the government of Turkey, Flynn accompanied Trump for his first intelligence briefing.

Flynn’s deal with Turkey was confirmed, with a 20% kickback to Alptekin for his company’s role as a cut-out, on August 25 and 26. When Kian put together the contract for the project on September 3, he set the start date two weeks after they really started it to hide that it was the same project for Turkey.

On September 8, Flynn would politicize the intelligence briefings he was attending with Trump while being paid by Turkey, claiming briefers indicated some policy differences with Obama.

“The intelligence we’ve received in the last two briefings were in stark contrast to the policy decisions being made,” Flynn said.

“They would say the intelligence professionals, as they should, they would say those are policy decisions,” Flynn continued. “So Donald Trump, in a very, very sophisticated way, was asking tough questions, and they would back off and say, ‘That is not our job, those are policy decisions at the—in this case the White House is making.’ And we would sit there and go, OK, we understand.”

Flynn, however, caught some controversy himself when NBC News reported on Thursday that Flynn was unruly in one of the briefings. The report stated that Trump’s transition chief, Chris Christie, had to calm Flynn down after he repeatedly interrupted intelligence officers with pointed questions.

On September 9, the first check arrived, $200,000, of which $40,000 went back to Alptekin as a kick-back.

On September 19, Flynn and his partners met with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and Turkish Energy Minister (and Erdogan son-in-law) Berat Albayrak in New York and discussed how to bring about Gulen’s extradition. James Woolsey, attending the meeting as an advisory board member with Flynn’s firm, described the meeting as “a covert step in the dead of night to whisk this guy away.” Woolsey declined his consulting fee after attending the meeting, in part out of legal concern, and let Joe Biden know about it via a mutual friend.

That was a week before the first Presidential debate.

On October 11, two days after the second presidential debate, the second check arrived, $185,000, with another $40,000 kicked back to Alptekin. Two days later, Flynn started reading from talking points scripted by Kian: funding, “Islamists,” and Mullahs.

On October 22, two days after the third debate, Flynn wrote members of the project team, referencing the Turkish officials who were the real customers for the project.

On November 2, days before Americans went to the polls, Flynn’s cut-out demanded more: private investigative work targeting Gulen’s supporters, congressional hearings on his schools. That same day, Kian sent Alptekin an op-ed he had drafted. Kian told Flynn the next day an editor was tightening it up before showing it to Flynn. November 4, Kian sent it to Alptekin, who loved it.

Flynn signed his name to Kian’s work and it was published in The Hill, blaming Gulen for the attempted coup, invoking “professionals in the intelligence community” viewing “the stamp of terror” in Gulen’s ideology, but the language was really written by Kian. The paid op-ed would go on to complain about Gulen’s “vast network of public relations” and his “false façade.”

On November 10, two days after Flynn’s op-ed and Trump’s victory and the day Obama warned Trump against picking Flynn to be his National Security Advisor, the third check came, another $200,000 to do the bidding of Turkey.

Even after the FARA office started nagging Flynn about registering, he stalled for the entire time he was in the White House, even while engaging Turkey and Russia in their joint peace plan for Syria. When he finally submitted his FARA filing on March 7, 2017, he falsely claimed he had written the op-ed as a public figure, not in the service of Turkey.

Trump may not have fired him. But both his wails that he should have been informed Flynn was under investigation (at a briefing Flynn attended) and that this investigation was in any way without predicate belie the sheer audacity with which Flynn sold his name to the highest bidder even while claiming to work for Trump.

A Tale of Three (Former) Mueller Dockets

May 13, 2019/52 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

Because I’m wondering why Robert Mueller remains a DOJ employee, which makes it harder for the House Judiciary Committee to get his testimony by subpoenaing him, I wanted to observe the status of three different former Mueller dockets, three weeks after Mueller submitted his “final report.”

The mass swap: Paul Manafort

First, there’s Manafort’s (and Rick Gates’) docket. On March 25, the first work day after delivery of the report, every single Mueller prosecutor filed a notice of withdrawal (Kyle Freeny had already withdrawn on October 17, 2008):

Adam Jed
Andrew Weissmann
Elizabeth Prelogar
Greg Andres
Jeanie Rhee
Michael Dreeben
Scott Meisler

Those seven prosecutors were replaced with a remarkably large team, considering Manafort is supposedly done, Rick Gates only awaits sentencing, and Konstantin Kilimnik presumably will never show up in the US to be prosecuted on his single witness tampering charge. The team includes:

Deborah Curtis
Fernando Campoamor-Sanchez
Jonathan Kravis
Molly Gaston
Zia Mustafa Faruqui

The large team for a prosecution that’s supposedly over is interesting for two reasons. First, Campoamor-Sanchez and Gaston just filed a status report in Gates’ case saying he’s not ready for sentencing. They specifically mention both Greg Craig’s August 12 trial (both are on that prosecutorial team) and Roger Stone’s November 5 trial suggesting they’ll hold off on sentencing him until after those are done.

More interesting still has been the government response to WaPo’s effort to unseal the redactions in Manafort’s plea breach proceedings. At first, Dreeben and Jed filed appearances, signing a request for an extension on March 19, just three days before Mueller finished a report that included new details about issues (the sharing of polling data and the Ukraine “peace” deals) that made up one of the most redacted topics in the breach proceedings. On March 27, Dreeben, Jed, and DC AUSA Jonathan Kravis filed another request for an extension, citing the transfer of “this matter” to the DC US Attorney’s office. After securing that extension on March 28, Dreeben, but not Jed, filed a notice of withdrawal on March 29. On April 15, Kravis responded by saying that the government could not yet unseal the documents — it went through and listed all the documents at issue — because of ongoing investigations, plural, and privacy concerns; the filing said WaPo should check back in six months.

We know what some of the ongoing investigations are: there’s the government’s effort to learn via what kickback system Manafort got paid, as well as some other attempt to save Trump’s campaign in August 2016 where Manafort’s lies aligned with those of the person trying to avoid prosecution after he signed the plea.

Still, that doesn’t explain why the polling and Ukraine stuff can’t be unsealed. Unless the government’s trying to hide Manafort’s lies about it all. Or the government continues to investigate Manafort’s post-election efforts to help Russia carve up Ukraine.

The new addition: Mike Flynn

Compare that to Mike Flynn’s case, which seems to be a mid-point between Manafort and Gates’ status. There, Brandon Van Grack (who has been put in charge of DOJ’s new FARA unit) and Zainab Ahmad (who has moved back to her old prosecutor job) remain on the docket. On April 9, Deborah Curtis joined that docket. She seems to be dealing with the ongoing counterintelligence interests arising out of Flynn’s case. She has joined Brandon Van Grack in WaPo’s suit to obtain the sentencing documents not yet made public. The government has to submit a response to WaPo’s request in that case tomorrow.

And on May 7, prosecutors in the Bijan Kian case requested and got an extension on some discovery materials; previously there had been a delay in turning over materials related to Flynn’s cooperation with Mueller.

The hybrid: Roger Stone

Finally, there’s Stone’s case. That case is different because DC AUSAs were included from the time Stone was indicted.

Jonathan Kravis
Michael Marando

Several of the Mueller prosecutors filed withdrawal notices on April 16, presumably when the considerable work of redacting all the Stone references in the Mueller Report was done.

Jeannie Rhee
Rush Atkinson

Andrew Goldstein didn’t file his notice of withdrawal until April 30, the day of Stone’s last status hearing. Adam Jed, one of Mueller’s appellate specialists, filed a notice of appearance that day, not long after Stone submitted a bunch of largely frivolous challenges to his prosecution that tie in part to Mueller’s mandate. One other Mueller prosecutor, Aaron Zelinsky, remains on the docket.

Zelinsky’s continued presence on the docket may be tied to the Andrew Miller challenge to a subpoena. I’ve wondered if Mueller remains at DOJ to keep that and the Mystery Appellant subpoena challenges active.

The “at Least One Other District” Mike Flynn’s Cooperation Live In

March 16, 2019/36 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Financial Fraud, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

The other day, I described the graymail that former Mike Flynn sleazy influence peddling partner, Bijan Kian, was engaged in. In an effort to identify all the lies Flynn told to discredit him on the stand, his defense team was asking for all his 302s (FBI interview reports). Yesterday, the judge gave Kian a partial victory, ordering him to come up with a specific list of things they still want.

The response is still graymail — they want documents that will embarrass Trump and disclose some of the most sensitive parts of Mueller’s investigation — but not as excessive as it could have been. Among the things they’re asking for are:

Details of whether he told DIA about a 2015 meeting with Sergey Kislyak and payments from RT, Kaspersky, and Volga-Dnepr Airlines.
A description of the reasons Flynn got fired from DIA in 2014.
Details of Flynn’s contact with Kirill Dmitriev and other Russian officials following the election, and whether those were reported to DIA.

Now, this graymail attempt seems to be more focused on revealing that Flynn is nowhere near as honorable as the title he’d use at trial, General, would otherwise indicate. There’s a reason Turkey picked Flynn to run their anti-Gulen campaign, and it’s that he’s willing to trade his values to make a buck, and these documents will help demonstrate that. The government may still want to delay handing these documents over.

That said, details disclosed in the hearing (CNN, Politico, CNS) suggest there may be parts of Flynn’s cooperation beyond those embarrassing details relating to the Mueller probe, parts that wouldn’t be included in Kian’s discovery request.

First, the government revealed that there are 19 Flynn 302s, of which 15 are from Mueller’s office.

In all, the Virginia prosecutors say they have 19 memos from Flynn’s cooperation –15 from the special counsel’s office and four from the Turkish lobbying investigation in Virginia.

“We do not want those 302s leaving the office” of the Virginia US attorney inside the courthouse, Gillis said

More interestingly, AUSA James Gillis at first said those other 302s pertain to investigations in more than one other US Attorney district, only to correct himself and say they pertained to at least one other district.

The prosecutor in court Friday stopped himself after he acknowledged other US attorneys may be looking at what Flynn shared with the special counsel.

“At least one other district,” he said, correcting himself after first saying “districts,” before asking to withdraw his statement in court representing the number of ongoing investigations.

Some thoughts on what this new information might mean.

The government is pretty sensitive about the 302s pertaining even to this case, asking that Kian’s attorneys review them at the EDVA US Attorney’s office, not share them with other counsel, not copy them, and not quote from those not identified as Jencks material at trial without permission.

This may, in part, be an effort to keep the documents out of the hands of Ekim Alptekin, the other defendant charged with Kian, who is back in Turkey.

As of Thursday, Kian’s team had seen just “several” and therefore not all four of the Flynn 302s pertaining to this investigation.

To be perfectly clear, the government has already permitted the defense to review a number of 302s, including several 302s of General Flynn. We have offered upon reasonable conditions to give the defense an opportunity to review all of the General’s 302s that were generated during its investigation of the crimes charged in the indictment,1 as well as the 302s for all but one2 of the other witnesses interviewed in connection with the present charges.

1. The conditions the government requested are listed in the attachment. We offered to negotiate these terms, but we have not heard from the defense. It is interesting, therefore, that the defense has filed this motion for all of General Flynn’s unrelated 302s when that have not even taken the opportunity to review those actually relevant to this prosecution.

2 This individual’s identity is being protected for the time being to prevent any reprisals or tampering involving the witness.

In addition, some of the 302s deemed to belong to the Mueller investigation mentioning Kian or Alptekin or other entities involved in the conspiracy.

Under similar conditions, we have invited the defense to review redacted versions of General Flynn’s 302s that contain any mention the defendants or any reference to the other individuals or entities involved in the charged conspiracy – regardless of whether they relate to this prosecution or to other investigations by the Special Counsel’s Office.

This suggests there’s more of a Turkish part of the Mueller investigation than previously reported.

Remember that in Flynn’s initial FBI 302 (which must be additional to the 19 capturing interviews while he was cooperating), he explained away his December 29, 2016 conversation with Sergey Kislyak to the FBI by claiming they were talking about a Syrian peace conference in Astana, Kazakhstan.

The redactions in Flynn’s 302 included two passages on Flynn’s December 29, 2016 phone calls with Ambassador Kislyak. In the first, Flynn offered up that he and Kislyak had discussed two things: a phone call with Vladimir Putin that would take place on January 28, and whether the US would send an observer to Syrian peace talks Turkey and Russia were holding in Kazakhstan the next month.

[snip]

The claim that those Kislyak phone calls discussed a later call with Putin and the Astana conference is the same one the Transition would offer to the WaPo the day after David Ignatius made clear that the FBI had recordings of the call. Mueller’s reply to Flynn’s sentencing memo describes that Flynn asked a subordinate to feed this information to the WaPo.

[snip]

Flynn’s lies to cover the discussion about sanctions and expulsions were not entirely invented; he’s a better liar than that. The Transition really was struggling over its decision of whether to join in a Syrian peace plan that would follow Russia (and Turkey’s lead) rather than the path the Obama Administration had pursued in the previous year. As he noted to the FBI, the Trump Administration had only decided not to send a senior delegation to Astana earlier that week. It was announced on January 21.

[snip]

But by staking his lies on the Astana conference — and the Trump Administration’s willingness to join a Syrian effort that deviated from existing US policy — Flynn also raised the stakes of his past paid relationship with Turkey. It became far more damaging that Flynn had still been on the Turkish government payroll through the early transition, when Trump directed him to conduct early outreach on Syria. So even while DOJ was repeatedly telling Flynn he had to come clean on his Turkish lobbying ties, he lied about that, thereby hiding that the early days of Trump Administration outreach had been conducted by a guy still working for Turkey.

Under similar conditions, we have invited the defense to review redacted versions of General Flynn’s 302s that contain any mention the defendants or any reference to the other individuals or entities involved in the charged conspiracy – regardless of whether they relate to this prosecution or to other investigations by the Special Counsel’s Office.

In other words, there appear to be parts of the Mueller investigation pertaining to Turkey outside of Flynn’s sleazy influence peddling with Kian. Some of those may have been spun off (like so much else) to other districts (perhaps SDNY, where Reza Zarrab flipped).

Now consider the addendum to Flynn’s sentencing memo describing his cooperation (of which there was an ex parte version withheld even from Flynn). I’ve suggested the description of his cooperation (which covers the same 19 302s at issue in yesterday’s hearing, so there has been no new cooperation since December) is structured like this.

Between the three investigations, Flynn sat for 19 interviews with prosecutors.

Here’s the structure of how the body of the cooperation section describes the three investigations:

A Criminal Investigation:

11+ line paragraph

6.5 line paragraph

2 line paragraph

B Mueller investigation:

Introductory paragraph (9 lines)

i) Interactions between Transition Team and Russia (12 lines, just one or two sentences redacted)

ii) Topic two

10 line paragraph

9 line paragraph

C Entirely redacted investigation:

4.5 line paragraph

The description of the first and third investigations are both almost entirely redacted.

The description of his cooperation with the Mueller investigation is split into two topics — i) interactions between the transition team and Russians, plus another ii) redacted section.

Category A is almost certainly the Kian prosecution, which consists of 4 302s.

Category B, Mueller’s investigation, breaks down into what we know (transition related activities) and something else. Parts of that something else (which likely has to do with the Trump team’s serial efforts to monetize the presidency) may well have gotten spun off.

Then there’s Category c, which given what was said yesterday, seems to relate to Mueller but is of a different sort of information — I’ve suggested it may pertain to a general counterintelligence investigation into Russia, one that might live at DOJ’s National Security Division rather than a US Attorney’s office.

That still doesn’t tell us all that much — except that Flynn hasn’t cooperated further since December and the 3-part cooperation described in his cooperation memo may involved some complexity reflecting Turkish issues that were part of the Mueller investigation as well as other topics (graft?) that could have been spun off.

Mueller may be close to done, but his investigation seems to have spin-offs that we haven’t even begun to hear of yet.

Mike Flynn’s Cooperation and the Giglio Clock

March 13, 2019/6 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

In a status filing yesterday, the government said, for the second time, that it is done with Mike Flynn. While Mike Flynn would like more time to make all the selling out of his country available to Emmet Sullivan look less ugly, Mueller said of Flynn’s cooperation,

[W]hile the defendant remains in a position to cooperate with law enforcement authorities, and could testify in the EDVA case should it proceed to trial, in the government’s view his cooperation is otherwise complete.

That is, unless Flynn can think of some other attempt to sell out the US for financial gain he wants to tell prosecutors about, the record on which he’ll be sentenced will remain largely the same.

And at least from that comment, Mueller’s team seems skeptical “the EDVA case” will go to trial.

Which is interesting because of the graymail that Flynn’s former sleazy influence peddling partner, Bijan Kian, is attempting in that EDVA case right now, and a request the government made yesterday in it.

Back on March 1, Kian moved to force the government to turn over all of Mike Flynn’s 302s under Giglio. (302s are what the FBI calls their interview reports, and Giglio is a discovery obligation to turn over the government communications it has about witnesses it will call to testify at trial). They pointed out that Flynn has a history of lying, even beyond the lies he pled guilty to, and the 302s the government had turned over were just a subset of the whole and were heavily redacted.

To date, the government has made available for defense counsel’s review certain FD-302 memoranda of interviews of Mr. Flynn. The government acknowledges that (i) the documents made available for review are an incomplete subset of all statements by Mr. Flynn to government agents (including the Office of Special Counsel) and (ii) a significant portion of the text of these documents has been heavily redacted.2

The government refused, noting that Flynn spoke to the government about a lot of things not having to do with his sleazy influence peddling having to do with Kian.

On February 22, 2019, the government responded that it “must decline [the] request,” basing its refusal on a government-determined standard of relevance that “General Flynn spoke to the FBI on a number of occasions on matters having nothing to do with Mr. Rafiekian specifically, or with Turkey or the Turkey project in general.”4 The government further stated, “We have read those 302s and are in the process of re-reviewing them with our Giglio obligations in mind . . . . Once we complete our prompt review of the unredacted 302s held by the Special Counsel’s Office, we will timely produce any Giglio information that we should find.”

Effectively, the defense was arguing that Flynn may have lied about the other topics he discussed with the government, so they need to see it so they can paint him as a liar during trial.

As I mentioned, this is really a (completely justifiable) graymail attempt rather than a legitimate search for proof of Flynn lying. Mueller’s team was pretty clear with Sullivan that once Flynn started cooperating, he cooperated in good faith.

But by asking for the 302s regarding the rest of his cooperation, Kian is asking for materials he knows the government is unwilling to share. All that stuff was kept sealed in December during Flynn’s aborted sentencing, we know some of it pertains to Trump’s potentially criminal conduct, and the other investigation on which Flynn cooperated (which is likely the CI side targeting Russia) appears to be even more sensitive than the potentially criminal conduct of the President of the United States. Kian is doing this to try to make going to trial more costly for the government. There’s abundant reason to believe that the government doesn’t need Flynn at trial for anything more than to certify the many emails on which he and Kian conducted their sleazy influence peddling, but given that he’s an unindicted co-conspirator, Kian is absolutely within his right to pretend that Flynn will be central.

This was supposed to be heard at a hearing last Friday, which got bumped to this Friday. But yesterday, the government just asked to have the hearing bumped four more weeks, to April 12, with their response to Kian’s request due April 5 (this request first reported by Josh Gerstein). That timing is pretty interesting, given that the government envisions finding “a potential resolution” that would moot Kian’s request.

The 302s of General Flynn’s interviews relating entirely to matters other than the pending charges against the defendant contain information concerning a number of sensitive matters, including ongoing investigations. The government is attempting to coordinate within the Department of Justice on a potential resolution that could moot much of the defendant’s request. However, this coordination requires time because of the various interests involved.

One resolution that would moot his request would be a plea (indeed, this case has seemed destined to be pled out to just the conspiracy to act as a Foreign Agent charge, just like Maria Butina did, from the start). Another would be the conclusion of the ongoing investigations that require his other 302s to be withheld. Or they might have another solution, such as summaries of the other 302s, akin to CIPA substitutions (which might be necessary in any case for an ongoing CI investigation into Russia).

Whatever the solution, DOJ thinks that solution will be available on April 5 where it’s not today.

Kian’s team has objected to that request, arguing that they need a lot of time to review this classified information. Again, this is graymail, but nevertheless a totally legitimate attempt to gain leverage in what are presumably plea discussions going on in the background.

Update: The judge denied the government’s motion for a continuance, which means the hearing will go forward on Friday morning.

Rob Kelner–the Guy Who Signed Mike Flynn’s FARA Filings–Continued to Be Insubordinate in Yesterday’s Hearing

December 19, 2018/66 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, emptywheel, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

Most of the attention in yesterday’s Mike Flynn sentencing hearing has focused on Judge Emmet Sullivan’s invocation of treason, which I addressed at length here. But — particularly since I have belatedly realized that Rob Kelner is one of the lawyers referred to in the Bijan Kian indictment who filed a FARA registration that, because of lies attributed to Flynn and Ekim Alptekin, ended up being a false statement, I want to look at two bullshit answers Kelner offered yesterday about his little ploy of introducing language on Peter Strzok and Andrew McCabe in Flynn’s sentencing memo.

Taking the second one first, Sullivan asked Kelner to explain why he chose to cite Peter Strzok’s August 22, 2017 302, which had some language about what a successful liar Flynn can be, and not Flynn’s own utterly damning January 24, 2017 302. This was a question directing counsel to explain why he tried to pull a fast one over on the judge. Any responsive answer would have to address that January 24 302 (and wouldn’t need to address the McCabe memo, at all).

But instead of answering that question, Kelner instead tried to use it to attack the Mueller team.

THE COURT: The other puzzling question I have is this: Can you explain for the record why Mr. Flynn was interviewed by the FBI on January the 24th but the 302 cited in his sentencing memorandum is dated August the 22nd, 2017? There’s no reference, and the January 24th is not highlighted at all.

MR. KELNER: Yes, Your Honor. Thank you for the opportunity to address that. I think there’s been some public confusion about that. The original draft of our brief cited specifically to the FD-302 for the interview of Special Agent Strozk and cited it specifically to the McCabe memorandum, and actually originally we intended to include those documents with the filing. Prior to the filing, we shared a draft copy of our brief with the Special Counsel’s Office really for two purposes: One was to make sure that we weren’t including anything covered by the protective order, which they objected to our including, which would, perhaps, have to be redacted or filed under seal; and the other reason, frankly, was generally to understand what their reaction might be to particular points in the filing. After that, the Special Counsel’s Office discussed it with us and asked that we consider removing the Strozk 302, and the McCabe memorandum from the brief and to simply cite to them. Given our position as cooperating in the investigation, we acceded to that. We then sent them a draft of the footnotes that we would use to cite to the relevant documents, and originally those footnotes, as drafted by us, named the McCabe memorandum specifically and named the Strozk 302 specifically so that it would be clear to the reader which documents we were talking about. The Special Counsel’s Office requested that we change those citations to simply reference the memorandum and date and the FD-302 and date without the names. We acceded to that request, and I would add would not have acceded to it if in any way we felt it was misleading, but we respected the preferences of the Special Counsel’s Office.

THE COURT: All right. Any objection to what counsel said? Anything that you wish to add to that?

MR. VAN GRACK: Judge, just one point of clarification.

THE COURT: Sure.

MR. VAN GRACK: Which is what we’ve represented to defense counsel in terms of what to and not to include, what we indicated was anything in the Strozk 302 and the McCabe memorandum that they thought was relevant can and should be included in their submissions. What we asked was that they not attach the documents because, as the Court is aware, there are other considerations in the material there that we wanted to be sensitive to.

Look closely: Kelner never actually answers Sullivan’s question, at all. Instead, he blames the decisions surrounding how those materials were cited in Flynn’s memo (which was not Sullivan’s question) on Mueller’s office.

Mueller’s team probably withheld the filings because there are legal proceedings involving both McCabe and Strzok. You can argue that those legal proceedings served as an excuse to hide embarrassing information and you might even be right. But that doesn’t give you permission to just blow off a legitimate question from the judge.

The second one is, given Kelner’s tenure of representation for Flynn, even more egregious.

Sullivan unsurprisingly expressed difficulty squaring the suggestion that there were extenuating circumstances to Flynn’s brazen lies in his FBI interview with Flynn’s claim that he was accepting responsibility for his actions. So the judge asked Kelner why he included them.

THE COURT: The references that I’ve mentioned that appear in your sentencing memorandum raise some concerns on the part of the Court. And my question is, how is raising those contentions about the circumstances under which Mr. Flynn lied consistent with acceptance of responsibility?

MR. KELNER: Your Honor, the principle reason we raised those points in the brief was to attempt to distinguish the two cases in which the Special Counsel’s investigation has resulted in incarceration, the Papadopoulos and Van der Zwaan cases in which the Special Counsel had pointed out as aggravating factors the fact that those defendants had been warned and the fact that those defendants did have counsel and lied anyway, and we felt it was important to identify for the Court that those aggravating circumstances do not exist in this case relevant to sentencing.

Kelner — the guy who signed a FARA registration that he might have faced his own legal consequences for if it weren’t for his client’s guilty plea accepting responsibility for the lies told in the registration himself — completely ignored Flynn’s FARA lies, both in his answer to this question and the brief generally. Flynn not only had benefit of counsel when he told one of the lies he pled guilty, again, to telling yesterday, Flynn had benefit of his, Rob Kelner’s, counsel.

And Kelner is only avoiding consequences for those FARA filings himself because (the existing story goes) his client is such an egregious liar, he has also lied to him, his lawyer, in the past.

That seems like a pretty major aggravating factor.

Much later in the hearing, when Kelner realized his client was facing prison time, he tried to take responsibility for all the things that showed up in that sentencing memo. Rather than leaving well enough alone, Kelner renewed his bullshit claim that what George Papadopoulos and Alex Van Der Zwaan did was worse than lying to the FBI and hiding your paid ties to a frenemy government. That led to Sullivan pointing out why even just Flynn’s lies to the FBI were, because he was in such an important role, worse than those of Mueller’s other false statements defendants.

MR. KELNER: Your Honor, with your indulgence, if I could make a few points.

THE COURT: Sure.

MR. KELNER: First of all, let me make very clear, Your Honor, that the decisions regarding how to frame General Flynn’s sentencing memorandum made by counsel, made by me, made by Mr. Anthony, are entirely ours and really should not and do not diminish in any way General Flynn’s acceptance of responsibility in this case. And I want to make that —

THE COURT: That point is well taken, but you understand why I had to make the inquiry?

MR. KELNER: I do.

THE COURT: Because I’m thinking, this sounds like a backpedaling on the acceptance of responsibility. It was a legitimate area to inquire about. And I don’t want to be too harsh when I say this, but I know you’ll understand.

[snip]

MR. KELNER: Right. We understand the Court’s reason for concern. I just wanted to make very clear the very specific reasons that those sections in the brief were included, to distinguish the Papadopoulos and Van der Zwaan cases, which did result in incarceration, we think are meaningfully distinguishable in many respects.

THE COURT: Let me stop you on that point, because I’m glad you raised that, and I was going to raise this point at some point. We might as well raise it now since you brought up Papadopoulos and Van der Zwaan. The Court’s of the opinion that those two cases aren’t really analogous to this case. I mean, neither one of those individuals was a high-ranking government official who committed a crime while on the premises of and in the West Wing of the White House. And I note that there are other cases that have been cited in the memorandum with respect to other individuals sentenced in 2017, I believe, for 1001 offenses, and the point being made — and I think it’s an absolutely good point — the point being made that no one received a jail sentence. My guess is that not one of those defendants was a high-ranking government official who, while employed by the President of the United States, made false statements to the FBI officers while on the premises of and in the West Wing of the White House. That’s my guess. Now, if I’m wrong, then you can point me to any one or more of those cases. This case is in a category by itself right now, but I understand why you cited them. I appreciate that.

MR. KELNER: Your Honor, we don’t disagree. We recognize that General Flynn served in a high-ranking position, and that is unique and relevant. But I —

THE COURT: Absolutely.

But Kelner took that comment, and kept digging, claiming that Flynn’s cooperation should be worth more because his cooperation was more “consequential” than that of the little people.

MR. KELNER: But I would submit to you a couple of points in response for the Court’s consideration. Number one, because of his high rank and because of his former high office, when it came time to deal with this investigation and to deal with the Special Counsel’s Office, that, too, set a higher standard for him, and he did understand that as a three-star general and a former National Security Advisor, what he did was going to be very consequential for the Special Counsel’s investigation, and very consequential for the nation, so he made decisions early on to remain low profile, not to make regular public statements, as some other people did. That was acknowledged by the Special Counsel’s Office when we did first hear from them, the value of that silence. And then he made the decision publicly and clearly and completely and utterly to cooperate with this investigation, knowing that, because of his high rank, that was going to send a signal to every other potential cooperator and witness in this investigation, and that was consequential, and we appreciate the fact that the Special Counsel memorialized that in his brief. That did make a decision, and that was another kind of high standard that was set for him and that he rose to and met decisively. In addition, there have been other cases —

Sullivan interrupted Kelner at this point, perhaps in an effort to get him to stop damaging his client. It didn’t work though, because having argued that Flynn’s efforts to undo his lies were worth more than that of the little people, Kelner then … brought up David Petraeus.

THE COURT: Can I just stop you right now? Is — How do you wish to proceed? Do you wish to proceed with sentencing today or do you want to defer it?

MR. KELNER: Thank you, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Or are you leading up to that point?

MR. KELNER: I’m leading up to that.

THE COURT: No, that’s fine.

MR. KELNER: Just a bit of indulgence, if I may.

THE COURT: No, no. Go ahead. That’s fine.

MR. KELNER: And let me just finish that last point.

THE COURT: No, no, no. I’m not trying to curtail you. I just wanted to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

MR. KELNER: I’m building up to it. I’m building up to it, Your Honor.

THE COURT: All right.

MR. KELNER: In addition, I would note there have been other high profile cases, one involving a four-star general, General Petraeus.

THE COURT: I don’t agree with that plea agreement, but don’t —

MR. KELNER: It’s a classic —

THE COURT: He pled to a misdemeanor?

Right before Sullivan closed the hearing, he expressed his disapproval of that sentence once again with Kelner, presumably as a warning not to argue Flynn should get light treatment, like Petraeus did, because he’s an important decorated general.

While bringing up the double standard the Obama Administration used with Petraeus is totally fair game, especially in Espionage-charged leak cases (which this is not), this was an instance where Kelner either couldn’t hear or didn’t give a fuck about what the judge had already told him, which is that, having read all the sealed underlying documents, he believes the stuff Flynn lied about “is in a category by itself.”

Honestly, if I were Mike Flynn and I had the money I’d fire Kelner after recent events, because — even if Kelner is not responsible for the ploy that badly backfired (and I suspect he’s not, at least not entirely) — by returning to sentencing with a different lawyer, you can try to start fresh with Sullivan, whom you’ve already pissed off.

But it’s not clear that Flynn can do that.

Because while firing Kelner might permit Flynn to claim he had nothing to do with this disavowal of responsibility that Kelner is now claiming responsibility for, Kelner’s still required to claim that Flynn is responsible for the false statements submitted in a document signed by Kelner back in 2017.

More importantly, according to Kelner, the Kian trial is the only thing left for Flynn to offer as far as cooperation.

Nothing has been held back. That said, it is true that this EDVA case that was indicted yesterday is still pending, and it’s likely, I would think, that General Flynn may be asked to testify in that case. We haven’t been told that, but I think it’s likely, and he’s prepared to testify. And while we believe that the Special Counsel’s Office views his cooperation as having been very largely complete, completed at this point, it is true that there’s this additional modicum of cooperation that he expects to provide in the EDVA case, and for that reason, we are prepared to take Your Honor up on the suggestion of delaying sentencing so that he can eke out the last modicum of cooperation in the EDVA case to be in the best position to argue to the Court the great value of his cooperation.

It seems likely that if Kian goes to trial, it will be Kelner’s testimony, not Flynn’s, that might be most important.

Kelner and Flynn are yoked together, Kelner to the lies Flynn told him to file in that FARA filing, and Flynn to the insubordinate effort to dismiss the importance of Flynn’s lies.

As I disclosed in July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post.

In Defense of Emmet Sullivan: Van Grack Suggested Mueller Did Review Whether Flynn’s Behavior Amounted to Treason

December 19, 2018/130 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, emptywheel, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

I’d like to defend Judge Emmet Sullivan’s intemperate mentions of unregistered foreign agents and treason in the Mike Flynn sentencing hearing yesterday. Not only has the discussion about his comments gotten the precise language used wrong, but it fails to understand the import of Mike Flynn’s lies about being an agent of the Turkish government.

There are two comments in question. First, in part of a speech about how he would weigh the mitigating and aggravating factors in Flynn’s sentencing, Sullivan said that Flynn was “an unregistered agent of a foreign country, while serving as the National Security Advisor to the President of the United States.”

I’m going to also take into consideration the aggravating circumstances, and the aggravating circumstances are serious. Not only did you lie to the FBI, but you lied to senior officials in the Trump Transition Team and Administration. Those lies caused the then-Vice President-Elect, incoming Chief of Staff, and then-Press Secretary to lie to the American people. Moreover, you lied to the FBI about three different topics, and you made those false statements while you were serving as the National Security Advisor, the President of the United States’ most senior national security aid. I can’t minimize that.

Two months later you again made false statements in multiple documents filed pursuant to the Foreign Agents Registration Act. So, all along you were an unregistered agent of a foreign country, while serving as the National Security Advisor to the President of the United States. [my emphasis]

Then, after having gotten Flynn to finally take him up on consulting with his attorneys, but before they recessed, Sullivan sat Flynn down and asked prosecutor Brandon Van Grack if prosecutors had evaluated Flynn’s activities to see if his behavior rose to the level of “treasonous activity.” Van Grack responded by answering about the crime of treason.

COURT: All right. I really don’t know the answer to this question, but given the fact that the then-President of the United States imposed sanctions against Russia for interfering with federal elections in this country, is there an opinion about the conduct of the defendant the following days that rises to the level of treasonous activity on his part?

MR. VAN GRACK: The government did not consider — I shouldn’t say — I shouldn’t say did not consider, but in terms of the evidence that the government had at the time, that was not something that we were considering in terms of charging the defendant.

THE COURT: All right. Hypothetically, could he have been charged with treason?

MR. VAN GRACK: Your Honor, I want to be careful what I represent.

THE COURT: Sure.

MR. VAN GRACK: And not having that information in front of me and because it’s such a serious question, I’m hesitant to answer it, especially because I think it’s different than asking if he could be charged under FARA or if there were other 1001 violations, for example. [my emphasis]

Flynn went off, consulted with his lawyers, and wisely decided the last thing he should do is let Sullivan sentence him while he was thinking of treason. When he came back, the first thing Sullivan did was correct that Flynn was not acting as a foreign agent while serving as National Security Advisor and explain that he did not think Flynn had committed treason, but wanted to know what Mueller’s thinking on uncharged crimes was.

THE COURT: All right. I just want to ask a couple of questions. This is directed to either government counsel or defense counsel. I made a statement about Mr. Flynn acting as a foreign agent while serving in the White House. I may have misspoken. Does that need to be corrected?

MR. VAN GRACK: Yes, Your Honor, that would be correct, which is that the conduct ended, I believe, in mid-November 2016.

THE COURT: All right. That’s what I thought, and I felt terrible about that. I just want the record clear on that. You agree with that, Counsel?

MR. KELNER: Yes, Your Honor.

THE COURT: All right. I also asked about — and this is very important — I also asked about the Special Counsel’s Office. I also asked questions about the Special Counsel and the — and other potential offenses for the purpose of understanding the benefit, if any, that Mr. Flynn has received in the plea deal. I wasn’t suggesting he’s committed treason. I wasn’t suggesting he committed violations. I was just curious as to whether or not he could have been charged, and I gave a few examples.

[snip]

THE COURT: And I said early on, Don’t read too much into the questions I ask. But I’m not suggesting he committed treason. I just asked a legitimate question.

MR. VAN GRACK: Yes, Your Honor. And that affords us an opportunity to clarify something on our end which is, with respect to treason, I said I wanted to make sure I had the statute in front of me. The government has no reason to believe that the defendant committed treason; not just at the time, but having proffered with the defendant and spoken with him through 19 interviews, no concerns with respect to the issue of treason. [my emphasis]

Now, I will be honest with you: I was screaming at Sullivan when I read this being tweeted out in real time, in part because I spend so much time arguing that Trump and his flunkies won’t be charged with treason because we’re not at war. I do think, in an effort to convey to Flynn just how reprehensible he believes his actions were, Sullivan got out over his skis. But I think his comments are far more defensible — and telling — than much of the commentary appreciates.

Here’s why.

First, even the docket makes it clear that there are a bunch of sealed documents that Sullivan has gotten, including an ex parte version of the government’s addendum describing Flynn’s cooperation. Sullivan started the hearing yesterday emphasizing that point, then returned to it after he had gotten Flynn to plead guilty again under oath.

There’s a great deal of nonpublic information in this case, and I’ll just leave it at that.

If any of my questions require a party to disclose nonpublic information, or if I begin to discuss something nonpublic, don’t be shy in telling me. My clerks over the years have learned to do this (indicating) if I get off of script or if I get into areas where — I won’t get offended if you do it. I may not see you, so stand up and raise your hands or say something, please. I don’t want to unintentionally say something that should not be revealed on the public docket.

There’s a new document that was filed at 10:19 this morning. The government filed a sealed motion alerting the Court that it inadvertently omitted one document from the government’s in-camera production.

[snip]

Having carefully read all the materials provided to the Court in this case, including those materials reviewed under seal and in-camera, I conclude that there was and remains to be a factual basis for Mr. Flynn’s plea of guilty. [my emphasis]

By yesterday morning, Emmet Sullivan probably became one of the few people outside Mueller’s team and his DOJ supervisors that understands the activities that Trump and his associates, including Flynn, engaged in from 2015 to 2017. He understands not just the significance of Flynn’s lies, but also how those lies tied to graft and conspiracy with foreign countries — countries including, but not limited to, Russia.

It should gravely worry the Trump people that Sullivan’s comments about whether Flynn’s behavior was treasonous came from someone who just read about what the Mueller investigation has discovered.

Now consider that, as part of his effort to understand how much benefit Flynn got from pleading guilty to one charge of false statements for his multiple lies, Sullivan and Van Grack had this exchange.

MR. VAN GRACK: [W]e’d like to bring to the Court’s attention that we just had an indictment unsealed in the Eastern District of Virginia charging Bijan Rafiekian and Ekim Alptekin with various violations, and the defendant provided substantial assistance to the attorneys in the Eastern District of Virginia in obtaining that charging document.

THE COURT: All right. Could the defendant have been indicted in that indictment? Could he have been charged in that indictment?

MR. VAN GRACK: And, Your Honor, the answer is yes, and the reason for that is that in the Statement of Offense in this case, the defendant refers to false statements in that FARA filing that are part of the indictment filed in the Eastern District of Virginia.

[snip]

THE COURT: And that would have been — what’s the exposure in that indictment if someone is found guilty?

MR. VAN GRACK: Your Honor, I believe, if you’ll give me a moment, I believe it was a conspiracy, 18 U.S.C. 371, which I believe is a five-year offense. It was a violation of 18 U.S.C. 951, which is either a five- or ten-year offense, and false statements — under those false statements, now that I think about it, Your Honor, pertain to Ekim Alptekin, and I don’t believe the defendant had exposure to the false statements of that individual.

THE COURT: Could the sentences have been run consecutive to one another?

MR. VAN GRACK: I believe so.

THE COURT: So the exposure would have been grave, then, would have been — it would have been — exposure to Mr. Flynn would have been significant had he been indicted? [my emphasis]

Van Grack not only says that Flynn could have been charged in that conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent indictment, but that the lies he told were part of the indictment.

And in fact, this language in Flynn’s statement of the offense (which Sullivan read yesterday in court):

On March 7, 2017, FLYNN filed multiple documents with the Department of Justice pursuant to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (“FARA”) pertaining to a project performed by him and his company, the Flynn Intel Group, Inc. (“FIG”), for the principal benefit of the Republic of Turkey (“Turkey project”). In the FARA filings, FLYNN made materially false statements and omissions, including by falsely stating that (a) FIG did not know whether or the extent to which the Republic of Turkey was involved in the Turkey project, (b) the Turkey project was focused on improving U.S. business organizations’ confidence regarding doing business in Turkey, and (c) an op-ed by FLYNN published in The Hill on November 8, 2016, was written at his own initiative; and by omitting that officials from the Republic of Turkey provided supervision and direction over the Turkey project.

Became this language in the Bijan Kian and Ekim Alptekin indictment:

From approximately January 2017 through approximately March 2017, outside attorneys for Company A gathered information to determine whether Company A or any of its employees had an obligation to register under FARA based upon Company A’s work on “Operation Confidence.” During this process, RAFIEK.IAN and ALPTEKIN knowingly provided false information to Company A’s attorneys in an effort to hide from the attorneys – and ultimately from the FARA Unit – the involvement of Turkish government officials in the project.

Among other things, RAFIEKIAN falsely told Company A’s attorneys that:

a. The meeting on or about September 19, 2016 in New York City had nothing to do with Project Confidence, and instead was in furtherance of an abandoned “Project Truth” that was distinct from Project Confidence;

b. There were no other contacts with Turkish government officials regarding the project;

c. The op-ed was Person A’s own idea, and he wrote it on his own behalf, and unrelated to the project;

[snip]

Attorneys for Company A also solicited information from ALPTEKIN for use in the FARA filings. Through his own attorneys, ALPTEKIN falsely told Company A’s attorneys that:

a. ALPTEKIN had not been consulted on the op-ed, and that he would have opposed it if he had been consulted;

[snip]

On or about March 7, 2017, RAFIEKIAN and ALPTEKIN caused to be made the following false statements of material fact in documents filed with and furnished to the Attorney General under the provisions of FARA, and omitted the following material facts necessary to make the statements therein not misleading. RAFIEKIAN reviewed the filings and provided comments to Company A’s attorneys before the filings were submitted, but did not request that any of these false statements be changed.

[snip]

Exhibit A to Company A’s FARA Registration Statement falsely stated that “[Company A] does not know whether or the extent to which the Republic of Turkey was involved with its retention by [Company B] for the three-month project.”

[snip]

Paragraph 13: “In addition to the above described activities, if any, have you engaged in activity on your own behalf which b~nefits your foreign principal?”

Response: “Because of its expertise, [Company A J -officials write, speak, and give interviews relating to national security. Although not undertaken at the direction or control of a foreign principal, it is possible that such activities may have an indirect benefit to a principal. On his own initiative, [Person A J published an op-ed in The Hill on November 8, 2016, that related to the same subject matters as [Company A] work for [Company BJ. Neither [Company BJ, nor any other person requested or directed publication of the op-ed.”

The Attachment to Company A’s FARA Supplemental Statement falsely stated that “[Company A] understood the engagement to be focused on improving U.S. business organizations’ confidence regarding doing business in Turkey, particularly with respect to the stability of Turkey and its suitability as a venue for investment and commercial activity.”

While there are other false statements alleged (presumably the ones Van Grack said Flynn was not implicated in), the EDVA indictment actually charges four counts of false statements, and one of those directly maps to the lie Flynn himself pled guilty to.

Side note: it’s worth mentioning that Rob Kelner — who is still Flynn’s lawyer — is the guy who submitted those false FARA statements, which means he may be the lawyer that will take the stand in the EDVA trial to attest to the lies on those forms. It’s Kelner who still has some cooperation with prosecutors to do, at least as much as Flynn.

Significantly, as I noted the other day, both the conspiracy and the foreign agents charges in the EDVA indictment say the conduct continued through March 2017, the date Flynn Intelligence Group filed false FARA filings, hiding the fact that they knew Turkey was behind the Fethullah Gulen project.

COUNT ONE Conspiracy – 18 U.S. C. § 3 71 THE GRAND JURY FURTHER CHARGES THAT: 1. The allegations contained in the General Allegations of this Indictment are incorporated here by reference. 2. From at least July 2016, through at least March 2017, in the Eastern District of Virginia and elsewhere, the defendants,

[snip]

COUNT TWO Acting as an Unregistered Agent of a Foreign Government – 18 U.S. C. § 9 51 THE GRAND JURY FURTHER CHARGES THAT: 1. The allegations contained in the General Allegations of this Indictment are incorporated here by reference. 2. From approximately July 2016 through approximately March 2017, in the Eastern District of Virginia and elsewhere, the defendants, [my emphasis]

There’s a reason it gets charged that way, which is even more important for Flynn than for his co-conspirators (a reason that also played out in Paul Manafort’s case, in which he was charged for hiding his ties to Ukraine at a time when they would have impacted the Trump campaign).

The point of these registration crimes is that so long as you withhold full disclosure about your actions, you continue to lie to the federal government and the public about the significance of your actions. By filing a registration in March 2017 specifically denying what all the co-conspirators knew — that Flynn Intelligence Group was actually working for Turkey, not Ekim Alptekin’s cut-out Inovo — it prevented the public and the government from assessing the import of Flynn’s actions in trying to force DOJ to deem Gulen a terrorist who could be extradited to Turkey. And frankly, so long as Flynn continued to hide that detail, it made him susceptible to pressure if not blackmail from Turkey.

There’s a grammatical difference between Sullivan’s two comments. He first said that Flynn was “an unregistered agent of a foreign country, while serving as the National Security Advisor.” That was, technically, true. For the entirety of the time Flynn served as National Security Advisor, FIG had not admitted that it had actually been working directly for Turkey. Indeed, FIG continued to lie (and so remained unregistered) about that fact until December 1, 2017, when Flynn pled guilty.

As I’ll show in a follow-up post, it is critically important that Flynn continued to lie about whether he had been working directly for Turkey when he met with the FBI on January 24, 2017.

Sullivan’s follow-up used different grammar. Then, he said “Flynn [was not] acting as a foreign agent while serving in the White House.” That is also true. He was no longer secretly being paid by the government of Turkey to do things like slap his name on op-eds written by other people.

Still, even though he was no longer being paid to take specific actions requested by the government of Turkey, for the entire time he worked at the White House (and for more than eight months afterwards), his past work as an agent of a foreign government — as opposed to a foreign company cut-out — remained unregistered, undisclosed to the public.

With that in mind, I want to return to the specific exchange that Sullivan had. In response to his question about whether Flynn’s behavior amounted not to treason, but to treasonous activity, Van Grack at first says they did not consider treason, but then corrected himself.

COURT: All right. I really don’t know the answer to this question, but given the fact that the then-President of the United States imposed sanctions against Russia for interfering with federal elections in this country, is there an opinion about the conduct of the defendant the following days that rises to the level of treasonous activity on his part?

MR. VAN GRACK: The government did not consider — I shouldn’t say — I shouldn’t say did not consider, but in terms of the evidence that the government had at the time, that was not something that we were considering in terms of charging the defendant. [my emphasis]

All of this seems to be consistent with Mueller reviewing Flynn’s actions, reviewing statute, finding that Flynn’s behavior did rise to the standards described in 18 USC 951 (with which Van Grack said he could have been charged), but did not rise to treason (as it clearly did not). Van Grack explained that “in terms of other offenses, they were not sort of in consideration in our interfacing with the defendant,” which seems to admit that Flynn could have been charged with other crimes, but was not, because he cooperated.

This walkback, I’m convinced, is as much for the benefit of the prosecutors, who gave Flynn an unbelievable sweetheart deal, as it was for the sake of judicial restraint. Mueller is forgiving Flynn working in the White House while continuing to hide that he had, during the campaign, secretly and knowingly worked for a foreign government, in consideration of his cooperation unveiling other activities.

But legal standards aside, Sullivan — one of the only people who has read a summary of what Flynn provided in his cooperation — still could not hide his disgust about the conduct he knows far more about than we do.

This crime is very serious. As I stated, it involves false statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation agents on the premises of the White House, in the White House in the West Wing by a high ranking security officer with, up to that point, had an unblemished career of service to his country. That’s a very serious offense.

You know, I’m going to take into consideration the 33 years of military service and sacrifice, and I’m going to take into consideration the substantial assistance of several ongoing — several ongoing investigations, but I’m going to also take into consideration the aggravating circumstances, and the aggravating circumstances are serious. Not only did you lie to the FBI, but you lied to senior officials in the Trump Transition Team and Administration. Those lies caused the then-Vice President-Elect, incoming Chief of Staff, and then-Press Secretary to lie to the American people. Moreover, you lied to the FBI about three different topics, and you made those false statements while you were serving as the National Security Advisor, the President of the United States’ most senior national security aid. I can’t minimize that.

Two months later you again made false statements in multiple documents filed pursuant to the Foreign Agents Registration Act. So, all along you were an unregistered agent of a foreign country, while serving as the National Security Advisor to the President of the United States.

I mean, arguably, that undermines everything this flag over here stands for (indicating). Arguably, you sold your country out. The Court’s going to consider all of that. I cannot assure you that if you proceed today you will not receive a sentence of incarceration. But I have to also tell you that at some point, if and when the government says you’ve concluded with your cooperation, you could be incarcerated.

It could be that any sentence of incarceration imposed after your further cooperation is completed would be for less time than a sentence may be today. I can’t make any guarantees, but I’m not hiding my disgust, my disdain for this criminal offense. [my emphasis]

I remain frustrated that Sullivan raised treason at all yesterday, as I spend a great deal of time tamping down discussion of treason; none of the Trump flunkies’ actions that have been thus far revealed reach treason.

But I think I’m beginning to understand what a big deal it was for Flynn to continue to lie about his service for Turkey, even aside from the disgust I share with Sullivan that anyone would engage in such sleazy influence peddling while serving as a key foreign policy advisor for a guy running for President.

Flynn did a lot of really sleazy things. There was no discussion yesterday, for example, about how he gleefully worked on cashing in with nuclear deals even while Trump was being inaugurated. The public lacks both a full accounting of his sleazy actions and full understanding of their import for national security.

Mueller’s team thinks Flynn’s cooperation has been so valuable that it should wipe away most punishment for those sleazy actions. Emmet Sullivan, having read a great deal of secret information, is not so sure.

The Flynn Sentencing: What Comes Next?

December 18, 2018/129 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, emptywheel, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

As Zoe Tillman describes, the Mike Flynn sentencing hearing today was even more unpredictable than I imagined (and I anticipated it would bring some surprises). Judge Emmet Sullivan (after apparently putting Flynn under oath so these questions, too, could be charged for perjury) asked him several times whether — given the sentencing memorandum he submitted suggesting extenuating circumstances for his lies to the FBI (but not to DOJ’s FARA team) — he believed he had lied, whether he knew that was a crime, whether he wanted to plead guilty.

Throughout the proceedings, US District Judge Emmet Sullivan repeatedly asked Flynn if he wanted to go ahead with sentencing, given his lawyers’ comments questioning the conduct of the FBI officials and agents who handled his questioning in January 2017, and the fact that Flynn might not be finished cooperating.

Having established that — and offered Flynn several opportunities to delay sentencing, he laid into him, even going so far as to ask prosecutor Brandon Van Grack if Mueller had considered charing Flynn with treason.

“Arguably, that undermines everything this flag over here stands for,” Sullivan said, gesturing to an American flag displayed behind his chair. “Arguably you sold your country out.”

Sullivan continued: “I’m not hiding my disgust, my disdain for this criminal offense.”

Flynn at that point took up the judge’s offer of additional time to consult with his lawyers. Before the judge took a break, however, he asked special counsel prosecutor Brandon Van Grack if Flynn could have been charged with treason for his conversations with now-former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December 2016, after then-president Barack Obama had entered sanctions against Russia for interfering in the election.

That’s when Flynn asked Sullivan for a break. When he and his lawyers returned, they took Sullivan up on his offer for a delay, and suggested a status hearing in March.

But it’s not entirely clear how that will help — aside from giving Sullivan time to set aside the visceral disgust he showed for Flynn today.

Here’s are some possible scenarios:

Flynn Finds Something Else to Cooperate On

This is the ostensible reason to delay the sentencing, so that Flynn can cooperate some more, in an attempt to convince Sullivan he should avoid prison time.

When Sullivan asked Van Grack whether Flynn was done cooperating, and the prosecutor replied that it remained a possibility. That stops short of even promising that Flynn will be called to testify in the trial against his former partner, Bijan Kian. As I noted yesterday, the indictment seemed to be built to avoid that, and as an unindicted co-conspirator there may be problems if Flynn does testify, to say nothing of his limited credibility as a sworn liar. Moreover, Flynn’s substantial cooperation in getting prosecutors to this point was already baked into today’s sentencing. It’s hard to imagine what Flynn could do to improve on that.

Which leaves the possibility that Flynn knows of something — some other crime, whether by Trump and his circle, or some of his other pals — that he can offer to federal prosecutors. It is possible that, seeing an angry judge talking about treason and imagining prison, Flynn unforgot somethings he knows, so took his lawyer aside and said there was another area he might be willing to share with prosecutors.

Trump Risks Clemency

A more likely motivation, for Flynn, is the hope that Trump will decide to give Flynn the pardon he floated over a year ago. If Flynn delays long enough, Trump might get into a place where it’ll be politically feasible for him to commute any sentence Flynn makes.

Maybe he, like the nutters who occupy the same bubble he does, that after a series of false hoaxes over the last year, someone will finally discover something that will provide the excuse Trump needs.

Or maybe he’s just delaying in hopes that one of the long shot challenges to Mueller’s authority — or perhaps his firing — will get him off his charges.

All of these, of course, would amount to a play for time, in the hopes that his fortune will improve.

Kelner Falls on His Sword

After they came back from the break, Robert Kelner said something suggesting that Sullivan shouldn’t penalize Flynn in his sentencing for something his attorney (that is, he, Kelner) had written in a sentencing memo.

It’s unclear to me whether Kelner was referencing the stunt suggesting there were extenuating circumstances explaining why Flynn lied or a reference he made to David Petraeus (Sullivan explicitly suggested he thought Petraeus got an easy deal). It’s equally unclear to me how much of Sullivan’s tirade today stemmed from Flynn’s actual conduct (and the sweet deal he himself got) or the stunt.

Particularly if it’s the former, then it’s possible to win some favor from Sullivan by having Kelner even more publicly fall on his sword, claiming (the claim would almost certainly be utter bullshit) that it was his idea to try that stunt. That might provide Flynn an opportunity to present a new, chastened sentencing memo in March, such that Sullivan would be more amicable to giving him probation.

There’s a tension underlying this: One reason Flynn wanted to get sentenced early was so he could return to sleazy influence peddling so he could pay his legal bills. Now he’s looking at still more legal bills for a stunt that he probably demanded.

The Unfolding Turkish and Russian Stories Change the Context

Judge Sullivan (or his clerks) have read, at a minimum, the following:

An unredacted copy of Flynn’s 302
An unredacted copy of the McCabe memo
A partly unredacted copy of the Strzok 302 (some parts of it are not relevant to this case, so may not have been shared)
An unredacted copy of Flynn’s cooperation addendum
An ex parte version of the Flynn cooperation addendum including details Flynn doesn’t know
Information, in some form, on the Kian indictment

And there are still some sealed items in Flynn’s docket.

So Sullivan should have a pretty complete idea of what cooperation Flynn has given.

That said, it’s not impossible that as both the Kian prosecution (I suspect he’ll plead) and the Russian investigation proceeds, additional information will become known — or at least public — to change the context of Flynn’s actions. Maybe, if the crimes of his business partner end up far worse than we know, Flynn’s treatment for the foreign agent charge won’t appear as easy. Maybe, if people next to Trump get charged with serious crimes, the value of Flynn’s cooperation will make him look less like a sell-out.

But the opposite could happen, as well. As his co-conspirators attempt to save themselves, they may be able to present credible evidence about stuff Flynn has thus far suppressed (if not from Mueller, from the public).

And what if Trump ultimately quits in disgrace? Sure, he could pardon his co-conspirators on the way out (though I doubt he’d do that if there weren’t a benefit to him). But if Trump leaves in disgrace, Flynn’s continued good relations with Trump may only make him look like more of a sell-out.

The point is, short of finding other criminals to flip on or finding a way to remove Mueller’s authority, it’s not clear how Flynn’s fortune can improve over the next three months, and there are definitely ways his fortune could go south.

Mike Flynn’s Flip: You Don’t Need Your Cooperator to Testify If the Conspiracy Was All Conducted over Email

December 17, 2018/54 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, emptywheel, Intelligence, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

Perhaps the most remarkable language in the Bijan Kian indictment appears in both the conspiracy 18 USC 371 and the 18 USC 951 foreign agent counts. In both, the indictment alleges that Kian (referred to by his legal name Rafiekian here) and Kamil Ekim Alptekin both acted, themselves, and caused others to act as unregistered foreign agents.

To knowingly act and cause others to act in the United States as an agent of a foreign government without prior notification to the Attorney General, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 951;

[snip]

From approximately July 2016 through approximately March 2017, in the Eastern District of Virginia and elsewhere, the defendants, BIJAN RAFIEKIAN, a/k/a “Bijan Kian” and KAMIL EK.IM ALPTEKIN, knowingly acted and caused others to act in the United States as an agent of a foreign government, that is, the Government of Turkey, without prior notification to the Attorney General, as required by law. [my emphasis]

While not explicitly stated, the reference to Mike Flynn throughout the indictment as Person A — the only unindicted co-conspirator so identified — makes it clear that the government believes that’s what Flynn was doing, acting as an agent of Turkey. And the timeline for the conspiracy goes up to March 2017.

One of Trump’s top foreign policy advisors and, for almost a month, his National Security Advisor, was an agent of Turkey.

That fact, and the indictment as a whole, raises further questions about why Flynn got off so easy: a false statements charge for which he’ll do no time, unlike the 15 years his business partner is facing (though he won’t get that). And that outcome has raised still other questions about how Flynn could be useful to prosecutors, having admitted he’s a liar, yet having escaped all consequences for his actions. How can Flynn testify, commentators wonder, given that he was not charged for his role in the conspiracy?

Aside from quipping “flip early and often,” I think the Kian indictment provides clues — clues that I’ve long suspected have parallels in the Mueller investigation.

The indictment focuses just on the op-ed purportedly authored by Flynn that appeared in The Hill on election day, though we know Flynn’s company did more than that for Turkey. By focusing on the op-ed, DOJ can trace what happened with language Kian used to describe Fethullah Gulen. It was used in early August, before the conspirators started hiding the role of Turkey in the project.

On or about August 4, 2016, RAFIEKIAN sent an email with the subject “Truth” to ALPTEKIN and Person A stressing the need to begin work on the Truth Campaign. Referring to Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, RAFIEKIAN said:

Let me give you a real life experience: 1978: A soft spoken cleric sitting under an apple tree in Neauphle-le-Chateau in France looked so harmless. Spoke of equality and spirituality, declared that if he were to gain power, he would go to a religious shrine and will not get into politics and governance. Sound familiar? Well, the world neglected to take the layers off the ink blot in 1978. One year later, from the place under the apple tree, The soft spoken spiritual man led the Islamic Revolution in Iran ….

The indictment then shows how the apple language appears in talking points for a key September meeting with Turkish officials.

On or about September 18, 2016, in preparation for the meeting with the Turkish officials, RAFIEKIAN sent ALPTEKIN a document entitled “Background and Talking Points,” which contained approximately twenty talking points for the meeting, all of which concerned the Turkish citizen, the Turkish citizen’s movement, or the Turkish citizen’s charter schools in the United States.

RAFIEKIAN’s “Background and Talking Points” contained the same “apple tree” comparison of Khomeini and the Turkish citizen that RAFIEKIAN had used in his email to ALPTEKIN (paragraph 13) when the project was still called the “Truth campaign” and in the “playbook” (paragraph 23) when RAFIEKIAN referred to the Turkish citizen as “X.”

And then the same language shows up in both a draft of the op-ed Kian wrote for Flynn to slap his name onto, and in the op-ed as it appeared in The Hill.

The apple language serves as the marker showing the continuity between the project originally explicitly backed by Turkey, at the time ironically named “Truth,” and the project after it got renamed “Confidence” as part of an effort to hide Turkey’s role by using Alptekin’s company as a cut-out.

And virtually every step of that process was conducted over email or other communication methods that the FBI could easily collect.

Flynn’s genius co-conspirators — at least in this particular foreign agent conspiracy — even sent emails that noted that they were hiding details in other written documents.

ALPTEK.IN further told RAFIEK.IAN, ”Needles [sic] to tell you but he asked me not to read in anyone else for the time being and keep this confidential.”

[snip]

RAFIEKIAN promised to send ALPTEKIN a contract, but noted that it “will not entail operational details for obvious reasons.”

DEAR FBI, they might as well have written, LOOK HERE FOR THE SEKRITZ.

At least as laid out, virtually all the evidence needed to convict the co-conspirators is written down. As noted, much of this was in emails (the word appears 33 times in the indictment). There were two conversations via Skype, a Section 702 provider, as well as one text sent via Skype. Flynn sent one text memorializing a meeting with Alptekin referencing one of the Turkish Ministers who were their real clients. There were multiple financial wires.

The only overt acts described in the indictment that could not have been captured by the FBI or collected after the fact were one meeting, some lobbying activities, and some weekly phone calls.

On or about the evening of September 19, 2016, Person A, RAFIEKIAN, ALPTEKIN, and other members of the project met in New York City with Turkish Minister #1 and Turkish Minister #2. The conversation centered on the Turkish citizen and the Turkish government’s efforts to convince the U.S. government to extradite the Turkish citizen to Turkey.

[snip]

In or about September and October 2016, RAFIEK.IAN and others involved in the project visited with and lobbied a member of Congress, a Congressional staffer, and a state government official in an attempt to depict the Turkish citizen as a threat who should be returned to Turkey and to persuade them to hold Congressional hearings concerning the Turkish citizen.

[snip]

On approximately a weekly basis during the project, RAFIEKIAN, Person A, and other Company A team members had telephone conference calls with ALPTEKIN to update ALPTEKIN on the progress of the project. [my emphasis]

All of those, however, also included other team members, members who didn’t lie to the government and aren’t being charged as co-conspirators.

That leaves one other key piece of evidence the government might have needed help to collect: communications with the lawyers who filed the false FARA filings.

From approximately January 2017 through approximately March 2017, outside attorneys for Company A gathered information to determine whether Company A or any of its employees had an obligation to register under FARA based upon Company A’s work on “Operation Confidence.” During this process, RAFIEK.IAN and ALPTEKIN knowingly provided false information to Company A’s attorneys in an effort to hide from the attorneys – and ultimately from the FARA Unit – the involvement of Turkish government officials in the project.

While Mueller was able to get a crime-fraud exception to get communications from the lawyer who did Paul Manafort’s false FARA filings, once Flynn flipped he could have voluntarily waived privilege to make those documents available to the government. Indeed, I wonder if that’s what’s hidden in a key redaction in Flynn’s cooperation addendum.

In other words, there is a non-liar witness (or document) for every overt act in this indictment. They don’t need Flynn to sit on the witness stand and describe the conspiracy, as laid out. They can just have his service providers provide authentication of all the communications and have his former colleagues testify, along with his lawyers, now freed of any privilege obligation.

Critically, for a national security investigation like this one (and, I assume, for the Russian one as well), I’m sure Flynn described at more length everything else that went on. But the government doesn’t need that information to prosecute these crimes (except insofar as his cooperation would have made it very easy to get warrants for the information Flynn didn’t hand over himself — and his own sentencing memo makes it clear he did hand over much of it). It needs that information for counterintelligence purposes.

And that’s why they were able to move towards sentencing without his testimony in court: because he may not need to give testimony in court. The government has secured other, more reliable witnesses for that testimony.

As I said, I’ve long suspected this was true of Flynn’s cooperation on the Mueller investigation, as well. When the government, in describing his cooperation, said his decision to flip “likely affected the decisions of related firsthand witnesses to be forthcoming with the SCO and cooperate” (which is followed by the last, entirely redacted, sentence in the memo), they are probably describing how by pleading guilty to lying himself, he led to their ability to get better, more reliable witnesses for much of the relevant testimony.

Update: Took out a reference to NSA; Alptekin may be a green card holder; if he is, he couldn’t be a legal 702 target.