More than eight months after his first sentencing hearing went completely off-the-rails, the new legal team for former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn clashed with federal prosecutors Friday over whether his case is now ready for sentencing.
Flynn claims he’s still not ready, and his attorneys are asking for more time to review his case and seek additional documents they claim the government is suppressing.
The two sides were unable to agree on the next steps in the case. Flynn’s lawyers asked for three months to file another joint status report, while prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan to schedule an in-person status conference as early as next week, and listed possible sentencing dates as early as Oct. 21.
A few hours after the filing Friday, Sullivan scheduled a joint status conference for Sept. 10
The antagonism from Flynn’s team represents just the latest in a growing tension with the government since Flynn’s botched sentencing hearing led him to fire his previous lawyers and hire a new legal team.
After pleading guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians, Flynn was set to be sentenced in December 2018. But during a disastrous sentencing hearing his team asked for more time.
Flynn replaced those lawyers in June, picking new attorneys with a track record of fighting back hard against prosecutors, including members of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team.
In the new filing, Flynn’s legal team accused prosecutors of suppressing documents necessary for his defense. Echoing what they said in court in late June, prosecutors replied they weren’t aware of “any” classified information that still needs to be disclosed to Flynn’s team.
While his new team said that “cooperation is fully ongoing,” a July filing revealed that Flynn would no longer take the stand against Bijan Kian — a former business associate who was charged with unregistered foreign lobbying.
Instead, prosecutors labeled Flynn a co-conspirator, suggesting they believed that Flynn knew that the March 2017 foreign agent registration filings he belatedly submitted for his company, Flynn Intel Group, were false.
Flynn admitted to filing false forms when he pleaded guilty in 2017, but he reportedly now maintains that he didn’t know they were false at the time. Flynn’s team wrote in a July 11 filing that there were “significant issues” they needed to address.
Kian was found guilty later in July — without Flynn taking the stand.
This post has been updated.
