‘Flynn didn’t understand the legal ramifications of it and the prosecution’s ethical obligations to disclose that…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The law firm that encouraged former national security adviser Michael Flynn to accept a bad plea deal is complaining about the inconvenience of releasing its files after new evidence revealed he was framed by corrupt FBI agents.
Covington & Burling said that the request from Flynn’s current attorney, Sidney Powell, amounted to “a disproportionately burdensome e-discovery process of great scale and duration,” according to the National Law Journal.
The firm has been under scrutiny itself after newly declassified documents released by the Justice Department showed that FBI counterintelligence operatives Bill Priestap and Peter Strzok plotted in advance to ensnare Flynn in a perjury trap.
The conspiracy reaches even higher. Then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who is believed to have had a personal grudge with Flynn over an unrelated personnel issue, deceptively reassured Flynn that he did not need a lawyer when Strzok and another agent were sent to the White House to interview him in January 2017.
Then-FBI Director James Comey also acknowledged that he had signed off on the highly irregular interrogation and had personally sent the agents.
Although the agents reported immediately after the fact that Flynn appeared to have given credible answers about his December 2016 communications with a Russian diplomat, Strzok later changed the filings—with help from his mistress, FBI attorney Lisa Page—to suggest that Flynn had lied.
The Covington firm had previously been ordered last year to produce all of its documents, but the firm admitted after the recent developments that it had failed to furnish some 6,800 files due to a “miscommunication,” reported the Conservative Daily Post.
However, speculation surfaced—including by Powell, herself—that the firm may have been complicit in a federal deep-state cover-up led by former Obama-era Attorney General Eric Holder, who joined Covington’s practice after leaving the Justice Department.
Flynn, a lifelong Democrat who had served in the Obama administration, fell out of favor—likely due to his criticism of a questionable nuclear deal with Iran. He then became a staunch advocate for future President Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign.
In addition to the questions surrounding Flynn’s own lawyers, focus has shifted to federal prosecutors—most notably Brandon Van Grack.
As a member of special counsel Robert Mueller‘s investigative team, Van Grack helped broker Flynn’s indictment for allegedly lying to the FBI in the Russian collusion probe—even though the underlying claims of collusion were eventually debunked by the Mueller Report.
However, Van Grack may have been in direct violation of a 2018 court order requiring the Justice Department prosecutors to disclose all favorable evidence in Flynn’s case, reported Fox News.
Flynn’s reversal of fortune is just the latest in what has been a damning series of developments for the corrupt Obama-era intelligence community, which not only investigated but helped orchestrate the seditious attempt to smear and remove the president and his advisors.
It also comes amid a backdrop of widespread FBI corruption or incompetence, as revealed via internal investigations by DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
Horowitz’s recent probe of several FBI branches showed that all of those audited had failed to meet their “Brady” obligations to present exculpatory evidence when applying for wiretap warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Several of the agents whose reports were under review could not even furnish the requested documentation and denied knowing what happened to it.
A parallel criminal investigation by special prosecutor John Durham is now believed to be in its final stages, and all indications are that it will result in at least some of the key FBI conspirators facing prosecution, according to Newsmax, which cited a recent radio interview by Powell.
“I am sure now, from what I am seeing, that Attorney General Barr and Durham are going to hold people accountable, because there is evidence of obstruction of justice by them, of crimes like obstruction of Congress and perjury in front of Congress, probably false statements to federal agents,” she said Sunday on 970 AM-N.Y.
The FBI “knew they were making up a case,” Powell said.
She accused prosecutors of secretly plotting with Flynn’s Covington lawyers about a plea-deal arrangement that would help prevent his son from being indicted under the Russia smear.
“That makes the plea coerced,” Powell said. “Flynn didn’t understand the legal ramifications of it and the prosecution’s ethical obligations to disclose that.”