This past week the Justice Department unsealed files from the FBI that cast light on agents’ motivations for investigating Michael Flynn as part of Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation.
Flynn was charged, and pleaded guilty to making false statements following an interview with the FBI in January 2017, surrounding his communications with former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December 2016. Those communications were wiretapped, with the FBI using his answers in the January 2017 interview to create the case against him.
Sidney Powell, Flynn’s lead attorney, told The Cats Roundtable that the unsealed FBI documents were “absolutely stunning.” She explained that the new documents constitute “BRADY evidence” (i.e that they are exculpatory, and that Flynn’s charges should be dropped).
“Now we have the evidence, in their own handwriting, that they were setting up General Flynn—they knew he was innocent,” Powell said.
Powell insisted the release proved Flynn, as a member of Trump’s transition team, had never broken a law by speaking with Kislyak, calling the pretext for the investigation, the Logan Act, “bogus.”
The Logan Act, enacted in 1799, criminalized negotiation by unauthorized American citizens with foreign governments on behalf of the United States. Rarely invoked, Powell called the use of it in Flynn’s case “ludicrous.”
She further explained that the unsealed documents reveal that prosecutors began to “escalate” their pressure on Flynn, Paul Manafort, and other Trump associates in late July 2017 as part of the Mueller investigation.
Prosecutors approached Flynn and coerced his guilty plea after threatening his son with prosecution if he didn’t accept the plea, according to Powell. Flynn was also forced to exhaust millions of dollars to pay his legal bills to his first law firm, Covington & Burling, which has former Attorney General Eric Holder as a partner.
Flynn’s sentencing had been postponed in February, following his claims that his lawyers from Covington & Burling violated his constitutional right for adequate legal counsel. Powell explained that his counsel had “expressly” helped the prosecution, telling The Cats Roundtable that a law firm with Eric Holder as a partner was an “egregious conflict of interest.”
Powell was confident in Attorneys General Bill Bar and John Durham, whom Barr tasked with overseeing a review of the origins of the Russia investigation, and their desire to hold abuses of power accountable.
“Attorneys General Barr and Durham are going to hold people accountable,” Powell said, adding that the FBI knew it was “sitting on this evidence that was due to General Flynn all this time.”
Ultimately, she said the buck stopped with Robert Mueller, and that others involved in the investigation, such as Andrew Weissmann, should be held accountable.
“He’s responsible for all of this,” she said. “He was supervising the investigation.”
To Powell, Flynn’s case is important because it shines a light on the “backward” culture that can hide in the heart of bureaucracy, where a government can commit crimes while innocent people take the fall.
“The entire culture is going to have to be changed, and a mindset reinstated that existed in the old days that they are to do everything correctly, by everyone,” Powell reflected. “It’s the citizens of the United States that they serve, not their own interests.”
She encouraged Americans to visit her website, sidneypowell.com, where she is presenting the unsealed government documents, as well as the exhibits to the motions filed on behalf of Flynn.
“Do not rely on what the regular media is telling you,” she said, “because none of it is correct.”
Listen to the interview below
