At this point it’s safe to say that no one understands the legal strategy driving former national security adviser Michael Flynn. And that probably includes Michael Flynn.
After Flynn fired the entire legal team that had been with him through his guilty plea and cooperation with the special counsel’s office, and then replaced it with Fox News regular and creepy T-shirt entrepreneur Sidney Powell, many observers assumed that Flynn was about to withdraw his guilty plea and end his agreement with the government. That would fit with the advice that Powell has voiced dozens of times, and would go along with a note Flynn floated back in December suggesting that he had been entrapped by the FBI—a note that earned the ex-general a rip-roaring scolding from District Judge Emmet Sullivan.
However, Powell stepped into court on Friday along with federal prosecutors to hand the judge a joint request for a 60-day delay in sentencing. The indication is that Flynn will continue his cooperation agreement, and will be back to see Judge Sullivan in August. In the meantime, he may appear as a witness in the government’s case against his former business partner and unregistered agent of the Turkish government, Bijan Rafiekian.
Flynn is still being pushed by, let’s say, alt-experts to pull the plug on cooperation and fight his likely-to-be-zero-days sentence. So … sure. He may do that. Honestly, it seems unlikely that Flynn hired Powell, who makes her living attacking Mueller and the “deep state,” because he intends to go gentle into that slap on the wrist.
But who knows? Maybe Flynn thinks Powell’s record of slinging insults at Sullivan will make things better. Somehow. Anyway, the days of writing about Michael Flynn’s sentencing hearing have definitely come to a middle.