Lawyers for retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn believe there is evidence of communications with the CIA and FBI on two Blackberry devices used by mysterious Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud, according to a court filing Friday.
Sydney Powell, who leads Flynn’s legal defense, shot back at federal prosecutors who urged U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan to deny her motion to provide the two phones to the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. as exculpatory evidence, arguing the information they may contain is not “favorable” or “material” or “relevant” to Flynn’s case.
Flynn, President Trump’s first national security adviser, pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to investigators about conversations he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in late 2016 regarding sanctions and agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s team. He faces up to five years in prison, although last year prosecutors recommended no jail time.
“The government is not aware of any information pertaining to the defendant’s motion that are even relevant to the defendant’s false statements to the FBI on January 24, 2017, or to his punishment,” the Justice Department said in October. “And, thus, the defendant’s motion should be denied.”
Flynn’s legal team disagreed.
“Any evidence that Mifsud’s phones trace back to the FBI or the CIA or evidence of his assignments in the data on those phones could be crucial to Mr. Flynn’s defense,” Powell said.
Powell contends that when Attorney General William Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham, who are conducting a review of the Russia investigation origins, recently flew to Rome to meet with Italian intelligence to obtain government information on Mifsud and listen to a secret recording of the elusive academic, they also obtained two blackberry devices belonging to Mifsud.
Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos identified Mifsud as the man who told him in 2016 the Russians had “dirt” about Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails, effectively setting in motion what would become the Russia investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller. Papadopoulos himself spent a few days in prison after misleading investigators about the timing of his conversations with Mifsud.
Mifsud, who denied telling Papadopoulos anything about Russian “dirt,” has long been suspected of having ties to Russia, but Republican investigators such as House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes have alleged he was cooperating with Western intelligence to undermine Trump.
Flynn’s defense team that negotiated the plea deal was fired earlier this year. Since taking over the new team a couple of months ago, Powell has argued “there never would’ve been a plea to begin with” if Flynn knew how much information the DOJ was hiding from him, alleging prosecutors improperly pressured Flynn into the deal.
Federal prosecutors argued that “Mifsud has no connection to the defendant’s communications with the Russian Ambassador in December 2016, or to the defendant’s work on behalf of the Republic of Turkey, and the defendant offers no argument or facts to the contrary” and that “none of the references to Mifsud in the Special Counsel Report are connected to the defendant.”
But Powell said in her latest filing the “pretext” of Flynn being viewed as a possible “agent” of Russia, which she calls a “lie” promoted by FBI informant Stefan Halper that helped lay the groundwork for the FBI’s interview with Flynn in January 2017, stretches back to a December 2015 RT dinner in Moscow attended by Flynn and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Powell claims Mifsud was present at the event “for a few minutes.”
“Because the data and metadata on any devices used by Joseph Mifsud may provide evidence that he acted on behalf of the American government to concoct a pretext on which to launch an illegal investigation of the President’s incoming National Security Advisor, Mr. Flynn respectfully asks this Court to compel the requested production — if not to the defense, then at least to this Court,” Powell said.
The Justice Department has rejected some of the claims by Flynn’s lawyers as “conspiracy theories” and on Friday told the court that many of Powell’s allegations were “divorced from the facts.”
