President Donald Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn asked to withdraw his guilty plea to lying to federal agents, two weeks before he was scheduled to be sentenced, in a further deterioration of his relations with the U.S. Justice Department.
Flynn said he's making the move because of the "government's bad faith, vindictiveness and breach of the plea agreement."
The request comes one week after the Justice Department changed its position on Flynn's punishment by recommending that he serve up to six months in prison for lying to the FBI during its investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
According to Flynn, prosecutors demanded that he admit to knowingly signing a false Foreign Agents Registration Act registration form, which he claims wasn't true. The government also wanted him to testify to this against his former business partner, Bijan Rafiekian, according to his filing Tuesday in Washington federal court.
In the court filing, defense lawyers said the Justice Department is attempting to "rewrite history" by withdrawing its recommendation that he be sentenced to probation and by suggesting he had not been forthcoming or cooperative.
"Michael T. Flynn is innocent. Mr. Flynn has cooperated with the government in good faith for two years. He gave the prosecution his full cooperation," the lawyers wrote.
"He endured massive, unnecessary, and frankly counterproductive demands on his time, his family, his scarce resources, and his life," they added. "The same cannot be said for the prosecution which has operated in bad faith from the inception of the 'investigation' and continues relentlessly through this specious prosecution."
"He rightly refused to lie for the government, and his new counsel would not allow him to do so, nor allow the government to bully him into acquiescence," his lawyers wrote.
Flynn asked the judge to delay his sentencing to Feb. 27 from Jan. 28. The government doesn't oppose the delay, he said.
Last week, prosecutors told the judge that Flynn should serve as long as six months in prison for lying to federal agents about contacts with a Russian ambassador.
In 2018, the government had recommended that Flynn get probation based on his cooperation with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The U.S. changed its position after Flynn adopted a more confrontational approach.
Legal experts have said Flynn's growing truculence clearly seemed aimed at pleasing Trump and winning a possible presidential pardon.
Flynn replaced his lawyer in June, hiring Dallas attorney Sidney Powell. Within weeks a dispute erupted between the new defense team and prosecutors counting on Flynn's cooperation in the illegal lobbying case against Rafiekian.
In last week's filing, prosecutors said actions and comments by Flynn and his lawyer since his last sentencing hearing in 2018 "negate the benefits of much of the defendant's earlier cooperation." They said they no longer believed he deserved credit for accepting responsibility for his actions.
Flynn served just three weeks as Trump's national security adviser before he was fired for lying about his contacts with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the U.S. at the time. Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
Information for this article was contributed by Edvard Pettersson of Bloomberg News and by Eric Tucker and Michael Balsamo of The Associated Press.
A Section on 01/15/2020