Legal experts: Flynn may be Trump threat
Former adviser no longer talking with president’s lawyers.
WASHINGTON — The prospect of Michael Flynn’s cooperation with federal prosecutors raises the possibility of new lines of inquiry and potentially valuable evidence in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 elections, legal experts said.
Lawyers for Flynn, who was fired as national security adviser in February, have stopped sharing information with President Donald Trump’s lawyers about the special counsel’s investigation, two people familiar with the probe have said.
While it’s possible that Flynn’s team made the move independently for strategic reasons, legal experts said it appears likely that he has entered into discussions of some kind with Mueller’s team that have caused his interests to diverge from Trump’s.
“Clearly, Flynn’s making a break from the president, and by doing so he’s signaling that he’s putting his interests first,” said Michael Weinstein, a former Justice Department prosecutor and trial attorney.
That may be a bad sign for the president and some of his close associates, Weinstein said. “At a minimum, Flynn could provide testimony. But more importantly, he could provide a road map to Mueller about where to look for more information. It could involve conference rooms, email, locations, individuals who were at meetings and travel records,” he said.
Attorneys for Flynn, who served as a senior Trump campaign adviser prior to his stint inside the administration, advised the White House of the decision shortly before Thanksgiving, the two people said.
The move has been anticipated by the president’s lawyers for weeks and doesn’t necessarily mean Flynn holds any information damaging to the president.
A lawyer for Flynn declined to comment on Thursday, as did lawyers for the president.
Flynn has become a focus of Mueller’s investigation into whether the campaign had any links with Russian attempts to interfere with the 2016 election. Democrats have raised questions about Flynn’s contacts with the Russian government before the campaign.
Under joint-defense or common-interest agreements, attorney-client privilege is extended to communication and collaboration among lawyers for different parties. Such agreements can be verbal or in writing and in some cases require each party involved to formally notify the others if it agrees to cooperate with the government.
Raymond Banoun, a former Justice Department prosecutor in Washington, said the situation with Flynn isn’t surprising.
“The only time you stop cooperating,” Banoun said, “is if the circumstances and relationships have changed and it creates a different ethical obligation. Or if the government says, ‘You’re either in our camp or the other camp.’”