Judge orders voicemail release
•A U. S. judge ordered prosecutors to make public a transcript of a voicemail from someone trying dissuade former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn from fully co- operating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
The message was one of several in which Flynn or his lawyers were contacted by people linked to the Trump administration and Congress, according to court papers made public Thursday.
Flynn told the government about a number of contacts “that could have affected both his willingness to co- operate and the completeness of his co-operation,” U. S. attorneys Brandon Van Grack and Zainab Ahmad said in an unsealed filing prepared for Flynn’s sentencing last December.
Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about his contacts with former Russian ambassador to the U. S. Sergey Kislyak. But the retired general agreed to put off the sentencing. A new sentencing date hasn’t been set.
On Thursday, Sullivan ordered transcripts of the phone message and of Flynn’s conversations with Russian officials to be posted on the court’s publicly available electronic docket by May 31. He also ordered that unredacted portions of the Mueller report related to Flynn be made public.
The voicemail transcript could illuminate parts of Mueller’s final report addressing whether Trump or his lawyers tried to obstruct the special counsel’s investigation. After Flynn began cooperating with Mueller, the president’s personal lawyer left a message for Flynn’s attorney reminding them of President Donald Trump’s “warm feelings” toward him, according to the report released last month. It’s not clear whether that message and the voicemail ordered to be made public are the same, or different, calls.
Trump claimed on Friday that he was unaware his original national security adviser was under scrutiny. But President Barack Obama had warned Trump to not hire Flynn in an Oval Office meeting just two days after the November 2016 election and weeks before Trump took office.