BE AFRAID, DON
Preet: Flynn a threat if Prez did ‘bad things’
EX-U.S. ATTORNEY Preet Bharara said President Trump should be “very worried” about his former national security adviser Michael Flynn cooperating with prosecutors if Trump has “done bad things.”
“It depends on what the President has done and what the President’s conversations with Michael Flynn and others have been,” the former chief federal prosecutor in Manhattan said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“But if you have done bad things, then you should be very worried.”
Flynn’s lawyers have notified Trump’s legal team that they can no longer share information about the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, The New York Times first reported — a move that could mean Flynn is cooperating or working on a deal to cooperate with the probe.
Bharara, who was fired by Trump, said there’s a good chance Flynn has flipped or is negotiating a deal.
“My views is, based on how things used to operate in my office and based on the way the world works, is that there’s a substantial likelihood that they are at least in discussions with respect to cooperating,” he said.
“Now, that could fall apart because maybe he’s not disclosing everything, he’s trying to protect or he’s trying to minimize, and the prosecutors decide not to sign him up to a deal. But I think that the likelihood is that that is what they are talking about.” Flynn, who was fired just a few weeks into Trump’s tenure, is viewed as vulnerable to potential criminal charges over his lobbying work, dealings with Turkey, and failure to disclose foreign contacts. His son, Michael Flynn Jr., could also be in jeopardy. He could strike a deal to cooperate in exchange for leniency. “The way to get yourself off the hook — and, in his case, not only himself, but potentially also his son, who is involved in some of this — the only way to do that is to cooperate with the prosecution,” Bharara said. Bharara was fired in March, after Attorney General Jeff Sessions demanded the resignations of 46 U.S. attorneys from around the country. The New York prosecutor refused to submit his.
Bharara has previously said Trump’s actions — firing FBI Director James Comey after he asked Comey to drop the probe into Flynn — paint a picture of potential obstruction of justice.
He added Sunday that testimony by Flynn could shed light on any potential chats he and Trump had about suppressing the probe.
“The kinds of things that Michael Flynn can talk about include conversations he had with the President, not only about Turkey, but also about the President’s interactions with Jim Comey, the firing of Jim Comey, and, by the way, also all sorts of things that we may not know about,” he said.