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Shortly after Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn joined the presidential campaign of Donald Trump in February of 2016, someone began contacting reporters spinning a tale about having seen General Flynn being courted by a female Russian spy. This person alleged to several media reporters that he suspected Flynn had been successfully compromised by the Putin government. Sveltana Lokhova is a lecturer and author at Cambridge who specializes in Soviet intelligence studies who ended up being dragged against her will into the center of one of the biggest political scandals of all time. The person responsible for dragging Lokhova into the middle...

When the final report of then-special counsel Robert Mueller stated that it couldn’t establish that anyone from the Trump campaign had conspired with Russia, many Americans may have failed to realize how revealing a statement that was. The recent conviction of a former partner in the now-defunct consultancy firm of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, shows how easy it would have been for Mueller to bring charges even if he could piece together only a circumstantial case. Yet he didn’t. Conspiracy Despite its ominous sound, the federal charge of conspiracy has a low...

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said Thursday he feels strongly that Congress should "step up to the plate and do their job" and impeach President Donald Trump. "I feel strongly that that's the same position Congress is in now, and they should step up to the plate and do their job," McCabe said Thursday on CNN. "It doesn't mean that the president will be removed from office or should be removed from office or will be impeached, but it is absolutely clear to me that the time has come for Congress to pursue a dedicated impeachment inquiry." "I think...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (CN) – The case against a business associate of former national security adviser Michael Flynn went to the jury Monday, which will determine whether he illegally lobbied at the direction of Turkey without telling the federal government. During closing arguments Monday, prosecutors said 66-year-old Bijan Rafiekian tried to carefully mask who was behind a project he and Flynn worked on that aimed to discredit Fethullah Gulen, a cleric Turkish President Recep Erdogan has blamed for a 2016 failed coup against him. “They tried to subvert the American process so Erdogan could get his hands on Gulen,” U.S. Attorney...

Late last week, Svetlana Lokhova, a Russian-born English citizen, sued presumed Spygate frontman Stefan Halper and three media giants—the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and MSNBC—for defamation and conspiracy, alleging the defendants falsely painted her as a Russian spy and Michael Flynn paramour in order to push the Russia collusion narrative. Lokhova’s 66-page complaint reads more like a political shock jock transcript than a legal document: “Stefan Halper is a ratf—er and a spy, who embroiled an innocent woman in a conspiracy to undo the 2016 Presidential election and topple the President of the United States of America,” her lawsuit...

When distress reports reached U.S. Intelligence in Langley and the Pentagon that the American ambassador to Benghazi and dozens of his diplomatic personnel were under terrorist attack in Libya on Sept. 11 2012, CIA and Defense Department officials scrambled an immediate response. Officials moved quickly to assemble a counter-terrorism team of professionals to dispatch to Benghazi. That little-known but elite squad, known as the Foreign Emergency Support Team (FEST), is in fact the government’s sole inter-agency, on call and short notice team trained to respond to any terror-related incident in the world. But not this time. Not in Benghazi. FEST...

...Litvinenko "was giving Scaramella lots of information about Russian and criminal infiltrations in Italy, but most of it was very difficult to verify and crosscheck. It was a little bit out on a limb." In the old days, Litvinenko had been familiar with criminal clans in Russia, now he was making risky approaches to the Italian mafia. Scaramella believed if they could get inside this network, they would be able to leverage much more damaging intelligence about Italian politicians. They spread their net wider. The Litvinenko dossier lists a dizzying roll call of names investigated by the pair, among them...

Yulia Tymoshenko, the Ukrainian prime minister who is keen to clean up the murky natural gas trade between her country, Russia and central Asia, on Monday said Moscow’s arrest of a reputed crime boss was a sign that the days were numbered for ”corrupt” intermediaries. Ms Tymoshenko was referring to the arrest of the 61-year old mobster Semyon Mogilevich, who has alleged links to Swiss-registered RosUkrEnergo, a company half owned by Gazprom and 50 per cent controlled by two Ukrainian businessmen. ”We don’t need any shadowy intermediaries,” Ms Tymoshenko told reporters in Brussels while on her first foreign visit after...

The special counsel’s investigation was a sham controlled by the intelligence community. Evidence has long suggested as much, but testimony earlier this week from Michael Flynn’s ex-lawyer—that Flynn’s former legal team had not seen recently revealed information purporting to implicate Flynn in a conspiracy with a Turkish agent—confirms it.This testimony came on Tuesday when Flynn’s former Covington and Burling lawyer, Robert Kelner, took the stand at the trial of Flynn’s former partner at Flynn Intel Group (FIG), Bijan Rafiekian. Rafiekian, who co-founded FIG with Flynn, is on trial for conspiring with his co-defendant Kamil Ekim Alptekin and others (unnamed...

“You are asking my client to lie,” Michael Flynn’s new defense attorney Sidney Powell charged in a contentious June meeting with federal prosecutors. Flynn would continue to cooperate with prosecutors, Powell stressed, but he could not provide the testimony the government sought at the July trial of Flynn Intel Group (FIG) co-founder Bijan Rafiekian, “because it is not true.” Soon after, the government filed a motion in Rafiekian’s case, branding Flynn a co-conspirator and informing the court that Flynn would no longer testify against his former business partner. While federal prosecutors are reticent to explain how Flynn went from being...

In yet another surprise development in the Michael Flynn case, on Tuesday Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered Flynn’s former Covington and Burling lawyers to appear in court to receive a lecture on ethics from the senior legal ethics counsel for the District of Columbia Bar. While Sullivan’s order expressed concern only over Covington and Burling’s delay in providing Flynn’s new attorney, Sidney Powell, access to his complete legal file, given recent revelations, one must wonder whether Sullivan is equally concerned that a conflict of interest existed in Covington and Burling’s representation of Flynn. Tuesday’s order followed a briefing by Powell and...

A good friend writes:Eric Holder is a senior partner with Covington & Burling, a prestigious Washington, D.C. law firm, which represents 17 Yemenis currently held at Gitmo. From the C & B website: The firm represents 17 Yemeni nationals and one Pakistani citizen held at Guantánamo Bay. The Supreme Court will soon review the D.C. Circuit’s ruling that ordered the dismissal of a number of habeas petitions filed by Guantánamo detainees; some of our clients are petitioners in the Supreme Court case. We expect to play a substantial role in the briefing. We also plan to petition the Supreme Court...

A federal judge has ordered current and former attorneys for President Trump’s onetime national security adviser Michael Flynn to appear in court at the end of August. Judge Emmet Sullivan, the Obama appointee overseeing Flynn’s case in Washington, D.C., scheduled a status conference for 11 a.m. on Aug. 27 after Flynn’s new legal counsel said his former Covington & Burling attorneys had not turned over all of the files related to his case. Sullivan also said he would invite a legal ethics official to the hearing to explain the applicable rules “In light of the representations made by defense counsel...

New counsel has not received entire file. Former counsel must attend

Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn appears to have put the team of former special counsel Robert Mueller on the defensive, unraveling what had been suggested to be a possible unofficial deal with the prosecutors. Flynn, former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty in 2017 to one count of lying to the FBI. The Mueller team recommended a light sentence for him, including no prison time, officially because of his contrition for the crime and extensive cooperation with multiple Justice Department investigations. But it appears that another, unofficial, deal may have been in place. Several weeks before Flynn signed...

Prosecutors from the team of special counsel Robert Mueller wanted Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn to testify to something that isn’t true, Flynn’s lawyers said. When he refused, they tried to label him a co-conspirator in a case where they previously said he was only a witness. A federal judge denied the prosecutors’ move, saying the government didn’t present enough evidence to introduce Flynn’s statement as one of a co-conspirator. ... In his November 2017 guilty plea, he said that the forms submitted by lawyers for his now-defunct lobbying company, Flynn Intel Group (FIG), contained false and misleading statements. The prosecutors,...

The defense team for former National Security Advisor Michael T. Flynn has submitted a filing to the Eastern District of Virginia fighting the government’s most recent proposal to ask the Court to deem Flynn a “co-conspirator” in the case against his former partner. The designation is solely for the purpose of obtaining the admission of one document the government itself claims is already admissible under a different rule, according to a brief filed by Flynn’s defense team. The substantial briefing was filed in just the last few days in the case the government filed against Bijan Rafiekian, Flynn’s former consulting...

A federal judge in Virginia on Tuesday struck down prosecutors’ efforts to characterize Michael Flynn as a co-conspirator with his former lobbying partner, who faces trial on charges that he secretly lobbied for the Turkish government. Judge Anthony Trenga said in a court filing that federal prosecutors failed to provide enough evidence to show that Flynn acted as a co-conspirator with Bijan Rafiekian, a former executive at Flynn’s consulting company, Flynn Intel Group. “The United States at this point has not presented or proffered evidence sufficient to establish by a preponderance of the evidence a conspiracy for the purposes of...

Breakthrough – Things Making Sense Now… Lots of things going on in/around the two legal cases involving Michael Flynn today. The origination of the DOJ shift in position involves the indirect case (EDVA) where Flynn is/was a witness in the FARA (Foreign Agent Registration Act) case against Bijan Rafiekian and the Flynn Intel Group. Hat Tip to Techno-Fog for a litany of legal filings assembled today [132 pages here]. This is somewhat complex to explain. The direct case against Flynn (Judge Sullivan court – Washington DC), where Flynn copped a guilty plea for lying to FBI investigators, has a sentencing...

WASHINGTON — Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, backed off his planned testimony in a federal case against a former associate, according to court documents unsealed on Tuesday. Mr. Flynn had previously admitted that he lied on foreign lobbying disclosure forms submitted to the Justice Department but now is blaming his former lawyers, accusing them of filing inaccurate forms without his knowledge. He did not dispute that the filing itself contained false information. His latest gambit could provoke another dramatic and risky confrontation with the federal judge who delayed sentencing Mr. Flynn last year in a separate case...