Evidence is piling up that federal prosecutors committed serious misconduct in their attempt to put Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn in jail.
Evidence is piling up that federal prosecutors committed serious prosecutorial misconduct in their attempt to put Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn in jail. And a new filing by Flynn’s attorney, Sidney Powell, highlights some very troubling actions by the federal government in both his and his former business partner’s cases.
On September 30, Powell filed her latest supplemental status report summarizing the acquittal of Flynn’s former business partner, Bijan Rafiekian.
Last week, the federal judge in Rafiekian’s case acquitted the man on all counts and said that the government utterly failed to prove its case.
Judge Anthony Trenga, of the Eastern District of Virginia, threw out Rafiekian’s convictions on violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act for work reportedly done on behalf of Turkey. Trenga said that there was insufficient evidence to sustain the convictions.
“The evidence was insufficient as a matter of law for the jury to convict Rafiekian on either count,” Judge Trenga wrote in his opinion. The judge added that a new trial may be warranted “in the interest of justice should the Court’s judgment of acquittal be later vacated or reversed.”
Rafiekian and Flynn worked together in Flynn’s now dissolved Flynn Intel Group before Flynn joined President Donald Trump’s administration.
Judge Trenga ruled that there was no evidence whatever that Rafiekian knowingly broke the law by filing false papers to register as a lobbyist for a foreign government. This finding has direct bearing on Flynn’s own case as one of the chief accusations against him is that he knowingly lied about working for a foreign government.
Powell’s Sept. 30 filing points out all the misconduct engaged in by the prosecutors in the Flynn case, especially in light of the Rafiekian ruling.
Powell notes that Flynn had lived up to his agreement with the government to offer full cooperation in the Rafiekian case, and that prosecutors wanted him to testify that he and Rafiekian knowingly signed a false FARA registration. But Flynn had already told the government that he did not file false FARA paperwork and that he could not lie in court that he and Rafiekian did such a thing.
That is when the government broke the agreement and barred Flynn from testifying in the Rafiekian case. This is an admission that their whole point (the false FARA issue) was the crux of their case and now that Judge Trenga has found that Rafiekian did not file a false FARA, the charges against Flynn is also untenable.
In her filing, Powell notes that they have the paper tail to prove this: “In our endless document review, we now have a draft of the statement of offense that proves the contrary, showing similar language deleted,” Powell says.
In that statement, Flynn said directly that he does not agree that he filed a false FARA, yet the government’s main case went forward as if he DID agree to this claim.
Worse, Powell shows that the government then used threats of prosecuting Flynn’s son as a weapon of intimidation to force the general’s acquiescence to the government’s desires. Powell notes that Flynn steadfastly refused to agree that he filed a false FARA, and in response the prosecutors turned on his agreement and charged him as a...
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