Thread by @TheViewFromLL2

Lots of drama in Flynn-land these days. In short: after firing his Covington counsel and securing new attorneys, Flynn changed his planned testimony for the upcoming trial of his business partner Bijan Rafiekian. So the gov't decided it couldn't call Flynn as a witness at all.

The government had almost certainly had intended to call Flynn to testify about facts he had agreed to back in 2017, in his Statement of the Offense. That included the fact that he lied in his FARA filing about his knowledge of Turkey's involvement in the Inovo contract.

Then in June 2019, just before Rafiekian's trial is to begin, Flynn's new counsel made a surprise announcement to the DOJ: hey, remember that time Flynn stipulated in court to committing a crime? He was just super confused, he didn't really meant to stipulate to that at all!

So the gov't nixed the idea of calling the obviously-lying Flynn to the stand. Then Rafiekian filed a motion objecting to the surprise twist in the government's trial strategy. How can the gov't not call Flynn, he argued, when they've been saying all along they would call him?

The government's response to Rafiekian: buddy, if you think YOU'RE surprised and prejudiced by Flynn suddenly changing his testimony, just think about how screwed we are.

Here's the email DOJ sent to update Rafiekian's counsel on Flynn's change of heart, and a section of Rafiekian's brief complaining about it:

To make its case against Rafiekian, the gov't needs to show that Rafiekian made false statements contributing to Flynn Intel Group's false FARA filings about the Turkey contract.

Obviously, Flynn's testimony that the FARA filings were false would've been a key part of that.

Only now, through his new counsel, Flynn is claiming that he *can't* testify that he authorized false FARA filings, because actually, Flynn never believed they were false in the first place... oh yeah, and also he never even took the time to read the FARA filings he submitted!

Basically, Flynn is now claiming, "I had no idea anything in the FARA filing was untruthful; I trusted my old attorneys, and if they wrote anything false in the filing, that was their decision; I only told the truth to my attorneys, so any lies in the filing didn't come from me."

This makes Flynn useless to the gov't as a witness for anything, because he's indicated his intent to commit perjury on the stand. What jury would believe a word he said?

Which, sure, is not ideal for the gov't. But it's also not the end of the world for their case. Except...

There are tons of documents that prove the FARA filings were false, so the gov't hardly needs Flynn to prove that, anyway. The problem is, the gov't doesn't just need to prove the filings were false -- it needs to prove that Rafiekian was responsible for those false statements.

And now that Flynn isn't testifying, and can't say which false statements Rafiekian was responsible for, Rafiekian has a lot more room to argue that, *actually*, it wasn't him who caused the false FARA registration -- Flynn was the one who did that, all on his own.

Of course, given the scope of the damning documentary record, even without "Person A" (Flynn) it might not be too hard to show that Flynn and Rafiekian were part of a plot to receive money from the Turkish gov't, and then lie to the US gov't about where they got the money from.

So the real mystery for me is still this: how in the hell Flynn got such a sweetheart plea deal from the Special Counsel, when the proof of Flynn's crimes was ironclad, and the "help" he provided as a cooperating witness has only damaged the govt's cases against other defendants.