Flynn's New MAGA Lawyer - Sidney Powell

Click here for an article at Politico by Keith Kloor entitled "The #MAGA Lawyer Behind Michael Flynn's Scorched-Earth Legal Strategy."

"Flynn fired his team at Covington & Burling [a well-respected world-class law firm] and hired Powell as his lead attorney. It was a striking turnabout: Flynn went from seeming to take the high road, by cooperating with the Mueller investigation, to seeking legal counsel from a Fox News pundit who thought Mueller was the perpetrator and Flynn the victim."

Flynn seemed to be meekly cooperating, and Mueller recommended that he receive no prison time because of the substantial help he had provided to the prosecutors.

"In August, she moved to have Flynn’s case dismissed for what she called “pernicious” prosecutorial misconduct, and requested that Emmet Sullivan, the presiding District Court judge, hold prosecutors in contempt for allegedly hiding FBI documents and communications that she said proved Flynn was pressured to plead guilty. In a court brief filed in October, she asserted that Flynn had been “deliberately targeted for destruction” by the intelligence community. The government countered that it had already relinquished any relevant material and that Powell was advancing “conspiracy theories” to fish for evidence that did not exist."

“'I don’t know how, but I can read the way these particular government lawyers say things to know that they are lying and hiding things,' she explained, referring to the prosecutors in the Flynn case. 'And I knew as soon as I started hearing and seeing what was going on with General Flynn that he had been set up'"

She wasn't initially successful: "Sullivan unequivocally rejected Powell’s requests for additional government documents and for the case to be dismissed. He also spurned her argument that Flynn had been framed, writing in an icy 92-page opinion that the retired general’s false statements to the FBI were 'undisputed.' Sullivan set January 28 as Flynn’s new sentencing date. Shortly afterward, government prosecutors recommended that Flynn receive up to six months in prison -- a reversal of the earlier recommendation that he not be incarcerated. 'Maybe Hiring Sidney Powell Was a Huge, Monstrous Mistake for Michael Flynn,' one headline suggested."

Powell is more than just a right-wing crank: She was a successful federal prosecutor for years, working in the Western District of Texas at the height of the drug wars, when judges were being assassinated and federal prosecutors wore bullet-proof vests, accompanied by armed guards. She went on her own and had good success as a defense lawyer, culminating in nearly a decade of work on the Enron case. She felt that Enron had been victimized:

"Powell, for her part, came away from the experience believing the prosecutors had bent the law to unfairly prosecute her clients and were never held to account for their actions. She became convinced that “prosecutorial misconduct,” in the form of suppression of evidence favorable to the defense, was a widespread problem in the judicial system."

She started crusading against prosecutorial overreach, and in 2014 she self-published a book entitled "License to Lie -- Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice." The book, Powell says, "'reveals the strong-arm, illegal, and unethical tactics used by headline-grabbing federal prosecutors in their narcissistic pursuit of power to the highest halls of our government.'"

Largely apolitical, she eagerly jumped on the Trump train in 2016. Her book, which had received very little attention, caught fire in sales when the Mueller team appointed to his prosecutorial team a number of people Powell had mentioned in her book. She tweeted that Mueller was "hiring out of my book!" Conservatives like Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity started to take notice, and "Powell rode her sudden wave of celebrity to political relevance and began appearing on the shows that had previously ignored her, embracing Trumpian talking points about not only the Mueller report but other issues, too. On Dobbs’ show, to take one example, Powell suggested that 'the continued invasion of this country' by immigrants might be the cause of 'diseases spreading across the country that are causing polio-like paralysis of our children.'”

One of her supporters and fundraisers, John B. Wells, "... appeared on Alex Jones’ show, 'Infowars,' in 2013 and talked about how 'it’s been pretty much established that the CIA and al Qaeda are almost one.' In his opening remarks at 'Operation Classified [a fundraising event he put on],' he spoke of the 'criminal cabal we refer to as government,' and he praised QAnon, the conspiracy movement that seems to believe a global gang of Satan-worshipping pedophiles in the media, Hollywood and the political establishment is secretly running the world. 'Q is a real thing,' Wells said to cheers in the audience."

She thought she had found a kindred spirit in the judge on the case: "Sullivan actually is known for bringing the hammer down on overreaching prosecutors, as in the trial of former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. 'Emmet G. Sullivan is one judge who knows a cover-up when he sees one,' she wrote in a 2014 Observer column. 'I love this man!' Powell has exclaimed in some of her public talks."

"Her conviction was bolstered by the release, in early December, of the long-awaited report by the inspector general for the Justice Department, which found that the FBI’s initial investigation into possible ties between Russia and Trump campaign officials (the precursor to the Mueller probe) was marred by sloppy and improper methods. Powell felt that the IG findings lent weight to a key component of her argument: that FBI agents manipulated the notes from their interview with Flynn to make him look guilty.

But in mid-December, Sullivan rejected the idea that the original FBI counterintelligence investigation of former Trump officials—Flynn included—was a deep state plot against Trump, and that Flynn had been tricked into his perjury by unscrupulous FBI agents. At the close of his ruling, Sullivan wrote: 'the Court summarily disposes of Mr. Flynn’s arguments that the FBI conducted an ambush interview for the purpose of trapping him into making false statements and that the government pressured him to enter a guilty plea. The record proves otherwise.'”