The NPR Politics Podcast - Federal Judge Delays Michael Flynn's Sentencing; Trump Foundation To Dissolve

Episode Date: December 18, 2018

A federal judge delayed sentencing former national security adviser Michael Flynn on Tuesday after he pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about his talks with Russia's ambassador. Plus, the New York Attorney General announced that the Trump Foundation will dissolve after an investigation into misconduct. This episode: Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and justice correspondent Carrie Johnson. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Erica Culling from Berkeley, California. I've listened to a lot of episodes of the NPR Politics Podcast while doing biology experiments. And right now I'm walking across campus to submit my dissertation. This podcast was recorded at 520 Eastern on Tuesday, December 18th. By the time you hear it, things may have changed and I will have a PhD. All right, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. A judge has delayed former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn's sentencing, but only after a dramatic showdown in the courtroom. And the Trump Foundation is dissolving after being investigated

and sued by New York's Attorney General. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. How's it going? Ah, quite a day. Quite a day. Okay. Better day for you than Michael Flynn, it seems, though. You know, I got to the courthouse around 8 o'clock this morning thinking the line would be long, and the only people, virtually the only people in front of me in line, were blood relations of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. You know, he has something like eight siblings,

and many of them showed up at the courthouse today thinking they were going to get a resolution, but they did not. So can you remind us what he was supposed to be sentenced on? Yeah. Remember, in December 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to a single count of making false statements to the FBI for allegedly lying about his contacts with the Russian ambassador in December 2016 and also some conduct about not registering under a foreign agent registration act for some of his lobbying work for Turkey. And the thinking was that this guy had been cooperating fully with prosecutors. The special counsel had said he sat down for 19 interviews in 62 hours with these investigators, answered virtually every question they had, and that they were recommending little or no prison time for Michael Flynn. So leading up to this hearing, there was a lot of stuff about like his lawyers maybe saying that he wasn't treated fairly by the FBI. Did that come up? Well, in fact, there's been a campaign almost since the time of Flynn's guilty plea over a year ago to suggest that he was set up or entrapped by the FBI when they went to his office in the White House in January 2017. Flynn's own son, Michael Flynn Jr., has been tweeting some

of these things, as has one of Flynn's brothers. And the president, as you know better than I, Tam, has also been kind of embracing this theory that Flynn was ambushed. But when Judge Emmett Sullivan got down to brass tacks in that courtroom, he asked, Mr. Flynn, do you believe you were entrapped by the FBI? Flynn said, no, your honor. Mr. Flynn, did you know it was a crime to lie to the FBI? Flynn said, yes, your honor. Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty?

Flynn said, yes, your honor. Flynn did not substantiate any of those conspiracy theories that have been floating around for over a year now. But speaking of that judge, we go into this hearing. Despite that back and forth, the prosecutors are saying recommending no jail time. So didn't expect or maybe it didn't seem like there would be many fireworks, but there were. Oh, my goodness. There were a lot of fireworks. At one point, Judge Solomon actually said, I'm not hiding my disgust, my disdain for this criminal offense. He repeatedly warned Flynn that the sentencing guidelines, which call for zero to six months, were not binding on him and he might depart from

them and actually sentence Flynn to a substantial amount of prison time. He also seemed really, really upset that at the time of this interview, at the time of these lies, Flynn was the sitting national security advisor lying to federal agents from the West Wing of the White House. At one point, the judge said this case is in a category all its own. And at one point, the judge even asked the government whether Flynn might have committed treason. And after a short recess, the prosecutor, Brandon Van Graak, came back and said, we have no reason to believe Flynn has committed treason. That is a big word. That is like a loaded thing to ask. Yeah. The judge also asked whether Flynn might have been acting as a foreign agent, an undeclared foreign agent for Turkey

while Flynn was in the White House. The prosecutor pushed back on that, too, saying Flynn's lobbying work for Turkey seems to have ended before Flynn joined the Trump administration formally. So one previous twist and turn of this case, I believe it was Paul Manafort's trial in the Virginia courtroom. The judge was like a notorious crank, right? He had a reputation as a crank and it showed in the trial. Did today's judge, did anyone see this coming? Does he have a reputation for being blunt or what should we make of all these back and forths? You know, Emmett Sullivan has been on the bench for a long time.

He was appointed by President Bill Clinton before he became a federal judge. He was a judge here in the D.C. Superior Court. And he maybe is most well known around the country for his handling of the prosecution of the late Senator Ted Stevens. That case was ultimately abandoned by the Justice Department in the Obama administration over prosecutorial misconduct. And what may be happening here is that Flynn's lawyers may have thought by raising some allegations, even in a very subtle way, about FBI conduct related to Michael Flynn in this interview in the White House, that they might have appealed to the judge's sensibilities with respect to prosecutorial misconduct. If that was their thinking, it backfired spectacularly today in the courthouse. The judge was really, really not happy with Michael Flynn and went on for minutes and minutes of questions trying to determine whether Michael Flynn really thought he was guilty. And when Flynn said, yes, I do believe I'm guilty. That's why I pleaded guilty. I want to stand behind this plea. The judge said, well, you better think twice about whether you want to be sentenced today. And so then he decided not to be sentenced today. Is the idea that he could do more helpful

deeds and that that would somehow earn him points with the judge? Yeah, the theory from the defense lawyer, Rob Kellner, is that Flynn has basically given up everything he can with one exception, and that is two of Flynn's business associates have been charged in federal court in Virginia for acting as agents of Turkey. If those men go to trial, Flynn may be able to cooperate and testify against them at trial. And thus, Flynn could get some more credit for cooperating with government authorities. But today, Tam, the mood in the courtroom was so rough, it was so dark in there, that they may have just figured that buying Michael Flynn 90 more days to have the judge potentially cool off was a smart strategy. So what happens next? Well, the judge has asked both sides to get together and file a progress report with him in mid-March 2019.

And it's hard to say where this investigation is going to be by mid-March, but presumably we'll know a little bit more about whether Flynn's going to have to testify against his former business associates by then. All right, so we were talking about Michael Flynn here, but of course there are implications beyond Michael Flynn, namely for President Trump and the rest of this investigation. We are going to talk about all of that after a quick break. Years ago, Jennifer Lopez's career almost took a big shift. Then the actress Penelope Cruz stepped in. I was like, I don't know, I was thinking about, maybe I'll keep doing movies, but I don't know if I'm going to keep singing. She was like, you have to keep singing.

I'm Sam Sanders. My chat with J-Lo on the secret to her continued success. This week on It's Been a Minute from NPR. And we are back. So, Carrie, the last few times that there have been court appearances or documents filed, we've been able to suss out broader themes or broader angles of the investigations based on things said in court or based on things written in these reports. Did we learn any big picture stuff today from this Flynn hearing? You know, that is the tantalizing thing for me. We know that the special counsel has filed court papers saying Flynn was able to

provide firsthand accounts of his contacts with the Russians and what other people on the Trump transition team were doing vis-a-vis the Russians. We don't know those details. And a lot of stuff is still redacted. At one point at the start of the hearing today, Judge Sullivan said, I'm mindful of the fact that there's still a lot of stuff under seal or under wraps in this case. If I start to ask any questions about material that should be secret, lawyers, you jump up and wave your hands and tell me to stop. So those secrets remain preserved for now. It's an underlying question for me, in part because President Trump seems to feel so warmly toward Michael Flynn. And I don't know what Michael Flynn may have given up about the Trump transition in context with Russia. I really don't know. I desperately want to know. Carrie, you're talking about warm feelings. This morning, President Trump, before Flynn went to

court, tweeted, Good luck today in court, General Michael Flynn. We'll be interesting to see what he has to say, despite tremendous pressure being put on him about Russia collusion in our great and obviously highly successful political campaign. There was no collusion! Okay, so Tam, I want to circle back to everything else the White House said today. But Carrie, given that we know that there is an obstruction of justice probe going on here, is tweeting best of luck to someone that you could pardon, is that the type of thing that they would have an interest in,

or is that hard to say? Scott, I got to be honest with you. That is the least of the worries on the obstruction of justice slash Twitter side in this case. Calling Michael Cohen a rat, threatening fired FBI director Jim Comey, beating up on former Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from this investigation, and a host of other things are a lot more problematic from a legal side than sending your former national security advisor best wishes via Twitter. Now I'm just imagining a universe of the various tweets like duking it out like for the heavyweight title or something. And it's not it's not it's not a contender.

OK. Could have been a contender. But this is not a contender. OK. Could have been a contender, but this is not a contender tweet. Tam, there was one of those rare, increasingly rare White House press briefings today. How was the White House responding to all of this drama playing out in the courtroom? Yeah, we had our monthly daily White House press briefing. Hold on now. I see what you did there.

It used to be daily. Now it's monthly. Yeah. You know, it was kind of amazing. Reporters asked Sarah Sanders, why does the president have such warm feelings for Michael Flynn? And yet he is calling Michael Cohen a rat because Michael Flynn, his former national security advisor, has been wildly cooperative with the special counsel. And she didn't really have a great answer to that, but did say that Michael Cohen is a liar and somehow Flynn isn't. Look, we know Michael Cohen to be a liar on a number of fronts. And the president's opinion is extremely clear on that front. I don't see any reason to go beyond that comment at this point.

You know, I kind of struggle with whether this makes any sense at all. She kept saying Flynn's guilty plea has nothing to do with the president, which is weird because he is accused of lying while in the West Wing. Yeah. And Tim, he's accused of lying about his contacts with the former Russian ambassador at a time when the outgoing Obama administration was imposing sanctions on Russia. So these were these were matters that were central to the Trump transition foreign policy. And we know from his initial guilty plea documents that Michael Flynn was actually in routine telephone conversations with people at Mar-a-Lago at the time he was also communicating with the former ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. And Mar-a-Lago is the president's winter home, where the president also was,

though the documents don't indicate whether the president was looped in or not. So pivoting to a whole different investigation into President Trump's orbit and business dealings. There's news today from the New York Attorney General's office, which was investigating the Trump Foundation and had filed a lawsuit against it. Tam, what did they announce today? Well, so what they are looking into is the Trump Foundation. What they announced today is that it will be winding down, it will be dissolved, and that any funds that remain in the foundation will be distributed under a court supervision to charities that the attorney general agrees are the right charities. And the Trump Foundation,

people first started paying attention to it in 2016 when the Washington Post took the lead on reporting a whole bunch of purchases made with foundation money that weren't exactly kind of nonprofit charitable. The types of things that you think a charity would spend money on, including ornate portraits of Donald Trump and many other things. And a $7 fee to a Boy Scout troop, presumably to pay for one of his sons to be in the Boy Scout troop. Scouting's important. $7? That seems cheap. It was a long time ago. Listen, Carrie, the Scouts are an accessible activity for people of all ages and means. But also, more notably, that he settled some legal disputes that his businesses had by making donations from his foundation to to settle those.

Anyway, here is the money quote from the attorney general Underwood in New York. She says, quote, Our petition. So this is their lawsuit against the foundation detailed a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation, including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more. This amounted to the Trump Foundation functioning as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump's business and political interests. And this investigation began under the last New York Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, who resigned in disgrace. But Barbara Underwood, get damages because, in essence, if a nonprofit foundation that gets the tax benefits of being a foundation is doing the work of a business, then you're basically taking money from taxpayers. What's the foundation saying?

Well, what lawyer Alan Futterfoss is saying is that the Trump Foundation wanted to dissolve after President Trump won in 2016, but that they had been prevented from doing it all this time because the New York attorney general was not letting them do it, presumably as part of this investigation. The statement says the New York attorney general sought to prevent dissolution for almost two years, thereby depriving those most in need of nearly one point seven million dollars. All right. And that is a lot of news on a lot of different investigations. We're going to wrap things there today. But of course, we will be back in your feed as soon as there is political news to talk about. We have some big news. I'm not sure it's worth a full podcast, but it's worth me telling you about it right now. And that is we are hitting the road again. We will be in Atlanta on March 8th for a live show. You can get your tickets by heading to nprpresents.org. That is nprpresents.org.

Hope to see you there. I will be there. Tam will be there. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.