Flynn attorney seeks three-month delay before sentencing

Michael Flynn’s new attorney said Monday she needs at least another 90 days to get up to speed on the former Trump national security adviser’s case before moving to set a sentencing date.

The lawyer, Sidney Powell, said she needed the extra time to work her way through three hard drives delivered from Flynn’s former lawyers. “And there’s still more to come,” she told U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan.

Sullivan initially made the suggestion to further delay sentencing in the case, which stems from Flynn’s guilty plea for lying to the FBI about contacts with a top Russian official.

The exchange came during a Monday morning hearing where Sullivan was considering The Washington Post’s request to remove several redactions from public documents tied to the Flynn case.

Powell, an outspoken critic of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, took over earlier this month as Flynn’s lead lawyer. The move prompted speculation Flynn is making a play for a pardon from President Donald Trump, who hailed Powell on Twitter as a “GREAT LAWYER” after the hire. Flynn has not given any reason for firing his previous attorneys.

Flynn is set to appear in Sullivan’s Washington, D.C., courtroom later Monday for his first appearance since a contentious December hearing, when the judge repeatedly criticized the former Trump aide for his role in the Russia saga, telling him at one point, “Arguably, you sold your country out.”

Sullivan during that hearing was expected to hand down Flynn’s sentence, but at the last minute he instead suggested the defendant take more time to fulfill his cooperation obligations to the government.

Since then, attorneys for Flynn and the federal government have three times requested delays in sentencing, including one made earlier this month for an additional 60 days.

Flynn is expected to testify in the government’s upcoming trial against his former business partner, Bijan Rafiekian, which is set to start on July 15. Rafiekian was indicted last December for acting as an unregistered agent for Turkey in the U.S. and a related conspiracy charge.

Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine