https://saraacarter.com/flynns-former-lawyers-covington-and-burling-turn-over-another-trove-of-docs-again/
Flynn’s Former Lawyers Covington And Burling Turn Over Another Trove Of Docs, Again By Sara Carter -April 28, 2020
Covington and Burling LLP, the former defense team for former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, turned over thousands of more pages of documents to Flynn’s new defense team that should have been submitted more than a year ago. Last week, another batch of documents withheld by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team on Flynn was turned over to his defense that allegedly reveals that the retired three-star general did not commit any crimes, as suggested by Department of Justice prosecutors.
This new batch of voluminous documentation turned over by his former defense team – which includes emails, texts, voice messages, notebooks, handwritten notes and legal documents – amounted to approximately 6,800 additional documents bringing the total amount of documents to roughly 669,800, along with attachments.
In early April, Flynn’s former law firm revealed to the court that it had discovered emails and handwritten notes that were not turned in with the original batch of millions of documents that were required by the court to be turned over last year. At the time, they suggested the delay was due to technical issues since being ordered by the presiding federal judge six months ago to turn over all documents.
At the time, presiding Federal Judge Emmet T. Sullivan, ordered the law firm to ‘promptly turn over the entire file’ on Flynn to his new defense attorney Sidney Powell. That order was made under threat of a hearing before the District of Columbia Ethics Counsel. The law firm turned over what is described as a ‘voluminous’ amount of documents but it apparently wasn’t all the documents. In early April the law firm hinted in its supplemental notice filed with the court that there may even be more documents still to be produced.
Powell told this reporter Tuesday that she is astonished that Covington and Burling LLP had failed to locate the documents earlier and just now turned over another voluminous batch to her team.
“The Flynn defense is stunned that Covington and Burling has only now found thousands of additional documents amounting to more than 17,000 pages that should have been produced to the defense almost a year ago,” she stated. Powell, who has been battling for documents from the Department of Justice as well, said the enormity of documents withheld from Flynn’s defense is proof of the misconduct against her client.
Powell obtained the new information from the DOJ after an extensive review by attorneys appointed by U.S. Attorney General William Barr to review Flynn’s case. Barr’s team included United States attorney in St. Louis, Jeff Jensen, who is handling the Flynn matter, along with prosecutors from the office of the deputy attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen. The documented evidence Powell said will exonerate Flynn was delivered to Powell but is under court seal.
Tuesday’s supplemental notice, which was signed by Flynn’s former defense counsel Robert Kelner with Covington and Burling LLP, stated that the reason the documents were turned over so late to Powell was due to “an unintentional miscommunication involving the firm” information technology personnel had led them, in some instances, to run search terms on subsets of emails the firm had collected for its response to document requests United States v. [Bijan] Rafiekian, the case involving Mr. Flynn’s business partner and their FARA-related work through their consulting firm, rather than on the broader sets of emails that should have been searched.”
Rafikian, Flynn’s former business partner, had been indicted on two criminal counts by government prosecutors, which included conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government, according to his original unsealed indictment. Rafiekian’s conviction, however, was overturned in an unexpected move by the court, which cited that prosecutors had ‘insufficient evidence’ to prove their case against him.