Mueller investigation: Report recommends little to no jail time for Michael Flynn

Special counsel Robert Mueller released a heavily redacted pre-sentencing report on President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn Tuesday night.

Mueller is recommending little to no jail time for Flynn, who pleaded guilty last December to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials.

Update 9:45 p.m. EST Dec. 4: President Donald Trump's former national security adviser Michael Fynn talked to special counsel Robert Mueller 19 times in relation to three separate investigations, according to the report Mueller released Tuesday night, which called for little to no jail time for Flynn because of his cooperation with Mueller in his probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Update 9:10 p.m. EST Dec. 4: Mueller's report said members of the Trump team publicly repeated false information from Michael Flynn about Russian contacts.

The new court filing appears to show that Flynn has helped with three separate investigations - the Russia probe, and two others which are redacted in the report.

Mueller said in the filing that Flynn provided such thorough cooperation, that he recommended no prison time. "The defendant deserves credit for accepting responsibility in a timely fashion and substantially assisting the government."

Update 9:00 p.m. EST Dec. 4: Mueller's office said it is not releasing all the details of Flynn's assistance in the probe because "the investigations in which he has provided assistance are ongoing," the report stated.

Because part of the filing “includes sensitive information about ongoing investigations, the government is seeking to partially seal [it], and has filed publicly a redacted version of the document that excludes the sensitive information.”

Update: 8:55 p.m. EST Dec. 4: Special counsel Robert Mueller's office said that former national security adviser Michael Flynn "has assisted in several ongoing  investigations, including its probe of coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government."

The report said Flynn "began providing information to the government not long after the government first sought his cooperation," and that Flynn’s guilty plea "likely affected the decisions of related firsthand witnesses to be forthcoming with the SCO."

Update: 8:40 p.m. EST Dec. 4: A pre-sentencing report on President Donald Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn by special counsel Robert Mueller has been released.

Mueller is recommending little to no jail time for Flynn, who pleaded guilty last December to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials.

"Given the defendant’s substantial assistance and other considerations set forth below, a sentence at the low end of the guideline range—including a sentence that does not impose a term of incarceration—is appropriate and warranted," the Mueller team said in the filing, according to news reports.

Original story:

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has until midnight Tuesday to file a pre-sentencing report on President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, a filing that’s expected to shed light on the extent of his cooperation with the Russia probe.

Flynn resigned from his post in the Trump administration in February 2017 after serving just 24 days in office. He pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials and agreed to fully cooperate with Mueller’s team.

He's scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 18 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Reuters reported.

The pre-sentencing report expected Tuesday is meant to brief a federal judge ahead of sentencing, according to CNN. Similar documents were filed before other sentencing hearings in the Mueller probe, however, Flynn is the first person to be sentenced after agreeing to cooperate with investigators, the news network reported.

The former national security adviser is, so far, the only member of Trump's administration to plead guilty to charges in the Mueller investigation, Reuters reported.

In May 2017, the Justice Department tasked Mueller, who served from September 2001 to September 2013 as director of the FBI, with investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its possible ties to Trump and his campaign officials. The investigation has led to charges against more than two dozen people accused of crimes ranging from money laundering and falsifying income tax returns to lying to FBI investigators.

Several people associated with Trump have pleaded guilty to charges uncovered as part of the probe, most recently his former long-time attorney, Michael Cohen. Last week, Cohen pleaded guilty to making false statements to Congress last year about the timing of a plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

Trump has frequently railed against the investigation, which he has called a witch hunt, and denied any collusion with Russia.

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