The NFL unveiled the full roster for the 2019 Pro Bowl on Tuesday night, with leading MVP candidate Patrick Mahomes headlining this year’s list of stars.
Mahomes has helped the Kansas City Chiefs post an 11-3 record—tied for second-best in the NFL—and he’s joined in the Pro Bowl by teammates Eric Fisher, Dee Ford, Tyreek Hill, Travis Kelce and Anthony Sherman.
Karachi, Pakistan – In the heart of Karachi’s southern neighbourhood of Lyari, a cafe has given birth to, and shelters, dreams of many women of the area.
At the Lyari Girls Cafe in Pakistan’s southern city, there is a 50-year-old who wants to launch her salon, a 19-year-old who is secretly filling out university application forms and the girls who cycle on the streets.
Set up in 2017, the cafe is located on the roof of a block of residential flats on a street called Phool Patti (petal) Lane.
But there are no flowers here. Informal “dentists” and kiosks line the street which is hardly 10 feet wide. Goats have the run of the place and rats scurrying past is normal.
Men sit by the side watching the world go by, while the women, in their black robes, look down as they walk past.
Gunshots mark the facade of all architecture. The bullet-pocked walls of the buildings are a reminder of Lyari’s past. The area suffered at least two decades of conflict and almost became an adjective to describe Karachi’s violence.
Parts of the neighbourhood became “no-go” areas because of the gang violence until a paramilitary operation in September 2013 aimed at improving the situation.
In addition to language classes, the cafe also teaches girls hairstyling techniques [Zehra Abid/Al Jazeera]
Those were bloody years for Lyari, and Phool Patti Lane was among the worst affected.
At the end of the street, there once was the infamous “White House”, the torture cell operated by one of the most notorious gangsters in the area, Baba Ladla. All that remains are the broken walls, a rubbish dump, and many stories of how things were then.
Zulekha Dawood, 26, vividly remembers what it was like living here five years ago.
“We never thought we’d have to leave but there came a time when there were sounds of bullets all the time,” Dawood told Al Jazeera. “There was no food, water or medicine. We couldn’t bear it. We had to leave. Everybody had to leave. We took nothing with us.”
When the family and their neighbours were able to return two and a half months later, everything in their house was exactly how it was. But there was a stillness in the air.
“You could only hear the sound of the birds, it was all so quiet. There was so much fear, the fear that had been embedded in all of us,” Dawood recalled.
While men had access to public places, street corners, community centres, tea stalls, where they could interact in search of normalcy, the women had nowhere to go.
The Lyari’s Girls Cafe celebrated the ‘International Day of the Girl’#AaoCycleChalaen’ “let’s go cycling” at Sea view, Karachi #IDG2018 to highlight the challenges girls face while advocating for their empowerment. Any distance, every mile – you can achieve your dreams. pic.twitter.com/KKo021BJ7Z
“We felt like we needed to help these women who were living with trauma and had no space to assuage their fears,” Dawood explains.
Lyari, much like the rest of Pakistan, has barely any recreational spaces for women who, in comparison to men, are largely invisible in the public sphere.
A World Economic Forum report on gender equality released in 2017 ranked Pakistan the second worst country in the world to be a woman.
After setting up the cafe, Dawood and her friend Raheen Rimsha, 19, working with Lyari-based NGO Arado, which focuses on gender equality, went door-to-door inviting women to visit.
Initially, there was resistance from residents who did not understand the need for or concept of the cafe.
But soon, that changed. Now, with the venue working more as a community space than a cafe, women of all ages spend hours learning new skills, playing foosball or carrom and practising different hairstyling techniques.
A World Economic Forum report released in 2017 on gender equality ranked Pakistan the second worst country in the world to be a woman [ARADO]
On the roof, there is a green canopy, some handmade decorations and some Christmas decorations on the wall.
For 19-year-old Summaiya Muhammad, the cafe is an escape from her family, who believe a woman’s place is inside the house.
“My father always says what is the point of me studying as eventually, I will be spending my day standing by a stove [in the kitchen],” said Muhammad, who has been visiting the cafe for seven months now.
“I really want to go to college but my brothers say there is no point as ‘you have to get married anyway’. Still, I secretly fill out college forms here. Maybe they will eventually allow me to go.”
The cafe offers English language classes. Makeup and hairstyling lessons are delivered in Kachchi, the language spoken by many in the area. There are computer classes in Urdu and guest lectures on topics ranging from mental health to photojournalism and cybercrime laws.
“The cafe is a safe space for women and girls to socialise, connect with other women and get a break from the stresses of everyday life,” said Nida Kirmani, a sociologist who has done extensive research on Lyari.
“In an area that has experienced years of conflict and insecurity, these contributions have the added importance of helping individuals and communities heal from experiences of violence.”
As closing time nears, girls – who hail from different parts of the city – start gathering and head over to a nearby school’s premises for football, boxing and cycling.
Every Sunday morning, the girls would assemble and head out to cycle around the city [ARADO]
To see women cycling in any part of the country is very rare and Rimsha recalls being jeered at by young boys when the group went out for the first time.
“They said their sisters were at home and we should be too,” said Rimsha.
“But we kept cycling. If we had stopped, that would’ve been the end of it. We don’t do this [cycling] just for fun. We do it because it should become a normal thing to do. When a woman wants to go somewhere, she should just take her cycle and step out instead of waiting for her father, husband or brother to take her.”
The girls can be seen cycling around the city early every Sunday morning: At 6:30am, most of Karachi is sleeping and they can freely ride on the streets.
But as the cafe and its activities gathered momentum, so did the opposition.
Arado President Sultan Mandhro is concerned about the cafe’s future due to the neighbourhood presence of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), a right-wing political party which won parliamentary seats in the 2018 elections.
TLP organised violent protests across Pakistan following the acquittal of a Christian woman, Aasia Bibi, in a high-profile blasphemy case earlier this year.
On the front wall of the white building where the cafe is located, ‘TLP’ is spray-painted in green.
The entrance to the building where the cafe is located, with ‘TLP’ spray-painted [Zehra Abid/Al Jazeera]
Unconcerned by the cafe’s other activities, TLP parliamentarian Younus Soomro told Al Jazeera he was not a fan of the cycling initiative.
“I personally don’t look at activities like cycling as very decent for women. We are a Muslim country, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, and this would not even be acceptable according to the Shariah,” said Soomro.
TLP’s presence in Lyari has been a concern for some as this is the first time a religious party has won seats from this constituency. There have been no direct threats to either Mandhro or the girls, but there are some implicit threats.
“We sometimes see comments on social media that are clearly meant to intimidate us and stop us from our sports activities,” said Mandhro.
But, despite the complexities and the dangers, the girls are just happy they have a chance to get out of the house and undertake these activities.
Naila Niaz, 19, comes to the cafe for boxing training. The newfound freedom for her is “addictive”.
“The first time I came here I was shocked. I had only imagined such a world. Now I’ve realised that it actually exists.”
Former NPR news boss Michael Oreskes, who was ousted from his position after allegations of sexual harassment, has been tapped to help create a new online news site. | Anja Niedringhaus/AP Photo
The site’s founder says it will remedy the media’s trust problems, but two top hires left their previous jobs after allegations of harassment and racism.
One was ousted from NPR amid allegations of sexual harassment. The other left Fox News shortly after writing a column widely panned as racist and anti-gay. Now they’ve been recruited to help launch a new digital news startup with the stated goal of restoring faith in media.
Another former Fox News executive, Ken LaCorte, has enlisted former NPR news boss Michael Oreskes and former Fox News executive editor John Moody to join him in creating LaCorte News, which he said will be a truly “fair and balanced” alternative in these polarized times.
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The site is expected to soft launch before the end of January and will feature a curated feed of aggregated news alongside some original content. Placement of each story will be partially determined by an “importance score” assigned by editors, to avoid the type of algorithm-driven partisan news silos that have formed on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.
LaCorte said that by recruiting from both NPR and Fox News, he has a built-in buffer against the trust problems that have plagued media in the era of President Donald Trump. “Anybody gets to pull the stop switch and say, ‘Hold on here, let’s see what we’re doing, let’s go back and talk about this,’” Moody said in an interview.
There will surely be questions, though, about the site’s ability to cover some of the biggest stories in the country, including the #MeToo movement and issues around race and sexuality. LaCorte said he’s not worried about Oreskes or Moody’s histories, arguing that some men have been dispatched from their jobs too quickly and easily in the #MeToo era.
“I’m proud that I pulled in both the former head of news at Fox News and the former head of news at NPR,” said LaCorte, who left Fox News at the end of 2016. “I’m not going to be egotistical enough to say I’m going to save journalism, but I’m fucking trying.”
He added, “I couldn’t have afforded either one of these guys had we not been in this crazy type of atmosphere…In a weird way, I’m actually a beneficiary of companies being hypersensitive.”
His view of the #MeToo movement is sure to draw objections. Jennifer Drobac, a professor at the McKinney School of Law at Indiana University and an expert on sexual harassment, said: “Women and minorities have been oppressed for so long that to say that this has gone too fast is not just laughable but insulting and demeaning.”
It’s too soon to tell how LaCorte News — which LaCorte said he’s launching with about $1 million, much of it his own money — will fare in a difficult business environment for media startups. LaCorte says he plans to largely rely on advertising revenue. But advertisers have been sensitive about being paired with controversial content and news sources. And the launch comes amid a reckoning in media, with men such as late Fox News head Roger Ailes and ex-CBS chief Leslie Moonves losing their jobs over allegations they harassed and assaulted women. Reports of potential comebacks by other media figures, such as former CBS anchor Charlie Rose, have largely been met with scorn.
Oreskes declined to agree to an interview for this story. When he left NPR last November, amid allegations of inappropriate advances and sexual comments over decades, he said in a statement that his behavior was “wrong and inexcusable.” LaCorte said he did not think the allegations, which included an NPR employee reporting as recently as 2016 that Oreskes invited her to his beach cottage for career counseling, were substantial.
Moody declined to discuss the February column in which he said the U.S. Olympic team should take as its motto “darker, gayer, different.” Fox pulled the column after its initial posting, but LaCorte said the piece was meant to be sarcastic.
Drobac said she had serious questions about how an outlet with someone accused of sexual harassment in an important role will present news.
“Will this person deliver the news fairly? Will he be able to work with others fairly and competently?” she asked.
Some plans for the site have been public for months, but Oreskes’ role was not previously known. LaCorte will be the site’s CEO, and Moody will serve as editor in chief. Oreskes doesn’t have a formal title, but LaCorte described him as sitting on the site’s editorial board and said he’d been joining regular phone calls for about six months, with compensation in stock. LaCorte said the site has five or six full-time employees now, one of whom is a woman.
LaCorte News will feature feeds that look similar to those on Facebook, with users able to adjust the mix of news they receive — but stories judged to be important by editors will always receive priority, LaCorte said. He expects 30 to 60 pieces of original content per month — mostly written, but with some video — alongside a “backbone” of aggregated material and a heavily moderated comment section.
Editorial meetings will be live-streamed as part of an effort to rehabilitate the image of media by demystifying the news-making process, he said. LaCorte sees his venture as simultaneously addressing media bias as well as the ills wrought by social media.
“I think there is a tremendous market out there for transparent news,” he said.
Both Moody and Oreskes will work remotely from New York, with the LaCorte News offices based outside San Francisco.
The site is launching at a time when most newsrooms are seeking diversity along all sort of lines: ideological, racial, gender and more. LaCorte said he was not concerned that the backgrounds of his leadership team would keep him from hiring women or otherwise diversifying his staff. He said he’d read everything reported about Oreskes, who he met through Moody, and talked with him before bringing him onto the team. He said he did not feel it necessary to further look into the allegations against him.
“I think that Mike Oreskes is a good man and a great journalist,” LaCorte said. “I am more troubled by this kind of new McCarthyistic era where people are blown out of careers for relatively minor things that might have happened decades ago or being sarcastic in an op-ed. I kind of anticipated that by bringing him aboard, some people might find that to be a good reason to dislike my product, this news service, before it started, but it just seemed like the right thing.”
Drobac said that she was not opposed to hiring people accused of wrongdoing who have demonstrated change but that they needed to be vetted carefully. She added that employers should be deliberate with how they are reintegrated into the workplace: “The question,” she said, “is, how is the company going to monitor this guy?”
LaCorte said he is not worried about any problems with Oreskes. “That’s not a concern,” he said. “If somebody is bothered because decades ago, a guy gave unwanted passes to people, I’m not sure what I would do.”
After public outcry, the United States has granted a visa waiver to a Yemeni woman whose dying son is on life support in the US, the family’s lawyer said on Tuesday.
Shaima Swileh is expected to arrive in California’s Bay Area on Wednesday evening, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Sacramento Valley (CAIR-SV).
“This is the happiest day of my,” said Ali Hassan, Swileh’s husband, an American citizen.
“Just last week I was about to pull him off life support … This will allow us to mourn in dignity,” he said in a statement.
Swileh’s case prompted widespread outrage this week after reports surfaced that the young mother had been waiting for more than a year for a decision on a visa waiver.
Swileh’s visa was rejected last year because of travel restrictions introduced in the so-called the “Muslim ban”, which bars individuals from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the US.
Hassan had previously said that he had requested that the Department of State expedite a decision on Swileh’s waiver so she could say goodbye to their son, Abdullah, who has a rare degenerative brain disease and may not survive much longer.
‘Sham’ process
On Monday, CAIR-SV filed an emergency federal lawsuit on behalf of the family. The suit alleged that the US embassy in Cairo, Egypt, where Swileh lives, purposely delayed a decision on her visa application until the travel ban went into effect. US authorities then told Swileh that she had been denied due to the ban.
“This case is the perfect example of how the waiver process is a sham,” said Jennifer Nimer, one of the family’s attorneys.
“The lawsuit filed yesterday clearly details for the court how the embassy callously ignored over 28 desperate pleas for help from the family over the past year and even the expedite requests filed by the prior attorney which contained medical documentation showing that the child was on the verge of death,” she added in a statement.
“Ms Swileh met all the criteria for a waiver yet they refused to take any action for over a year until public pressure mounted and forced them to take action.”
A spokesman for the State Department told Al Jazeera that the department cannot discuss the details of individual cases, but “makes every effort to facilitate legitimate travel to international visitors”.
Hassan brought Abdullah to the US due to his deteriorating condition [Courtesy of Council on American-Islamic Relations, Sacramento Valley]
Swileh and Hassan met and married in Yemen, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Their son was born in Yemen, nearly two years after the country’s ongoing civil war erupted in 2015.
The conflict has killed tens of thousands and pushed the impoverished country to the verge of famine, prompting the United Nations to call the situation there “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis”. Rights groups and a war monitor have put the death toll at more than 60,000.
Swileh left Yemen for Egypt when Abdullah was eight months old. Hassan met her in Cairo and obtained travel documents for his son from the US embassy, the Chronicle said.
He was forced to leave Swileh and travel to his hometown of Stockton, California, because of Abdullah’s deteriorating condition.
In addition to nationals of Yemen, the most recent version of US President Donald Trump’s travel ban prohibits entry to the US by most people from Iran, Libya, Somalia and Syria. It also affects visitors from North Korea and some travellers from Venezuela.
Rights groups sought to overturn the ban in the US Supreme Court, claiming it was biased against Muslims. But the top court rejected the petition in June.
It’s not uncommon for Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry to pull up from the logo, but he’s not the only one around the league trying to stretch the court.
According to ESPN.com’s Malika Andrews, the Philadelphia 76ers, Atlanta Hawks, Brooklyn Nets, Chicago Bulls and Milwaukee Bucks are among the teams that have practiced with some variation of a “four-point line.”
“We are all thieves,” Philadelphia coach Brett Brown said, per Andrews. “It is a copycat league. I look at it as a compliment that other people value that.”
Atlanta has painted a four-point line five feet behind the three-point line on its practice court. Conveniently, that approach fits the style of 2018 fifth overall pick Trae Young, who stands 6’2″ and 180 pounds.
“I would always try to extend my range farther and farther because I wasn’t getting much taller,” Young told Andrews. “The farther I shoot, people weren’t expecting that.”
Through his first 29 games, Young is shooting just 37.8 percent from the field and 24.1 percent from beyond the arc in his rookie season. But Atlanta’s four-point line isn’t only for shooting. For Hawks coach Lloyd Pierce, today’s NBA is all about spreading out the defense.
“Spacing changes the whole game,” Lloyd said, per Andrews.
The four-point line has helped create space that might not have otherwise been available. Meanwhile, Young is averaging 7.2 assists this season.
Not every four-point line is the same, though. In Milwaukee, Mike Budenholzer has made five boxes out of tape around the arc to help the Bucks with their five-out offense. Having all five players on the perimeter opens up the paint.
As Andrews notes, Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo has taken advantage of these open lanes, leading the league with 55 unassisted dunks. The next-closest player, Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert, has 23.
These days, the four-point line is not just something you see from the Harlem Globetrotters.
It’s becoming a phenomenon around the Association—in various forms.
Teams around the league are pulling up from deep with historically great frequency, and even big men are expected to be able to step out to the perimeter. As a result, spacing is more important than ever before.
Lately, it seems like everyone who passes through BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge feels compelled to cover an Ariana Grande song. In just the past few weeks, The 1975 put a synthy spin on “thank u, next,” while both Mumford & Sons and Alessia Cara turned in their own renditions of “Breathin.” Now, the cover train continues to roll, with Miley Cyrus and Mark Ronson hopping aboard with their string-laden take on Ari’s Sweetener anthem “No Tears Left to Cry.”
Cyrus (on vocals) and Ronson (on guitar) were accompanied by a small string section, and their arrangement nixed the original’s U.K. garage beat in favor of something more soulful. Sure, no one can quite tackle Ari’s vocal gymnastics, but Cyrus’s raspy, lived-in voice gave “No Tears” a stunning emotional edge.
Unsurprisingly, Grande hopped on Twitter to sign off on her pal’s cover, sharing a link to the video and writing, “I love that voice and soul sm.”
Cyrus’s cover choice isn’t all that shocking, considering she and Grande have put on a united front as of late. In the past few days, they’ve supported each other’s latest singles (Ari’s “Imagine” and Miley’s “Happy Xmas“), and even issued a joint “thank u, next” to Kanye West’s recent Twitter drama. It’s just the latest proof that their friendship — which spans their own cover song and a joint performance at last year’s One Love Manchester concert — is as strong as ever.
Meanwhile, Cyrus and Ronson’s Live Lounge appearance also included a performance of their country-disco collab, “Nothing Breaks Like a Heart.” Check that out below.
A US judge fiercely criticised President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn on Tuesday for lying to FBI agents and delayed sentencing to ensure Flynn cooperates fully with an investigation into possible collusion between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.
During the sentencing hearing, US District Judge Emmet Sullivan told the retired lieutenant general that he “arguably” had sold out his country. Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to FBI agents about his conversations with Sergei Kislyak, Russia ambassador to Washington at the time.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller, leading the investigation, had asked the judge not to sentence Flynn to prison because Flynn already had provided “substantial” cooperation to prosecutors over the course of many interviews.
But Sullivan told Flynn his behaviour was abhorrent, noting that Flynn had also lied to White House officials, who in turn lied to the public.
“Arguably, you sold your country out,” Sullivan said. “I’m not hiding my disgust, my disdain for this criminal offence.”
The judge also noted that Flynn was operating as an undeclared lobbyist for Turkey even as he worked on Trump’s election team and prepared to be his national security adviser. He appeared ready to sentence Flynn to prison but then gave him the option of a delay in his sentencing so that he could fully cooperate with any pending investigations. Flynn accepted that offer. Prosecutors said Flynn had already provided most of the cooperation that he could, but it was possible he might be able to help investigators further.
The judge did not set a new date for sentencing but asked Mueller’s team and Flynn’s lawyer to give him a status report by March 13.
Flynn served as a high-profile adviser to Trump’s election campaign team, and at the Republican Party’s national convention in 2016, he led Trump’s supporters in cries of “Lock her up!” directed against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. He became national security adviser when Trump took office in January 2017 but lasted only 24 days before being removed.
He told FBI investigators on January 24, 2017, that he had not discussed US sanctions against Russia with Kislyak, when in fact he had, according to his plea agreement.
Trump has said he fired Flynn because he also lied to Vice President Mike Pence about the contacts with Kislyak. But Trump has said Flynn did not break the law and has voiced support for him, raising speculation the Republican president might pardon him if he is sentenced.
“Good luck today in court to General Michael Flynn. Will be interesting to see what he has to say, despite tremendous pressure being put on him, about Russian Collusion in our great and, obviously, highly successful political campaign. There was no Collusion!” Trump wrote on Twitter on Tuesday morning.
Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election and whether Trump has unlawfully sought to obstruct the probe has cast a shadow over his presidency. A series of former Trump aides have pleaded guilty in Mueller’s probe, but Flynn was the first former official of Trump’s White House to plead guilty.
Trump has called the investigation a “witch-hunt” and has denied collusion with Moscow. Russia has denied meddling in the election, contrary to the conclusion of US intelligence agencies that have said Moscow used hacking and propaganda to try to sow discord in the US and boost Trump’s chances against Clinton.
Several protesters were at the court on Tuesday as Flynn arrived, along with a large inflatable rat.
Lying to the FBI carries a statutory maximum sentence of five years in prison. Flynn’s plea agreement stated that he was eligible for a sentence of between zero and six months.
Former National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 for lying to the FBI during a White House interview just days after the Trump inauguration. | Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
‘You were an unregistered agent of a foreign country while serving as the national security adviser to the president,’ said U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan.
Michael Flynn’s sentencing for lying to the FBI was postponed on Tuesday after a federal judge suggested all sides wait until President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser was finished cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.
The surprise outcome came after an unexpectedly contentious hearing, in which U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan repeatedly admonished Flynn, telling him, “Arguably, you sold your country out.” Flynn had been expected to become the first ex-senior Trump administration official to go to jail as part of Mueller’s wide-ranging investigation into Russian interference in the last presidential election. It now appears that may occur sometime in 2019.
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Flynn pleaded guilty late last year to lying about the subject of conversations he had with high-ranking Russian officials after President Donald Trump won the election, but before he took office.
“All along you were an unregistered agent of a foreign country while serving as the national security adviser to the president of the United States,” Sullivan said at Tuesday’s hearing. “Arguably, that undermines everything that flag over here stands for.”
After about an hour of back and forth with Flynn and his lawyers, as well as Mueller’s team, Sullivan called an abrupt recess to give Flynn and his lawyers more time to reconsider whether they wanted to proceed with the sentencing, indicating he was not always comfortable sentencing those who are still cooperating with authorities.
Sullivan, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, also noted he was not obliged to follow Mueller’s recommendation that Flynn get little or no prison time for pleading guilty.
“This is a very serious offense,” said Sullivan, who noted Flynn’s crime involved a high-ranking official of the government making false statements to the FBI “while on the physical premise of the White House.”
After the recess, Flynn attorney Robert Kelner said they would accept Sullivan’s offer to postpone sentencing so they can “eek” out every drop of cooperation benefit. “We do not take it as a wink-wink, nod-nod,” Kelner said.
“I’m not promising anything,” Sullivan replied.
Kelner noted that Flynn had purposefully remained silent about discussing the Mueller investigation and attempted to draw a contrast with other unnamed people pulled into the probe who have spoken with reporters and lashed out at the Russia probe.
“General Flynn has held noting back, nothing,” Kelner said. “In his extensive cooperation with the special counsel’s office he’s answered every question he’s been asked.”
The Flynn lawyer thanked Mueller’s team for highlighting his client’s cooperation in its sentencing memos and nudged the judge to take into account how it sent a “signal to every other potential cooperator and witness in this investigation.”
“That was consequential,” Kelner said.
Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 for lying to the FBI during a White House interview just days after the Trump inauguration. His crime: not being completely forthcoming regarding conversations he had with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about the Obama administration’s sanctions over Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 election.
On Monday night, Mueller’s team released a redacted FBI readout of its interview with Flynn where he lied, showing that the agents offered reminders to the national security adviser about the subjects he may have discussed with Kislyak, such as sanctions. Releasing the notes was the latest attempt to show the FBI agents acted properly during their sit-down with Flynn.
Sullivan opened Tuesday’s hearing offering Flynn a chance to formally back out of his guilty plea in light of concerns his attorneys had raised in their pre-sentencing memo about whether their client was aware that his January 2017 interview with FBI agents, which took place without a lawyer, could lead to his prosecution for lying.
The judge said he “cannot recall any incident in which the court has accepted a plea of guilty from someone who maintained he was not guilty and I don’t intend to start today.”
Flynn’s lawyers replied that they raised the point only in a bid to distinguish their client’s legal predicament from two other people already sentenced in the Russia probe who did have lawyers present for their FBI interviews: former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and the Dutch attorney Alex Van Der Zwaan.
Papadopoulos was released earlier this month from a federal prison camp after a 14-day sentence, while Van Der Zwaan spent 30 days in prison before being deported.
For his part, Flynn initially said he didn’t want to take Sullivan up on his offer to postpone his sentencing hearing. “I appreciate that, but no your honor,” the former Trump official said.
After striking a plea deal with Mueller’s team, Flynn sat for 19 interviews with Mueller and other government prosecutors. While Mueller’s prosecutors redacted most details about Flynn’s assistance, they noted he provided “firsthand information” on interactions between Trump’s transition team and the Russian government.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Mueller prosecutor Brandon van Grack said “it remains a possibility that Gen. Flynn is continuing to cooperate at this point.”
That prompted Sullivan to take note that he typically doesn’t issue sentences for cooperating witnesses until they’ve finished helping the government. With that, he warned Flynn that he’d be sentenced Tuesday without all of his potential cooperation taken into account.
As he digested the open-ended nature of Flynn’s cooperation, the judge asked Mueller’s prosecutors if Flynn could have been indicted for treason.
“That was not something we were considering at the time, charging the defendant,” van Grack replied.
Pressed again on whether Mueller’s team could have “hypothetically” indicted Flynn on treason charges, van Grack urged caution: “Your honor I want to be careful what I represent, and not having that information in front of me and because it’s such a serious question, I’m hesitant to answer it.”
After the brief recess, Sullivan cautioned observers: “Don’t read too much into the questions I asked. I’m not suggesting he committed treason.”
Flynn’s cooperation did play a role in at least one new round of federal prosecutions, van Grack said.
On Monday, a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia unsealed a grand jury indictment against two of his former business partners who are charged with conspiracy and acting as unregistered foreign government agents for their efforts to get a Turkish cleric extradited from the United States.
Flynn is mentioned nearly 40 times in the indictment unsealed Monday, and van Grack said Flynn could have also been charged in that case. The ex-Trump aide is referred to in the charges as “Person A.” Justice Department policies generally bar naming uncharged individuals by name in an indictment.
Flynn’s attorneys pleaded for no jail time for their client by noting his 33 years of military service, including combat duty for five years. He also spent two years atop the Defense Intelligence Agency during the Obama administration, though that job ended in 2014 after he clashed with the CIA and senior Pentagon officials and shocked some of his colleagues with his increasingly strident views about Muslims.
A registered Democrat, Flynn signed onto Trump’s campaign as an adviser in February 2016 and later saw his stock soar as a potential running mate due to his national security credentials.
Although Trump instead picked then-Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, the Republican’s campaign continued to lean on Flynn and gave him a prime speaking slot during the RNC, where he led a memorable “lock her up chant” about Hillary Clinton.
Flynn’s rise under Trump didn’t come without red flags. President Barack Obama personally warned Trump two days after the 2016 election against hiring Flynn because of his erratic behavior. And Sally Yates, the acting attorney general who served briefly in that role after Trump’s inauguration, also raised concerns to the Trump White House about Flynn’s contacts with the Russian ambassador.
Flynn originally insisted to his administration colleagues that the calls between him and Kislyak were a simple exchange of pleasantries — a line that senior officials used publicly. Ultimately, Trump’s White House fired Flynn in February 2017, days into the administration, for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with the Russian officials.
In his guilty plea, Flynn admitted that his calls with Kislyak included a discussion of the recently imposed sanctions.
Some of Flynn’s allies, including family members, Republican lawmakers and Trump himself, have claimed that the former Trump official was essentially set up by the FBI, arguing the agents urged Flynn to answer questions without a lawyer and intentionally failed to warn him that lying to the FBI was a crime.
But Mueller’s team rebutted those claims by noting the FBI officials followed proper interview protocol, releasing the details notes from bureau agents about the White House sit-down.
Trump fanned the flames of the theories about FBI misconduct, suggesting recently that the FBI never accused Flynn of lying in its probe.
“They gave General Flynn a great deal because they were embarrassed by the way he was treated — the FBI said he didn’t lie and they overrode the FBI. They want to scare everybody into making up stories that are not true by catching them in the smallest of misstatements. Sad!……” the president wrote last Thursday.
Trump’s characterization, however, does not square with the fact both Mueller and Flynn agreed in court that he did lie to the bureau.
Trump’s private comments about the Flynn investigation have also become part of a Mueller probe into whether the president obstructed attempts to investigate Russian interference. According to James Comey, the president pleaded with his then FBI director in February 2017 to go easy on Flynn, an interaction Mueller is now probing.
As he wrapped up the hearing, Sullivan made a quick digression to comment about another high-profile case involving a retired military official: Gen. David Patraeus.
The former CIA director got two years of probation and a $100,000 fine in 2015 after pleading guilty to sharing classified information with a girlfriend and biographer.
“Let me just say this, I probably shouldn’t, I don’t agree with Gen. Patraeus’s sentence,” Sullivan said. “Maybe there were extenuating circumstances. I don’t know. it’s none of my business.”
The judge then quickly added, “That has no impact and I would not take that into consideration on whatever sentence I impose here.”
After running through some housekeeping issues related to the Flynn case, including setting the March 13 date for the next status conference, Sullivan adjourned the hearing with a “happy holidays.”
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