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Flynn Requests Travel Area Expanded to Rhode Island

Facing new travel restrictions now that his sentencing date has been delayed indefinitely, convicted former Trump official Michael Flynn asked a federal judge Wednesday to expand his travel radius.

WASHINGTON (CN) - Facing new travel restrictions now that his sentencing date has been delayed indefinitely, convicted former Trump official Michael Flynn asked a federal judge Wednesday to expand his travel radius.

U.S. District Judge Emmett Sullivan ordered the travel restrictions just over a week ago after a tense hearing where Flynn was read the riot act instead of getting the sentence of probation that seemed a given until that point. 

“Arguably you sold your country out,” Sullivan told the former general, whom President Donald Trump had made his top national-security adviser. “The court’s going to consider all that. I cannot assure you that if you proceed today you will not receive a sentence of incarceration.”

Sullivan ordered Flynn to turn over his passport and stay within 50 miles of Washington, D.C., pending sentencing, but Flynn noted Wednesday that this would otherwise interfere with his regular visits to Middletown, Rhode Island, where he and his wife have owned a home since 2005.

Attorneys at the firm Covington & Burling said that the Special Prosecutor’s Office has not lodged any objection to stay within a specified radius either in the District of Columbia or Middletown.

Apart from the Rhode Island property, the Flynns previously owned a home, and now rent an apartment, in Alexandria, Virginia. 

“For defendant’s circumstances a 20-mile radius from D.C. and a 40-mile radius from Middletown would be sufficient to enable defendant to get to the nearest airports and take direct flights between those two locations,” the motion states.

Judge Sullivan had scheduled the travel restrictions for Flynn to take effect on Jan. 4. A year earlier, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, but details of his crimes are still emerging.

Just ahead of Flynn’s aborted sentencing hearing last week, an indictment unsealed Monday in the Eastern District of Virginia says Flynn’s consultancy accepted lucrative contracts from Turkey to secretly lobby here on that government’s behalf.

The indictment details a $600,000 contract Flynn Intel accepted from the shell company, Inovo BV, whose trade group is controlled by the Turkish government, to make “criminal referrals” against Fethullah Gulen, a political enemy of Turkish President Recep Erdogan.

Flynn’s attorney Robert Kelner indicated that Flynn could testify in those proceedings against his former associate Bijan Kian. The Monday indictment also leveled charges against Ekim Alptekin, a Turkish national who is believed to still be at large in Istanbul.

Gulen, a cleric and U.S. green card holder, has been living in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania for over a decade. He denies Erdogan’s allegations that he orchestrated an attempted coup of Erdogan’s government in 2016, and the United States has refused requests by Turkey to have Gulen extradited.

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Categories / Criminal, Government, Politics

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