april 1st through september 30th, $4.568 million. what we have got in the last hour is that the mueller investigation has responded to michael flynn s attorneys in making a sentencing recommendation. they have said that flynn did lie to the fbi but they end this by saying the seriousness of the defendant s offense cannot be called into question, and the court should reject his attempt to minimize it while the circumstances of the interviews do not present mitigating circumstances, assuming the defendant continues to accept responsibility for his actions. his cooperation and military service continue to justify a sentence at the low end of the guideline range. i want to thank my colleagues and friends for supporting our coverage of this, this hour. tom winter, glen kershner and former federal prosecutor elizabeth holtzman, attorney and former u.s. congresswoman who voted to impeach richard nixon, joyce vance. daniel goldman, msnbc s legal
guideline range and let flynn go with probation. in doing that, they stumbled into it a little bit. and i think frank is dead on the money when he says that mueller was right to call them on it. it s clear this wasn t some misadventure that flynn stumbled into. the fbi showed up to interview him because he d been making these sorts of statements in the press already and anybody like mike flynn who as the nsa knows when someone tells you that two fbi agents want to show up in your office to talk to you, everybody knows that that s what it s about. if it s a friendly visit, it may be one agent but, frank, correct me if i m wrong. two agents means there s an interview that s going on that has some seriousness. one of those people is there to write the 302, the record of interview. flynn knew what was at stake in this conversation. this is just an effort that backfired a little bit as it came off. frank, it s not go ahead, frank. when he got the call from the
do at their peril because they don t know what else he knows, but it s normally a lot. president trump, as hans indicated, not in the west wing right now, but continues to use his thumbs tweeting a short time ago here, he s talking now, continues to talk about the investigation. this is the president on his former national security adviser. 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 up everybody into making up stories that are not true by catching them in the smallest of misstatements. sad. mr. cevallos, what do we make of the president s communication there? general flynn got what the president calls a great deal because to start with, his sentencing guideline range was already in the zero to six-month category. plus, he cooperated. now, there may be an argument that the deal came early on in the case if the government held back from charging michael flynn w
just punishment. and then they go through previous cases that involved prosecutions of people lying to federal officials, including references to alex van der zwaan who plead guilty in the special counsel s case. also george papadopoulos, who just got out of prison in the similar case. and then this is the end. the nature and extent of general flynn s cooperation. we cannot say it any better than the special counsel s office has. given all the circumstances, 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. general flynn provided timely and substantial assistance to law enforcement. he agreed to a proffer with the special counsel s office upon its first request to speak with him, and with only the scanty protections of a typical department of justice proffer letter. hmm. as the government states, his early decision to plead guilty and cooperate likely affected the decisions of related firsth
proffer sessions with the special counsel s office and 14 additional meetings with the government pursuant to his plea agreement entered on december 21st, 2017. in total, he participated in 19 meetings with the special counsel and other components of the government, totalling approximately 62 hours and 45 minutes, but whose counting. additionally, general flynn has produced thousands of documents to the department of justice, even before his voluntary pre-plea proffer sessions. he had chosen to produce sweeping categories of documents held by his two companies rather than fight over the breadth of subpoenas, and he facilitated the production of electronic devices. a of his plea agreement, he made another five productions of documents. a false statements case with a guideline range of zero to six months on top of which the government has moved for a downward departure presents a particularly strong argument for a noncustodial sentence. throughout the federal court system in fiscal year