President Trump’s onetime attorney asked Michael Flynn’s lawyer for a “heads up” if the former national security adviser intended to give Special Counsel Robert Mueller information damaging to the commander-in-chief, according to a transcript of a voicemail released on Friday.
In the phone call made in November 2017, John Dowd said the president was compassionate to Flynn, whose legal team had just severed a joint representation deal with Trump’s attorneys. Flynn proceeded to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interfering in the 2016 presidential election.
According to the transcript, “I understand that you can’t join the joint defense; so that’s one thing. If, on the other hand, we have, there’s information that … implicates the president, then we’ve got a national security issue, or maybe a national security issue, I don’t know … some issue, we got to deal with, not only for the president, but for the country. So … uh … you know, then-then, you know, we need some kind of heads-up,” Dowd said.
Federal prosecutors released the transcript in a court filing. Flynn, who pleaded guilty last year to lying to federal investigators about contacts with Russians and is awaiting sentencing, said the call was an attempt to block his cooperation with Mueller’s probe.
Dowd, who also said on the voicemail that Trump’s warm feelings toward Flynn “still remain,” resigned as Trump’s lead attorney in March 2018. On Friday, He denied that the voicemail was a bid to obstruct Flynn’s cooperation.
“During the joint defense relationship, counsel for the president provided to Flynn’s counsel documents, advice and encouragement to provide to SC [the special counsel] as part of his effort to cooperate with the SC,” Dowd said in a statement. “SC never raised or questioned the president’s counsel about these allegations despite numerous opportunities to do so.”
The voicemail is believed to be the one referenced in the Mueller report and was directed to Flynn’s attorney, Rob Kelner. It was left the same day Flynn left the joint agreement with Trump’s legal team, a sign that he was going to cooperate with prosecutors.
In a related development, the Justice Department resisted Judge Emmett Sullivan’s order to produce transcripts of Flynn’s calls with Russian officials, including former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Flynn later admitted that he lied to investigators about his communications with Kislyak.
Prosecutors said they didn’t have to submit those transcripts because it is not part of his sentencing record.
“The government further represents that it is not relying on any other recordings, of any person, for purposes of establishing the defendant’s guilty or determining his sentence, nor are there other recordings that are part of the sentencing record,” The prosecutors wrote.