Flynn had $4.6M unpaid legal tab, records show
Michael Flynn built up unpaid legal bills of more than $4.6 million during the Trump-Russia investigation before parting ways with his attorneys last month, according to records introduced at a federal court trial this week.
Law firm Covington & Burling appears to have billed Flynn about $5 million after he became a client in early 2017, when his lobbying and consulting work came under Justice Department scrutiny.
Covington partners Robert Kelner and Stephen Anthony initially helped the retired Army lieutenant general and his consulting firm, Flynn Intel Group, navigate a Justice Department inquiry into the firm’s work on Turkey-related issues.
After Flynn’s statements about contacts with the Russian ambassador became a focus of the FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, the white-collar lawyers negotiated a deal with prosecutors in which Flynn agreed to plead guilty to a single felony count of lyingstatements to investigators in December 2017.
Flynn admitted to providing inaccurate information about several topics, and the deal limited his criminal exposure to the single charge in exchange for his cooperation. It also offered the prospect of no jail time if prosecutors deemed his cooperation to be fulsome.
The law firm invoices were introduced by defense lawyers Tuesday as Kelner testified at a criminal trial in Alexandria, Va., federal court for Flynn’s former business partner, Bijan Rafiekian, who is also know as Bijan Kian.
The invoices are unclear about how much of the overall legal bill Flynn has paid, but they appear to show a $1.8 million tab pertaining to the Justice Department’s Foreign Agent Registration Act inquiry into Flynn Intel Group’s work. The billing records, printed in April, show the law firm credited less than $25,000 in payments toward that $1.8 million total — or under 2 percent.
Kelner indicated during his testimony Tuesday that billing related to the criminal investigation of Flynn over his statements to the FBI was tallied separately from the “regulatory advice.”
The billing documents introduced in court pertain solely to that advice, but show an accounts receivable amount from Flynn of $4,678,999.72.
“Some of our bills are unpaid,” Kelner said on the witness stand Tuesday. He said he billed at an hourly rate of $960 at the time, but now charges $1,160. Anthony billed at $995 an hour.
Kelner declined to comment Thursday, citing an order from the judge not to discuss his testimony.
Rafiekian’s attorneys introduced the bills in an effort to show the scope of the effort Covington made to gather information about Flynn Intel Group’s work in advance of a retroactive FARA filing Flynn’s firm made in March 2017.
The filing said that even though firm officials believed the client for its Turkey-related work was a Dutch company owned by a Turkish businessman, the work could have been viewed as primarily benefiting the Turkish government so a FARA filing may have been appropriate. The Flynn firm previously filed a less-detailed disclosure with Congress portraying the lobbying as a strictly commercial matter.
Prosecutors contend Rafiekian withheld important information from the Covington lawyers about the involvement of senior Turkish officials in approving the $600,000 lobbying project and also misled the attorneys about payments related to the assignment.
Rafiekian’s lawyers contend Covington attorneys had nearly all of the relevant facts in their possession in March 2017, so Rafiekian could not be responsible for any inaccuracies or omissions in the FARA filing.
The newly disclosed billing records appear to confirm an ABC News report in March that Flynn had incurred about $5 million in legal fees. The report was attributed to a source close to Flynn, who has a legal defense fund set up to accept donations.
Flynn, who is awaiting sentencing on the false-statement charge, switched attorneys last month. No public explanation was offered for the shift, but his new lead lawyer, Dallas-based former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell, has been a strident public critic of the Mueller investigation.
Darren Samuelsohn contributed to this report.
