The real reason Michael Flynn just fired his lawyers

| 6:34 pm EDT June 6, 2019
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According to a new court filing today, Michael Flynn has fired his criminal defense lawyers and hired a new team. No reason has been given, but in general there are three reasons you’d make this kind of move. Let’s take a look at each of the three, and see if any of them make sense in context of what we already know.

The first reason to fire your lawyers would be that you can’t afford them anymore, so you’re switching to a less pricey legal team. Michael Flynn has spent the past couple years crying poor about his legal fees, and asking the public to fund his criminal defense – but there’s been no recent indication that he’s finally run out of money. So what other possibilities are there?

The second reason to fire your lawyers is that you’re no longer satisfied with the job they’re doing. A lot has happened with Flynn’s criminal case in the past few weeks. Robert Mueller made a court filing which revealed some of Flynn’s cooperation against Donald Trump. The judge responded by demanding that the DOJ release more of the evidence, before backing down. But even with all this sudden controversy, Flynn’s lawyers weren’t even involved in any of it. So there’s no indication that Flynn dumped his legal team because he thinks they’re blowing it for him.

That brings us to the third reason to change lawyers: you’re about to shift legal strategy, and you need new lawyers with a different expertise. Michael Flynn is already knee deep into a cooperating plea deal, and it would be way too late for him to try to get out of it without creating a huge mess for himself. But because Flynn’s testimony and evidence against Donald Trump has been revealed, it’s a given that House Democrats will subpoena Flynn to publicly testify about Trump’s crimes.

Michael Flynn’s performance in front of the television cameras will go a long way toward determining what kind of reputation and public life he’ll have once his criminal proceedings are over. Flynn’s name has been in the headlines for two and a half years, but during that time we’ve never heard from him directly. He’s about to enter the public fray – and perhaps that’s why he’s changing legal teams right now. Either that, or he’s about to make the huge mistake of withdrawing his guilty plea, long after he’s already incriminated himself in a proffer session.