Michael Flynn is awaiting sentencing in his case, and the next joint status report from his lawyers and the Justice Department is due June 14. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images legal Judge OK without public release of Flynn-Kislyak transcript

A federal judge reversed course on Tuesday and absolved the Justice Department of a demand to make public transcripts of recorded phone calls between former national security adviser Michael Flynn and a Russian official.

In a one-paragraph order, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan said he accepted the argument recently made from federal prosecutors who defied his earlier request to release any recordings from December 2016 between Flynn and Sergey Kislyak, who at the time was the Russian ambassador to the U.S.


Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 for lying to the FBI about his conversations with Kislyak, and the general contours of what they discussed are described in the redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report released in May. That includes Flynn asking for Russia not to escalate tensions between the two countries after the outgoing Obama administration-imposed sanctions for Kremlin-orchestrated interference in the 2016 election.

But a full transcript of the Flynn-Kislyak calls remains under wraps, and Sullivan last month ordered Mueller’s prosecutors to place the material on the public docket. The judge, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, also asked for the public release of an unredacted version of the Mueller report with any other blacked-out information tied to the Flynn case.

Last Friday, federal prosecutors declined to release the Flynn-Kislyak transcripts, arguing that the government “is not relying on any other recordings, of any person, for purposes of establishing the defendant’s guilt or determining his sentencing, nor are there any other recordings that are part of the sentencing record.”

The Justice Department prosecutors also said in their filing to Sullivan that all of the material related to Flynn that he’d provided to Mueller as part of his cooperation agreement had been unredacted, as well as information in the final report that others provided about Flynn. The government attorneys explained that “limited” redactions do remain in the Mueller report tied to its sourcing of information, including references to grand jury subpoenas.

Flynn is awaiting sentencing in his case, and the next joint status report from his lawyers and the Justice Department is due June 14.