“Far from accepting the consequences of his unlawful actions, he has sought to blame almost every other person and entity involved in his case, including his former counsel,” federal prosecutors wrote in a 33-page memo to U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan. “Most blatantly, the defendant now professes his innocence.”

Prosecutors seemed particularly aggrieved by Flynn’s actions in connection with a criminal case brought against Bijan Rafiekian, his former partner in a lobbying and consulting firm. Prosecutors argued that by shifting his testimony just prior to the trial last summer, Flynn undercut the case, which the government won in front of a jury but later had thrown out by a judge.

“Given the serious nature of the defendant’s offense, his apparent failure to accept responsibility, his failure to complete his cooperation in — and his affirmative efforts to undermine — the prosecution of Bijan Rafiekian, and the need to promote respect for the law and adequately deter such criminal conduct, the government recommends that the court sentence the defendant within the applicable Guidelines range of 0 to 6 months of incarceration,” they wrote.

The tougher line toward Flynn followed what appeared to be protracted behind-the-scenes deliberations at the Justice Department about whether to abandon the lenient stance Mueller’s office took more than a year ago when prosecutors agreed that probation — and no jail time — would be a reasonable sentence for Flynn in light of his extensive cooperation.

The prosecution, handed to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Jessie Liu, last May after the closure of Mueller’s office, was supposed to reveal its final position on Flynn’s sentence in a written filing on Dec. 30.

Shortly before the deadline, however, prosecutors said they needed an extra week to clear the Flynn submission with “multiple individuals and entities” who needed to review it. The prosecution also explicitly raised the prospect that the government might change the position it took in December 2018 when it credited Flynn with “substantial assistance” to investigators and called the 19 interviews he did with prosecutors and FBI agents “particularly valuable.”

Former special counsel Robert Mueller. | Alex Wong/Getty Images

On Saturday, prosecutors told Sullivan they’d be unable to complete the required consultations by the revised, Monday noon deadline and needed another 24-hour extension.

Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec declined to comment Tuesday on what role senior department officials played in discussions about what stance to take on Flynn’s sentence.

Sulllivan granted the government’s requests for more time, but has kept the sentencing hearing set for Jan. 28, despite the recent delays.

Any prison sentence Sullivan imposes could wind up being little more than a formality, since Flynn’s family members are already publicly urging Trump to grant Flynn a pardon that would spare him any time behind bars.

Trump has been publicly noncommittal about a pardon, but has repeatedly expressed sympathy for Flynn. Indeed, one of the conversations that helped fuel the firing of FBI Director James Comey and set in motion Mueller’s appointment was the February 2017 exchange in which Comey claims Trump praised Flynn and urged investigators to go easy on him. Trump denied ever telling Comey to shut down the probe of Flynn. Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani went further, denying the president ever talked to Comey about Flynn.

The withering language prosecutors direct toward Flynn in their latest filing may ultimately be more damaging to him than the change in the government’s sentencing recommendation, which was rather nuanced. As prosecutors dropped their earlier statement that a sentence of probation would be a suitable one, they also omitted previous comments urging the judge to sentence Flynn at “the low end” of the zero-to-six-month range called for by the sentencing guidelines.

The government’s filing on Tuesday does acknowledge one weak point in the argument for a tougher sentence for Flynn: Much, if not all, of prosecutors’ current dismay with the former Trump adviser and retired general is based on actions taken by the new defense team Flynn brought in last June.

Prosecutors pointed to several recent challenges by the defense to the basic premises of Flynn’s plea. Those include a letter that the head of the team — Texas lawyer Sidney Powell, a prominent critic of Mueller’s operation — sent to Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen in June calling the case “worse than entrapment,” and a court filing last October that argued that Comey and his associates “plot[ted] to set up an innocent man and create a crime.”

While it seems unlikely the new attorneys were acting without Flynn’s approval, it’s not clear every step the lawyers took was at his direction, so prosecutors asked Sullivan to question Flynn directly at the sentencing hearing later this month.

“The government asks this Court to inquire of the defendant as to whether he maintains those apparent statements of innocence or whether he disavows them and fully accepts responsibility for his criminal conduct,” prosecutors wrote.

The prosecution’s call for Sullivan to use the hearing to interrogate Flynn about his current view of the acts he pleaded guilty to promises to heighten the drama surrounding the session.

While prosecutors stopped short of arguing that Flynn’s recent actions amount to a breach of his plea agreement, it is not beyond possibility that Sullivan could upend Flynn’s guilty plea altogether. At the first sentencing hearing in 2018, the judge made clear he would not proceed if Flynn was wavering about his guilt.

“I cannot recall any incident in which the court has ever accepted a plea of guilty from someone who maintained that he was not guilty, and I don’t intend to start today,” Sullivan said then.

Flynn was fired just 23 days into his tenure as national security adviser and began cooperating with Mueller’s investigation several months later. Trump said he fired him because Flynn had given Vice President Mike Pence inaccurate information about his dealings with Russia during the transition, prompting Pence to issue false denials on the point.

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Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to a charge of making false statements to the FBI, but he admitted — or appeared to admit to — several acts of deceit, including lying to FBI agents about his conversations with the Russian ambassador on the issue of U.S. sanctions and with various diplomats about a United Nations resolution condemning Israeli settlement activity.

Flynn also acknowledged submitting false and misleading information to the Justice Department about his advocacy for Turkish interests during the 2016 presidential campaign.

However, under a plea deal that Flynn’s attorneys at the time, Robert Kelner and Stephen Anthony, hammered out with prosecutors for Mueller, Flynn pleaded guilty to just a single count of false statements. Prosecutors agreed not to file other charges if Flynn fully cooperated with the Mueller probe and other ongoing investigations.

The deal contemplated a sentence of between zero and six months for Flynn, leaving open the possibility he might escape jail time altogether. However, his ultimate sentence is in the hands of the judge, and the false-statement charge carries a maximum possible sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

At the initial sentencing hearing in December 2018, Sullivan — a Clinton appointee — took a strident tone with Flynn, prompting speculation that Flynn might face a prison sentence and not the one year of probation his defense lawyers were recommending.

“Arguably, you sold your country out,” the judge declared, drawing gasps and head shakes from members of Flynn’s family sitting in the courtroom.

Sullivan even asked Mueller prosecutor Brandon Van Grack a couple of times whether the special counsel considered charging Flynn with treason.

“That was not something that we were considering, in terms of charging the defendant,” van Grack replied.

After a recess, Sullivan seemed to say he’d overstepped in suggesting Flynn’s behavior was treasonous. “I wasn’t suggesting he’s committed treason,” the judge said.

But the Sullivan’s unforgiving tone prompted Flynn’s lawyers to take him up on an offer to postpone the sentencing until Flynn could cooperate further with prosecutors by testifying at a planned trial of Rafiekian.

Prosecutors dropped plans to call Flynn as a witness in that case after Flynn parted ways with Kelner and Anthony last June and signed up his new legal team. Trump publicly hailed Flynn’s change of attorneys, but the relationship between his defense and prosecutors quickly soured.

Powell told government lawyers that if Flynn testified, he planned to say he did not deliberately lie about the Turkish lobbying project, but was guilty only of failing to adequately read the relevant filings before signing them. Prosecutors said the claim was a retreat from admissions Flynn made when pleading guilty and reaffirmed a year later.

Powell also mounted a more direct attack on the Flynn prosecution, demanding nearly 50 categories of records she said would help make the case that the retired Army general was railroaded into a guilty plea by corrupt FBI agents and prosecutors working with Flynn’s former lawyers. Powell said she planned to use the information to prepare a legal motion claiming the case against Flynn should be dismissed on grounds of outrageous government conduct.

Last month, Sullivan turned down every one of Powell’s discovery requests, saying that the information wasn’t helpful to Flynn or was already in his possession. Flynn’s defense has yet to file the dismissal motion they advertised.

The sentencing submission from prosecutors on Tuesday was accompanied by about 140 pages of exhibits and other documents painting Flynn in an unfavorable light, including secret grand jury testimony he gave in June 2018. That testimony appears to show Flynn admitting he lied to his own attorney by denying that an election-day op-ed in 2016 had anything to do with the Turkey-related lobbying project Flynn’s consulting firm was embarked upon.

The records also include FBI reports showing that Flynn’s son Michael Jr. delivered information and data from the consulting firm to the firm’s lawyers on several occasions as they were preparing foreign-agent filings that prosecutors say were untruthful. It is unclear from the documents whether Michael Flynn Jr. was familiar with the contents of the materials or was simply acting as a courier.

The younger Flynn was never charged, but Powell has argued that the decision by the retired general and Defense Intelligence Agency chief to plead guilty in 2017 was driven in part by concerns about his son being targeted by prosecutors.