Lawyers for Donald Trump believe the former national security adviser Michael Flynn is on the verge of “flipping” and cooperating with investigators into the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia, according to reports.

Flynn’s legal team has cut off communications with the president’s lawyers, the strongest signal yet that he is negotiating a deal with with the special counsel in the investigation, Robert Mueller, the New York Times said.

The retired three-star general, who championed Trump at campaign rallies and advocated closer ties with Russia, is a central figure in Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump aides coordinated with Moscow to boost his 2016 presidential campaign. US intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia interfered to help defeat Hillary Clinton by hacking and releasing emails and flooding social media with propaganda.

Last month, Mueller announced his first charges in the case, with the indictments of Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and Manafort’s business associate Rick Gates and the guilty plea of George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser.

Papadopoulos has been cooperating with Mueller’s investigators and, it has been speculated, may have worn a wire to collect evidence. Flynn, however, would be a star witness for the special counsel.

His lawyers notified Trump’s legal team in recent days that they could no longer discuss Mueller’s investigation, the New York Times said, citing four unnamed people involved in the case. “Flynn’s lawyers had been sharing information with Mr Trump’s lawyers,” the paper wrote. “That agreement has been terminated.”



Although this alone is not proof that Flynn has turned state witness, the development has led Trump’s lawyers to conclude that Flynn has at least begun discussions with Mueller about cooperating, according to the Times.

In major criminal investigations, defence lawyers routinely share information with each other, but it can become unethical to continue if one of the potential targets is looking to negotiate a deal with prosecutors.

Quick Guide What you need to know about the Trump-Russia inquiry Show How serious are the allegations? The story of Donald Trump and Russia comes down to this: a sitting president or his campaign is suspected of having coordinated with a foreign country to manipulate a US election. The story could not be bigger, and the stakes for Trump – and the country – could not be higher. What are the key questions? Investigators are asking two basic questions: did Trump’s presidential campaign collude at any level with Russian operatives to sway the 2016 US presidential election? And did Trump or others break the law to throw investigators off the trail? What does the country think? While a majority of the American public now believes that Russia tried to disrupt the US election, opinions about Trump campaign involvement tend to split along partisan lines: 73% of Republicans, but only 13% of Democrats, believe Trump did “nothing wrong” in his dealings with Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. What are the implications for Trump? The affair has the potential to eject Trump from office. Experienced legal observers believe that prosecutors are investigating whether Trump committed an obstruction of justice. Both Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton – the only presidents to face impeachment proceedings in the last century – were accused of obstruction of justice. But Trump’s fate is probably up to the voters. Even if strong evidence of wrongdoing by him or his cohort emerged, a Republican congressional majority would probably block any action to remove him from office. (Such an action would be a historical rarity.) What has happened so far? Former foreign policy adviser George Papadopolous pleaded guilty to perjury over his contacts with Russians linked to the Kremlin, and the president’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and another aide face charges of money laundering. When will the inquiry come to an end? The investigations have an open timeline.

Flynn would offer a critical insight into the workings of the Trump campaign and the chaotic start of the administration. James Comey, the FBI director fired by Trump in May, has claimed the president urged him to end an investigation into Flynn during a private Oval Office meeting in February.

Matthew Miller, a partner at the strategic advisory firm Vianovo and former public affairs director at the justice department, said: “I don’t think we know yet whether he’s cooperating. He’s almost certainly negotiating with Mueller, though. There would be no other reason for the lawyers to stop communicating.”

As a longtime campaign aide who travelled with Trump, Flynn could offer evidence as to whether any illegal contacts took place and whether the candidate himself was aware of them, Miller added, though he said: “But we have not seen any evidence yet that the president knew about it.”

Perhaps more critically, Miller said, “Flynn is at the centre of the obstruction of justice piece of the investigation, which impacts on the president directly.

“If you go back to Watergate, it was really John Dean [former Nixon White House counsel] deciding to cooperate with prosecutors that led directly to implicating the president himself. You need a star witness in these cases and Michael Flynn would certainly be that.”

Flynn – who sat with Vladimir Putin at a 2015 event in Moscow – served 24 days as Trump’s national security adviser but was forced to resign after it was discovered he had misrepresented his contacts with the Russian ambassador to Vice-President Mike Pence.

He was interviewed by the FBI in January about his communications with the ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. The deputy attorney general at the time, Sally Yates, soon advised White House officials that their public assertions that Flynn had not discussed sanctions with Kislyak were incorrect and that Flynn was therefore in a compromised position.

In addition, Mueller has been investigating the retired general’s role in $530,000 worth of lobbying work his now defunct firm performed for a Turkish businessman during the final months of the 2016 campaign. The lobbying campaign sought to gather derogatory information on Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish cleric and green-card holder living in Pennsylvania. It was also reported this month that Flynn was being investigated regarding an alleged plot to kidnap Gülen and deliver him to Turkey.



Trump’s first campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, denied on Friday that the latest development brought Trump himself closer to a day of reckoning.

“This is a narrative that the mainstream media wants to perpetuate the last year,” he told Fox News. “The bottom line is, if Michael Flynn did something wrong by not disclosing the relationships he had with Turkey and other governments, then he should be held accountable for that.”

Lewandowski added: “There is no liability to the president, because he didn’t collude, cooperate, or coordinate with Russia in any way or form.”

FBI agents have also been scrutinising Flynn’s business partner, Bijan Kian, who served on Trump’s presidential transition, and his son, Michael Flynn Jr, who worked for his father as part of the lobbying campaign. Flynn Jr was a near constant presence during the campaign and presidential transition period.



On Friday, Flynn Jr tweeted an image of the actor Tracy Morgan with the caption: “Everybody calm down.” He also took a swipe at MSNBC for replaying an old interview in which his father pointedly refused to criticise Putin and posted a quote attributed to George Earle Buckle, a 19th-century editor of Britain’s Times newspaper: “In practical life the wisest and soundest people avoid speculation.”

The White House has claimed Flynn does not have incriminating information to provide about Trump. Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer, told the New York Times last month that Trump “likes Gen Flynn personally, but understands that they have their own path with the special counsel. I think he would be sad for them, as a friend and a former colleague, if the process results in punishment or indictments. But to the extent that that happens, that’s beyond his control.”

Along with Mueller, two congressional committees are investigating links between the Trump campaign and Russia. A June 2016 meeting that Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner and others held in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer is under scrutiny. It also recently emerged that Trump Jr was messaging with WikiLeaks, which leaked emails from top Democratic officials during the campaign.