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A federal judge said there would be a July date after defense lawyers for Bijan Kian complained that the process of turning over investigative records to the defense has stalled for more than a month. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo Judge firm on July trial for Flynn partner Kian

A federal judge said Friday he’s committed to launching a trial in July for one of the cases springing from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation: the prosecution of Bijan Kian, a business partner of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

“We’re going to keep our July 15 trial date,” U.S. District Court Judge Anthony Trenga said emphatically during a brief hearing Friday morning in Alexandria, Virginia. “Proceed in confidence that we will be going to trial on July 15.”

Trenga made the comment after defense lawyers for Kian complained that the process of turning over investigative records to the defense has stalled for more than a month.

“We have made basically no progress since March 15,” defense attorney Stacy Mitchell told the judge.

Kian, who also goes by the name Rafiekian, was indicted in December on two federal felony charges stemming from work he allegedly did with Flynn as an unregistered foreign agent for Turkey.

The indictment says the scheme, which played out as Flynn was a top adviser to the Trump presidential campaign, involved lobbying on behalf of Turkish officials seeking to gain custody of a dissident cleric, Fethullah Gulen, who has been in exile in the U.S. for decades.

Flynn was not charged in the case, but admitted to part of the scheme publicly in 2017 when he pleaded guilty to a false-statement charge brought by Mueller’s office. As part of the plea deal, he agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

Flynn’s sentencing in the other case has been postponed to allow him to testify at Kian’s trial, where he is expected to be the government’s star witness.

However, the breadth of Flynn’s cooperation with prosecutors — and a series of false statements Kian’s defense wants to use to undercut the fired Trump national security adviser’s expected testimony — have complicated the effort to prepare for Kian’s trial.

“This has been a very complicated discovery case — one of the most difficult I’ve experienced,” prosecutor James Gillis told Trenga. He said producing the records to the defense — including statements Flynn made to investigators handling a wide variety of probes — has required consultation with “seven different agencies outside the Department of Justice, including parts of the United States intelligence community.”

“It’s just taken some time that’s been out of the prosecution team’s hands,” Gillis added.

Declaring that Flynn’s statements will be central to the case, Mitchell took another opportunity to note publicly that Flynn had lied in the course of the Trump-Russia investigation, including to Vice President Michael Pence — a move that led President Donald Trump to fire Flynn after just 24 days at the White House.

“This is an unusual case. This is an unusual witness,” she said.

Trenga also heard a bit more Monday about a dispute between the law firm, Covington & Burling, and Kian’s defense over access to records the firm gathered and created while representing Flynn and the company Flynn and Kian founded, Flynn Intelligence Group. The judge previously rejected the firm’s efforts to resist part of a subpoena Flynn’s defense issued for the firm’s case file.

Covington attorney Daniel Johnson said the firm needs another couple of weeks to turn over the records. He also said the firm wants the files protected from public disclosure or to prosecutors, at least without a court order.

Kian lawyer Mark MacDougall said that was acceptable to the defense, but that Kian’s team opposes an order precluding them from being used at trial, in part because Covington lawyers who worked on a Foreign Agents Registration Act filing Flynn’s firm submitted in March 2017 are going to be called to testify in Kian’s case.

“Covington partners are clearly going to be witnesses, if not by the government, called by the defense as hostile witnesses,” MacDougall said.

Trenga ordered that the information be turned over confidentially for now, while he considers how the records will be treated at trial.