The counsel representing former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn laid out a series of reasons in a letter in late August as to why her client will not testify or submit more documentation to Chairman Adam Schiff’s House Intelligence Committee’s ongoing investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential elections.

The letter obtained by SaraACarter.com reveals the extent of cooperation Flynn has already given to the committee, which Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell said “is so unreasonable and unethical, we are copying Chairman Schiff and Ranking Member Nunes. Perhaps the Committee will decide to exercise better judgment.”

“Your demand that he appear at a hearing merely to assert the privilege against self-incrimination is transparently pure harassment, because it cannot achieve any legitimate congressional purpose,” said Powell in a letter to Schiff sent on Aug. 22.

What prompted Schiff’s tantrum at Powell recently?

Apparently it was Powell’s letter. He lashed back at Powell’s letter this week in a letter of his own.

“Notwithstanding repeated efforts by committee staff to engage with your counsel and accommodate your adjournment requests, you have, to date, failed to comply with the committee’s subpoena or cooperate with the committee’s efforts to secure your compliance,” he said in his letter to Powell.

Schiff also said Flynn does not have sufficient grounds to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights. The “Fifth Amendment privilege must be invoked in response to specific questions or topics that might tend to incriminate you if answered truthfully,” said Schiff.

“Your counsel’s blanket invocation of the Fifth Amendment … is, therefore, inadequate,” Schiff said.

Flynn’s Right To Invoke Fifth Amendment

But Powell’s letter tells a fuller story as to why Flynn is invoking his Fifth Amendment privilege.

“As far as testimony is concerned, we have already informed you that at our insistence, Mr. Flynn will assert his Fifth Amendment privilege and will not answer any questions,” she states. “He remains, after all, a defendant in a criminal prosecution that has not been concluded. We attach the docket entry from Judge Sullivan dated yesterday.”

Flynn has cooperated fully and provided the committee with substantial documentation and information, said Powell.

“With respect to further document production, you know at least as well as we do that Mr. Flynn has already provided large caches of documents to several congressional committees, including the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that you serve,” the letter states.

She noted that over the past several years Flynn “has responded to multiple subpoenas and produced thousands of pages of documents on behalf of himself and his former business the Flynn Intel Group (FIG).”

Further, Powell said that the process has been “extraordinarily time consuming and financially exhausting. (Flynn Intel Group) is no longer in business. It ended in late 2016.”

Flynn “cooperated fully with the Special Counsel investigation, spending countless hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars over two years to assist the government. He does not have the resources to comply with yet more open-ended congressional fishing expeditions,” she told the House Intelligence Committee.

“Moreover, the Department of Justice took possession of all his electronics and files,” she added in the letter.