Judge delays sentencing Flynn after rebuke: 'Arguably, you sold your country out!' originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

Michael Flynn's defense attorney asked a federal judge to delay sentencing after the judge unleashed a blistering attack on the former Trump adviser's conduct.

Judge Emmet Sullivan, a veteran of the bench who received his judicial appointments from Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, admonished Flynn at a hearing on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., for lying to the FBI, which he said was made worse because of where it occurred.

"In the White House! In the West Wing. By a high ranking security officer who up to that point had an unblemished career of service to his country,” the judge said. “It's a very serious offense. ... Arguably, this undermines everything this flag over here stands for! Arguably, you sold your country out!"

The judge agreed to the postponement and set the next status report for March.

The judge’s comments appeared to be a reversal of fortune for the man who spent months campaigning for Trump and served briefly as Trump’s national security adviser.

Prosecutors had asked for leniency – no jail time – in sentencing Flynn because he had cooperated extensively with the Special Counsel Robert Mueller's ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

"We believe that he has accepted responsibility -- not just his statements to the court today but throughout the proceedings," said Brandon L. Van Grack, a prosecutor from Mueller's office.

Flanked by his wife, and supported by his son and several of his eight siblings, Flynn responded methodically to the judge’s questions, declining to reverse his guilty plea or argue that he lied as a result of coercion by the FBI.

PHOTO: This courtroom sketch depicts President Donald Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn, standing center, flanked by his lawyers, listening to U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, right in Washington D.C., Dec. 18, 2018. (Dana Verkouteren via AP) More

But the judge’s comments substantially changed the mood in the courtroom -- especially when he began to question prosecutors about whether they ever considered a charge of treason -- which appeared to stem from his concern about Flynn's work on behalf of the Turkish government until just days before Trump identified him as the man who would serve as his first national security adviser.

“Is there an opinion about the conduct of the defendant that rises to treasonous on the defendants part?” the judge asked Van Grack, who said the special counsel had not considered leveling that charge. “Hypothetically could he have been charged with treason?” the judge asked again.

Van Grack replied that it was “such a serious question I'm hesitant to answer it.”

After a brief recess, the judge walked-back the incendiary question, saying "I wasn't suggesting he committed treason!"

"There are a lot of conspiracy theorists out there. I am not taking the elements of any of the uncharged offenses under consideration at the time of sentencing,” he said.

Flynn had done lobbying work between August and November 2016 for Turkey that, according to Justice Department filings, “could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.” Flynn’s company, the Flynn Intel Group, was paid at least $530,000 for the work, and the contract ended on November 15, just three days before Trump named Flynn as the man he wanted to take on the top White House post.

It has been more than a year after he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States and agreed to cooperate with Mueller's probe.

He faces up to six months in prison, but in a sentencing memo filed last week, Mueller told the judge that Flynn had provided investigators with "substantial assistance" in more than a dozen interviews, and that because he flipped early, "a sentence at the low end of the guideline range -- including a sentence that does not impose a term of incarceration -- is appropriate and warranted."

But last-minute intrigue was thrown into what was anticipated to be a cut-and-dry sentencing process Monday evening when the government filed the FBI's formerly secret internal report based on two investigators' interview with Flynn on Jan. 24, 2017.

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