That prompted prosecutors to scrap Mr. Flynn as a witness, a seeming blow to their case against Mr. Kian, who had faced up to 15 years in prison. But they were dismissive of Mr. Flynn’s move, saying in a court filing that they had plenty of evidence to convict Mr. Kian.
His new position could anger the judge overseeing his case, Emmet G. Sullivan of the United States District Court in Washington. Judge Sullivan erupted at Mr. Flynn earlier for what seemed like a failure to take responsibility for his crimes.
Mr. Flynn has likely put himself on a collision course with Judge Sullivan, fueling speculation that Mr. Flynn believes that President Trump, who has publicly expressed sympathy for his case, will pardon him. But putting his fate in the hands of a mercurial president would be a risky, if not reckless, course by Mr. Flynn, who faces up to six months in prison.
Mr. Flynn’s fired his previous lawyers in June, partially blaming them for his legal troubles. He hired a new lawyer, Sidney Powell, who has pushed conspiracy theories about the special counsel’s investigation and sells anti-Mueller T-shirts on her website. During the trial, she sat behind Mr. Kian’s defense, occasionally passing notes to his lawyers.
Mr. Kian was indicted in December, along with another man, Ekim Alptekin, as part of a federal investigation into Turkey’s secret 2016 lobbying campaign to pressure the United States to expel Fethullah Gulen, a rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Prosecutors accused the two men of seeking to conceal that Turkish government officials were directing the project, saying that high-level Turkish officials approved the budget and Mr. Alptekin regularly updated them. Mr. Flynn’s firm, Flynn Intel Group, received a total of $530,000 for its work on the effort. At trial, prosecutors said that project was “single-mindedly focused on dirtying up Gulen, portraying him as a terrorist and a fraud and getting him extradited.”