• Pentagon: Turkish pilots grounded from F-35 training in retaliation for Ankara's refusal to ditch S-400
• Still whining: US to stop training Turkish F-35 pilots, gives deadline to cancel S-400 deal

While Flynn may still be planning to cooperate with prosecutors, his choice of Powell suggests he may be taking a more combative posture as he waits to be sentenced. Powell, who has had appearances on Fox News, has been highly critical of special counsel Robert Mueller and the other Justice Department officials involved in the Russia investigation.

Powell, who claims to be an advisor for the pro-Trump group America First, has previously accused Mueller of obstructing justice and of withholding evidence that would exonerate Flynn.

"I'd bet he will realize later he needs new lawyers," she tweeted in March.
[...]
Legal experts have said it would be "suicidal" for Flynn to escalate any attacks on the FBI while he awaits his sentence. Yet he has hired a lawyer who has done just that, in punditry on Twitter and on television.

As recently as this month, she called Mueller "divisive" and said he shouldn't have been appointed.

In February, she claimed that the "entire Russia collusion narrative was made up" and that "the FBI and the intelligence community and the Department of Justice began an investigation against four American citizens simply because they worked for the opposition political candidate, that being Donald Trump.

Her anti-Mueller punditry once was touted by Trump on Twitter.

Her website calls the tweet an "endorsement."

Her commentary has focused specifically on Flynn's case and claims that he did not commit the crimes he pleaded guilty to.

"Like many others, including a disproportionate number of young minority men who have no resources whatsoever, that does not mean that he did anything wrong," she wrote in December. "All it means is that he - like so many others - saw no other way out."

She also called Flynn "the quintessential example of why the innocent plead guilty" and last year, she recommended that Flynn withdraw his guilty plea.

Powell is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, an obscure right-wing foreign policy think tank founded by the late Herbert London, a former president of the Hudson Institute and father of the stylist and television personality Stacy London.

The London Center fellows and its founder, the Daily Beast reported in 2017, "call for a foreign policy stance somewhere between the neoconservative interventionist tendencies of the Bush administration and non-interventionist backlash to that led by Rand Paul and others."

Powell describes herself on her website as "a former partner in a large regional firm" who has served as "lead counsel in more than 500 appeals" in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. She received her law degree from University of North Carolina School of Law - Chapel Hill, and worked as a federal prosecutor in the late 1970s and 1980s in Virginia and Texas.

Her biography touts her work on a $3 billion national class action against Fibreboard Corporation as well as representation of "judges, lawyers, and a prominent Merril [sic] Lynch executive in the Enron litigation."

She recently was also involved briefly on the Steve Stockman case, where the former Texas congressman was convicted for his misuse of funds donated to non-profits he oversaw for personal and campaign-related purposes. Powell represented Stockman pro-bono after his conviction as he sought his release from prison while his appeal was pending.

Powell claimed that it was "highly likely" that the Justice Department "targeted former Congressman Stockman and have been extremely and unreasonably harsh toward him because he was so outspoken in trying to hold Lois Lerner, the Clintons, and Obama accountable."

Russia has initiated an agreement on the full cessation of hostilities in the Idlib de-escalation zone in Syria, the Russian Center for Syrian reconciliation said on Wednesday in a statement.

"At Russia's initiative and under the Russian and Turkish mediation, an agreement on the full cessation of hostilities across the entire Idllib de-escalation zone starting from the midnight of June 12, 2019 [21:00 GMT on June 11], has been reached, As a result, the number of attacks of illegal armed groups has significantly decreased ... The Syrian government troops have not opened retaliatory fire [after two attacks in the province of Hama], respecting the reached agreements," the statement said.

Russia and Turkey, along with Iran, are guarantors of the ceasefire in Syria. Moscow has also been assisting Damascus by supporting the struggle against terrorist groups, providing humanitarian aid to local residents, and facilitating the return of refugees.

Julian Assange's extradition to the US would be a deathblow for all truth seekers, George Galloway told RT, warning that anyone who fails to support Assange will one day share the same fate as the persecuted Wikileaks co-founder.

Galloway, a former MP who has campaigned tirelessly for Assange's freedom, quipped that the "dark" episode shows that Theresa May's "zombie" government was "not content with all the other disasters for which it's responsible."

He insisted that Assange's supporters would "never give up" the fight to stop his extradition to the US and secure his safe release from UK custody.

Failing to support Assange now will have disastrous consequences for journalism and all who profess to hold progressive values, Galloway warned. He expressed particular discontent with those who would have ordinarily protested Assange's treatment at the hands of the UK authorities, but remained silent because the Wikileaks co-founder was accused of sexual misconduct - what Galloway decried as a politically-motivated smear.

The liberals and the progressives, as they describe themselves, they will one day be a victim of this tyranny themselves, that is unless they eventually give up any pretense of actually being liberals and actually being progressives.

Asked about what would happen if Assange is ultimately extradited, Galloway said that the consequences for allowing such an injustice would be devastating.

"Every truth seeker will go down if Julian goes down."