Special counsel Robert Mueller on Tuesday requested that sentencing for former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn be delayed by at least two months.

Mueller's team and attorneys for Flynn submitted that Flynn is not ready for sentencing "due to the status of the special counsel's investigation," according to a court filing in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

Flynn pleaded guilty in December to lying to the FBI as part of Mueller's probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. As part of the plea deal, Flynn agreed to cooperate with Mueller's ongoing investigation.

Russian firm linked to Putin's chef accuses special counsel of 'pettifoggery.'

A federal judge has rejected special counsel Robert Mueller's request to delay the first court hearing in a criminal case charging three Russian companies and 13 Russian citizens with using social media and other means to foment strife among Americans in advance of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

In a brief order Saturday evening, U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich offered no explanation for her decision to deny a request prosecutors made Friday to put off the scheduled Wednesday arraignment for Concord Management and Consulting, one of the three firms charged in the case.

The 13 people charged in the high-profile indictment in February are considered unlikely to ever appear in a U.S. court. The three businesses accused of facilitating the alleged Russian troll farm operation - the Internet Research Agency, Concord Management, and Concord Catering - were also expected to simply ignore the American criminal proceedings.

By the end of this column, it will be clear which country the United States will invade and topple next. Or failing that, it will be clear which country our military-intelligence-industrial complex will be aching to invade next.

We all want to know why America does what it does. And I don't mean why Americans do what we do. I think that question still will be pondered eons from now by a future professor showing his students a video mind-meld of present-day UFC fighters booting each other in the head while thrilled onlookers cheer (not for either of the fighters but rather for more booting in the head).

But we all seem to assume that America - the entity, the corporation - has some sort of larger reasoning behind the actions it takes, the actions put forward by the ruling elite. And almost all of us know that the reasons we're given by the press secretaries and caricature-shaped heads on the nightly news are the ripest, most fetid grade of bullshit.

Former FBI Director James Comey often removed sensitive national security documents from FBI headquarters and stored documents at his home, according to high-ranking FBI officials who called such actions a violation of a host of federal laws.

In essence, Comey handled certain classified government documents in the identical manner Hillary Clinton handled classified documents and emails; By breaking strict government protocols and breaching laws governing the security of sensitive documents.

Yet Comey was tasked with investigating Hillary Clinton, the former Secretary of State, for improper handling of classified documents. At the same time he was mishandling classified documents. Little wonder why Hillary was never charged with a crime.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's claim in his theatrical 20-minute presentation of an Israeli physical seizure of Iran's "atomic archive" in Tehran would certainly have been the "great intelligence achievement" he boasted if it had actually happened. But the claim does not hold up under careful scrutiny, and his assertion that Israel now possesses a vast documentary record of a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program is certainly fraudulent.

Netanyahu's tale of an Israeli intelligence raid right in Tehran that carted off 55,000 paper files and another 55,000 CDs from a "highly secret location" requires that we accept a proposition that is absurd on its face: that Iranian policymakers decided to store their most sensitive military secrets in a small tin-roofed hut with nothing to protect it from heat (thus almost certainly ensuring loss of data on CDs within a few years) and no sign of any security, based on the satellite image shown in the slide show. (As Steve Simon observed in The New York Times the door did not even appear to have a lock on it.)

Both Democrats and Republicans have taken turns criticizing the FBI over the past two years, but of late the former have been criticizing the latter for attacking the law-enforcement agency's leadership and performance. Democrats complain that the GOP wants to weaken the FBI as part of their efforts to defend Donald Trump and are sacrificing the credibility of the organization. Rep. Jim Himes preached to a CNN congregation last month that those "besmirching" the integrity of James Comey would "rot in Hell."

Don't repent too quickly, Time Magazine's Eric Lichtblau reports today. Politics aside, the FBI finds itself in a serious crisis of credibility, and not just on the news shows. Juries have begun discounting testimony from FBI agents, and James Comey may be one of the problems, Hell notwithstanding:

Many view Trump's attacks as self-serving: he has called the renowned agency an "embarrassment to our country" and its investigations of his business and political dealings a "witch hunt." But as much as the bureau's roughly 14,000 special agents might like to tune out the news, internal and external reports have found lapses throughout the agency, and longtime observers, looking past the partisan haze, see a troubling picture: something really is wrong at the FBI.

The Justice Department's Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, will soon release a much-anticipated assessment of Democratic and Republican charges that officials at the FBI interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign. That year-long probe, sources familiar with it tell TIME, is expected to come down particularly hard on former FBI director James Comey, who is currently on a high-profile book tour. It will likely find that Comey breached Justice Department protocols in a July 5, 2016, press conference when he criticized Hillary Clinton for using a private email server as Secretary of State even as he cleared her of any crimes, the sources say. The report is expected to also hit Comey for the way he reopened the Clinton email probe less than two weeks before the election, the sources say.

The Robert Mueller investigation is using research financed by a top George Soros official, according to top strategists from the Donald J. Trump presidential campaign.

Thursday, Big League Politics revealed the role of deep state operative Daniel J. Jones, who is working behind the scenes to fund the Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller's bogus investigation into Trump campaign "collusion" with Russia.

As we reported:

"'Dan Jones, the former Senate Intelligence staffer, has raised millions of dollars to fund continued exploration of the bogus [Steele] dossier,' said Michael Caputo, Trump campaign advisor.

Daniel J. Jones is a deep state operative and President of The Penn Quarter Group, a Washington D.C. based investigative research firm. He spent four years in the FBI before joining the United State Select Committee on Intelligence under then-Senator Jay Rockefeller, and subsequently under Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

'If you see the stories out there with unnamed sources, it's become very clear that Dan Jones is one source, and he goes and gets another - no doubt from among his colleagues on the partisan hit-squad at the Intelligence Committee,' Caputo continued."

We have learned that Jones' deep state ties are much more in-depth than previously understood.

Former FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom took the gloves off on Thursday, accusing the FBI of taking part in an organized conspiracy to topple President Trump's presidency.

Kallstrom is a respected FBI alumnus. When he speaks many other FBI officials and former officials listen. As do lawmakers. He shapes opinions.

Kallstrom called the leadership of the FBI a disgrace. He alluded Special Counsel Robert Mueller was a would-be thug fabricating concocted evidence. The FBI was part of a fifth column running a clear conspiracy to topple Trump, he said.

Kallstrom's comments should raise a number of eyebrows in Congress too.

Even FOX News host Tucker Carlson was taken aback by Kallstrom's hammering of his former employer.

As the special counsel investigation surrounding President Trump goes on, we still don't know what evidence Robert Mueller and his team have amassed behind closed doors. It's entirely possible they have built a strong case that Trump illegally conspired with Russian President Putin, which Trump's critics have long claimed but which Trump denies.

If the New York Times' list of questions that Mueller wants to ask Trump is accurate, however, it's hard not to notice that Mueller is treading in waters in which he - the special counsel - may have at least three serious conflicts of interest.

The first area has to do with Mueller's reported inquires into Trump's alleged desire to terminate Mueller himself as special counsel, as well as Trump's firing of Mueller's longtime friend and colleague, former FBI director James Comey.

Think of it this way: You're the boss at a company and decide to fire an important manager. Maybe you believe he acted improperly, conspired against you, or is simply not the right man for the job. He's unhappy you fired him. Now imagine the fired employee - or his good friend and colleague - is awarded the power to judge and assess your motives regarding that firing and other matters. Would it be fair to have the very people who feel wronged be put in charge of determining your fate?

When King Pyrrhus of Epirus stood on the Italian coast surveying the battlefield of Asculum where he had just defeated the Roman army in 279BC, he famously said: "If I have another victory like that I will return to Epirus alone."

Epirus is in the modern-day Balkans and Pyrrhus was the first serious challenger faced by the growing Roman Empire, which very nearly lost to the Illyrian fighting forces.

The Romans won in the end thanks to their ability to out-resource all their opponents: if an army lost they simply drew on their massive and growing hinterland to raise another one. They wore their opponents down into eventual defeat - even if that took years to accomplish. The Romans were later challenged by Hannibal in the second Punic war and unable to defeat the wily general, but again they out-resourced him and Carthage was eventually razed to the ground.

The US is in a similar position today and that is what worries the emerging markets that are rapidly catching up with the western world.