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Mr. Flynn changed his legal team last year and began seeking to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming he never lied to investigators and was the target in January 2017 of what his lawyers in court papers called an “ambush-interview” by F.B.I. agents seeking to entrap him. He has since become a hero figure on the pro-Trump right, portrayed as a decorated patriot victimized by the politically motivated Russia “hoax” investigation of Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump, who initially distanced himself from Mr. Flynn after his firing, has since taken up his cause, calling him “an innocent man” targeted by Obama administration officials trying to “take down a president.”

“What happened to General Michael Flynn, a war hero, should never be allowed to happen to a citizen of the United States again!” Mr. Trump tweeted in April, weeks before the Justice Department sought to withdraw its charges. After the department acted, Mr. Trump tweeted his approval, writing on May 8, “Yesterday was a BIG day for Justice in the USA.”

In a late September hearing before Judge Sullivan, a lawyer for Mr. Flynn, Sidney Powell, reluctantly admitted that she had recently spoken to Mr. Trump about the case, but said she had asked the president not to pardon her client.

Ms. Powell has appeared alongside lawyers for Mr. Trump, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, to press an unfounded case of election fraud. But after Ms. Powell floated a set of particularly wild claims, Mr. Giuliani and another lawyer representing the Trump campaign, Jenna Ellis, said in an abrupt statement on Sunday that Ms. Powell “is not a member of the Trump legal team.”