Trump ex aide’s immunity plea
ONE of Donald Trump’s former top advisers “certainly has a story to tell” over his dealings with Russia so long as he gets immunity against prosecution, his lawyer said yesterday.
Mike Flynn “very much” wants to give his account if he is protected from what he sees as a witch hunt, Robert Kelner said. Mr Flynn was forced out as national security adviser for lying about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the US.
He is now offering to give potentially explosive evidence about whether or not the Trump team colluded with Russia. He was one of Mr Trump’s inner circle investigated by the FBI and two Congressional inquiries.
In December Mr Flynn spoke to Russia’s ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, and discussed sanctions on the same day President Obama announced a new round of them against the Kremlin for the hacking.
Surprisingly, Mr Putin did not respond by expelling American diplomats from Russia, prompting speculation that there could have been a deal with the Trump administration. Mr Flynn was also paid over $65,000 (£52,000) by companies linked to Russia and sat next to President Vladimir Putin at an event organised by Kremlin-backed TV channel RT.
Meanwhile, a British-Russian Cambridge graduate was last night dragged into the row over Mr Trump’s dealings with Russia after it emerged that she met Mr Flynn.
Svetlana Lokhova chatted with Mr Flynn for 20 minutes at the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, a gathering of former intelligence officials hosted at Cambridge University, in 2014. Miss Lokhova is said to have shown him a historic Russian documents including an “erotic postcard” sent by Stalin.
The two are said to have remained in email contact and swapped messages on an unclassified channel.
In 2015, Miss Lokhova was awarded £3.2million by an employment tribunal against Russian firm Sberbank in London for sex discrimination and harassment while doing her £750,000 a year job. The case heard she was branded “Crazy Miss Cokehead”.