Ex-Trump official revises statement
McFarland had denied sanctions talk
WASHINGTON — A former top White House official has revised her statement to investigators about a key event in the probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, after her initial claim was contradicted by the guilty plea of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, according to people familiar with the matter.
K.T. McFarland, who briefly served as Flynn’s deputy, has now said that he may have been referring to sanctions when they spoke in late December 2016 after Flynn’s calls with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, these people said.
When FBI agents first visited her at her Long Island home in the summer of 2017, McFarland denied ever talking to Flynn about any discussion of sanctions between him and the ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, in December 2016 during the presidential transition.
For a time, investigators saw her answers as “inconsistent,” putting her in legal peril as the FBI tried to determine if she had lied to them.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is examining whether Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak are in any way related to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
Flynn pleaded guilty last December to lying to the FBI about his calls with Kislyak and has been cooperating with Mueller. He is to be sentenced in mid-December.
Court papers filed in connection with Flynn’s plea indicated that a senior Trump transition official was involved in strategizing over the conversations with Kislyak. That official was not identified in the court papers, but people familiar with the case have said it was McFarland.
Prosecutors have sought to determine what Trump or those close to him knew about Flynn’s calls with the Russian ambassador, but McFarland does not appear to be a critical witness in that regard, according to people familiar with the matter.
Not long after Flynn’s plea, McFarland was questioned by investigators again about her conversations with Flynn, and she walked back her previous denial that sanctions were discussed, saying a general statement Flynn had made to her that things were going to be OK could have been a reference to sanctions, these people said.
McFarland’s account does not answer the question of what the president knew or didn’t know about Flynn’s interactions with the ambassador, these people said.
McFarland didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment, including emails and calls to her home.
Eventually, McFarland and her lawyer Robert Giuffra were able to convince the FBI that she had not intentionally misled the bureau but had rather spoken from memory, without the benefit of any documents that could have helped her remember her exchanges with Flynn about the Kislyak conversations, these people said.
Mueller’s team appears to be satisfied with McFarland’s revised account, according to people familiar with the probe.
Just days after Flynn talked to Kislyak, however, McFarland said that her memory was clear, and that the two had never discussed sanctions or how the incoming Trump administration hoped Russia would respond.
Early on the morning of Jan. 13, 2017, McFarland phoned The Washington Post to rebut a column that said Flynn and Kislyak had spoken “several times” on Dec. 29, the day President Barack Obama’s administration announced it was expelling 35 Russian officials and taking other punitive measures.
McFarland insisted in an on-the-record conversation that Flynn and Kislyak had never discussed sanctions and that they had actually spoken prior to the administration’s announcement on Dec. 29. McFarland said that Flynn “called me right after” his call with Kislyak and conveyed the details of their conversation.
But according to Flynn’s guilty plea, before he called Kislyak, he spoke to McFarland to discuss what he should tell the ambassador, if anything, about the sanctions.
Immediately after that call with McFarland, Flynn phoned Kislyak “and requested that Russia not escalate the situation and only respond to the U.S. Sanctions in a reciprocal manner,” according to the plea. Flynn then called McFarland to report on what he had said to Kislyak, “including their discussion of the U.S. sanctions.”
Emails among transition officials at the time of Flynn’s contacts also show McFarland communicating about how to respond to sanctions, according to people who have seen the messages.