Flynn admits lying to FBI about Russia
Ex-national security adviser pleads guilty, is cooperating with Mueller’s investigation. Flynn says members of Trump’s inner circle helped direct outreach to Kremlin.
Michael Flynn, WASHINGTON — the retired general who campaigned at Donald Trump’s side and then served as his first national security adviser, pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI about reaching out to the Russians on Trump’s behalf and said members of the president’s inner circle were intimately involved with — and at times directing — his contacts.
Court papers didn’t name the senior officials, but The Associ- ated Press has confirmed that they were Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser Jared Kushner and former deputy national security adviser KT McFarland, who is now up for an ambassadorship.
Flynn’s plea could be a crucial development in the wide-ranging criminal investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election in Trump’s favor, because it means Flynn is now required to cooperate with federal investigators.
His plea to a single felony count of false statements made him the first official of the Trump White
House to admit guilt so far in the criminal investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.
Friday’s developments don’t resolve the paramount question of possible Trump-Russia coordination in the campaign, but they do show that Flynn lied to the FBI about multiple conversations last December with the Russian ambassador to the United States. Court papers make clear that senior Trump transition officials — including Kushner and McFarland — were fully aware of Flynn’s outreach to Russian officials in the weeks before the inauguration.
McFarland’s involvement was confirmed by two former transition officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly discuss the matter. One of the officials confirmed Kushner’s involvement.
That revelation moves the Russia investigation, which has shadowed Trump throughout the year, deeper into the White House and raises questions about the accuracy of repeated assertions by the administration that Flynn had misled Vice President Mike Pence and other officials about the content of his calls with the ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.
Trump son-in-law Kushner had led a transition team effort to defeat a United Nations vote referenced in the court papers, according to former U.S. officials and foreign diplomats.
Though prosecutors also had investigated Flynn lobbying work on behalf of the Turkish government, the fact that he pleaded guilty to just one count, and faces a guideline range of zero to six months in prison, suggest that prosecutors see him as a valuable tool in their investigation and are granting a degree of leniency in exchange for cooperation.
White House lawyer Ty Cobb sought to distance the plea from Trump himself, saying: “Nothing about the guilty plea or the charge implicates anyone other than Mr. Flynn.”
Flynn, the longtime soldier, stood quietly during his plea hearing except to answer brief questions from the judge. He accepted responsibility for his actions in a written statement, though he said he had also been subjected to false accusations. He said, “My guilty plea and agreement to cooperate with the Special Counsel’s Office reflect a decision I made in the best interests of my family and of our country.”
The Russia investigation has persistently followed Trump the first year of his presidency, angering the president and repeatedly distracting from his agenda. Flynn’s plea came as Republican senators labored to pass a far-reaching tax bill, which would be a significant victory for Trump.
On Friday, the president ignored reporters’ shouted questions as he welcomed the Libyan prime minister to the White House, and aides canceled media access to a later meeting between the two. He did appear briefly at an afternoon White House holiday reception for the media, but departed without addressing the Mueller investigation.
Early on in his administration, Trump had taken a particular interest in the status of the Flynn investigation. Former FBI Director James Comey, whose firing in May precipitated the appointment of Mueller as special counsel, has said Trump asked him in a private Oval Office meeting to consider ending the investigation into Flynn. Comey has said he found the encounter so shocking that he prepared an internal memo about it.
A former Defense Intelligence Agency chief, Flynn was a vocal Trump surrogate during the campaign and was known for leading crowds in “Lock her up” chants regarding Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
Flynn was forced to resign following news reports indicating that the Trump White House had been warned by Obama administration officials that he had discussed sanctions with Kislyak and was therefore compromised and potentially vulnerable to blackmail.
White House officials including Pence, who had declared publicly that Flynn never discussed sanctions, said they had been misled.
The court case Friday concerns a series of conversations that Flynn had with Kislyak during the transition period between the November election and the Jan. 20 inauguration.
Prosecutors say Flynn on Dec. 29 spoke with an unnamed senior transition team official about what, if anything, to say about sanctions that had been imposed on Russia one day earlier by the Obama administration in retaliation for election interference. Flynn then requested the Russian ambassador “not escalate the situation” and respond “in a reciprocal manner.”
If the Trump transition team made secret back-door assurances to Russian diplomats, that could potentially run afoul of the Logan Act.