Flynn rolls over
Sure it’s said that everybody in Washington lies. But yesterday the nation got a look at the lies former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn told the FBI four days after the Trump inauguration.
What we don’t know yet is who he was protecting and why; but we will.
The charging document is quite clear on one issue — that by late December, with Barack Obama still in the White House, members of the Trump transition team were already attempting to set foreign policy and signal to Russia in particular that things were about to change.
The inappropriateness of that — the violation of the one-president-at-a-time rule — frankly makes us queasy. But what is also apparent from the documents filed in court is that Flynn, good little soldier that he is, was just following orders at one point from “a very senior member of the Presidential Transition Team” (quite likely son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner) and from “a senior official” of the Trump team — presumably two different people whose sleepless nights have just begun.
In one instance Flynn was “directed” to contact world leaders, especially Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, to try to defeat or delay an Egyptian-sponsored U.N. resolution on the issue of Israeli settlements, which the Obama administration had already decided not to veto.
In the second instance Flynn was called by Kislyak on the same day Obama announced sanctions on Russia in response to its interference in the 2016 presidential election, Dec. 28. The next day Flynn phones down to Mar-aLago, talks to the “senior official” who was “with other senior members” of the transition team to get his marching orders, which were essentially to make it clear that the incoming administration did not want Russia to escalate the situation.
Flynn relayed the message to Kislyak, and on Dec. 30 Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a statement saying Russia would not take retaliatory action at this time. Kislyak calls on Dec. 31 to tell Flynn that was done in response to Flynn’s request.
It’s a good time to remember President Trump’s plea to then-FBI Director James Comey to Trump: “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.”
The question of why that was so important to Trump remains at the center of this investigation.