EX- TRUMP AIDE PLEADS GUILTY TO LYING ABOUT RUSSIA CONTACTS
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty Friday to lying to FBI agents about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador while serving in the White House, acknowledged that those conversations were coordinated with Trump’s top aides and promised to cooperate with investigators.
In a written statement, Flynn, who didn’t speak in court other to say he was pleading guilty, said: “I recognize that the actions I acknowledged in court today were wrong, and, through my faith in God, I am working to set things right. 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.”
Flynn agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller focusing on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign aimed at sending the Republican businessman to theWhite House.
Now, an aide who once occupied a position in the president’s inner circle is providing evidence in an investigation that has cast a cloud over Trump’s first year in office.
The charge and Flynn’s abrupt guilty plea and cooperation are the culmination of an investigation that Trump had once asked the FBI to drop.
White House lawyer Ty Cobb said “nothing” about Flynn’s guilty plea “implicates anyone other than Mr. Flynn,” and he sought to distance Flynn from Trump, saying he’d worked in the White House for only 25 days and describing him as a “former Obama administration official.”
But court papers make clear that Flynn knows the identities of at least two members of Trump’s transition team who were intimately aware of his outreach to Russian government officials in the weeks before the inauguration. Mueller’s prosecutors did not reveal the names of the officials but indicated they were senior and within Trump’s inner circle.
Those officials discussed the details of what Flynn was supposed to communicate to the Russians about U. S. sanctions imposed by the Obama administration, authorities said. One of the officials, described as a “very senior member” of the presidential transition, also directed Flynn to contact foreign government officials, including Russia’s, about a U. N. Security Council resolution regarding Israeli settlements. A member of Trump’s transition team told the Associated Press that Trump’s soninlaw Jared Kushner is the “very senior” Trump transition official who directed Flynn to contact Russians on theU. N. vote.
Kushner had led a transition team effort to defeat the U. N. vote, according to former U. S. officials and foreign diplomats.
The transition team official who confirmed the person as Kushner spoke only on the condition of anonymity because Kushner’s name was not publicly revealed.
According to court papers filed Friday in connection with Flynn’s guilty plea, the “very senior transition official” directed Flynn to contact foreign governments, including Russia, about a U. N. resolution regarding Israeli settlements
In a court filing made public Friday, prosecutors said Flynn “did willfully and knowingly make materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statements” to FBI agents during a Jan. 24 interview about his conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the weeks before Trump took office. Prosecutors charged that he falsely told FBI agents that he did not ask Kislyak to delay a vote on a pending United Nations Security Council resolution when the two men spoke in December.
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 had asked him in a private Oval Office meeting to consider ending the investigation into Flynn. Comey has said the encounter unnerved him so much that he prepared an internal memo about it. The White House has denied that.
Flynn, who was interviewed by the FBI just days after Trump’s inauguration, was forced to resign in February afterWhite House officials said he had misled them about whether he had discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador, Kislyak.
Administration officials said Flynn had not discussed sanctions that had been imposed on Russia in part over election meddling. In charging Flynn, prosecutors made clear they believe that claim to be false.