Flynn’s defense repudiated
Special counsel dismisses claim that FBI agents misled him into lying
WASHINGTON — The special counsel’s office rejected Friday a suggestion from Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, that he had been tricked into lying last year to FBI agents investigating Russia’s election interference and ties to Trump associates.
Prosecutors laid out a pattern of lies by Flynn to Vice President Mike Pence, senior White House aides, federal investigators and the news media in the weeks before and after the presidential inauguration as he scrambled to obscure the truth about his communications during the presidential transition with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States at the time.
Neither his lawyers nor Flynn, the former director
of the Defense Intelligence Agency, have explained why he lied to the FBI, a felony that he pleaded guilty to a year ago. But in a memo this week seeking leniency, his lawyers revealed details from the interview that stoked an unfounded theory that Flynn’s relaxed appearance during questioning was potential evidence that he did not actually lie. They also blamed the FBI for not informing Flynn ahead of time that lying to agents is illegal — an argument that prosecutors repudiated.
“A sitting national security adviser, former head of an intelligence agency, retired lieutenant general and 33-year veteran of the armed forces knows he should not lie to federal agents,” prosecutors for special counsel Robert Mueller wrote in court papers. “He does not need to be warned it is a crime to lie to federal agents to know the importance of telling them the truth.”
Leniency had all but been assured after Mueller’s prosecutors recommended last week that Flynn get little or no prison time, crediting his cooperation with their inquiry and other investigations as well as his lengthy military service. His decision to attack the FBI in his own plea for probation appeared to be a gambit for a pardon from Trump, whose former lawyer had broached the prospect last year with a lawyer for Flynn.
The president seized on the case that Flynn made against the FBI in his sentencing memo, defending him on Twitter and on Fox News. “They convinced him he did lie, and he made some kind of a deal,” Trump said of investigators Thursday during the TV interview.
That contradicts the narrative that prosecutors have described in court papers. U.S. intelligence had picked up Flynn’s conversations on wiretaps of the ambassador as part of standard surveillance. So the FBI agents had evidence that Flynn was lying when he denied asking Kislyak that Russia refrain from reacting harshly to sanctions imposed by the Obama administration over election interference. He also said he did not remember Kislyak telling him that Moscow had backed off as a result of Flynn’s request.
And prosecutors revealed Friday how far investigators had gone during the interview to give Flynn the chance to tell the truth. At one point, the FBI agents repeated portions of what he had said privately to Kislyak to jog Flynn’s memory. “But the defendant never corrected his false statements,” the prosecutors wrote.
Lawyers for Flynn have tried to minimize his lying to the FBI as an “uncharacteristic error in judgment.” In their sentencing memo, they also seized on the spurious theory that Flynn’s relaxed behavior was exculpatory.
“Even when circumstances later came to light that prompted extensive public debate about the investigation of General Flynn, including revelations that certain FBI officials involved in the Jan. 24 interview of General Flynn were themselves being investigated for misconduct, General Flynn did not back away from accepting responsibility for his actions,” his lawyers wrote.
The theory about his body language grew out of FBI memos, court papers and revelations about the interview in which the agents have revealed that Flynn appeared “relaxed and jocular” when they arrived at the White House.
But prosecutors explained his confidence not as evidence of truth-telling but as a result of the numerous dishonest accounts he had already given about his conversations with Kislyak. “By the time of the FBI interview,” they wrote, “the defendant was committed to his false story.”
Flynn’s disclosures this week about his FBI interview also called into question why he waited until just before his sentencing Tuesday to argue that he was coerced into lying. In pleading guilty last year, he said, “I recognize that the actions I acknowledged in court today were wrong.”
The move also prompted a quick response from the judge presiding over the case, Emmet G. Sullivan of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. He ordered that lawyers and prosecutors turn over documents related to Flynn’s Jan. 24, 2017, interview and could question Flynn during his sentencing about why he decided to revisit the circumstances of it nearly a year after pleading guilty.