The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former top White House official revises statement
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 scheduled to be sentenced in 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 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 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 one of the authors of this article to rebut a column in The Washington Post, which said Flynn and Kislyak had spoken “several times” on Dec. 29, the day the Obama administration announced it was expelling 35 Russian officials and taking other punitive measures.
The column, by David Ignatius, questioned why Flynn was engaging in sensitive foreign policy discussions with Russia when Trump had yet to take office.