Former national security adviser tells FBI he did not discuss U.S. sanctions.
Intelligence agencies intercepted calls that dispute that claim
WASHINGTON — Former national security adviser Michael Flynn denied to FBI agents in an interview last month that he had discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia with that country’s ambassador to the United States before President Donald Trump took office, contradicting the contents of intercepted communications collected by intelligence agencies, current and former U.S. officials said.
The Jan. 24 interview potentially puts Flynn in legal jeopardy. Lying to the FBI is a felony offense. But several officials said it is unclear whether prosecutors would attempt to bring a case, in part because Flynn may parse the definition of the word “sanctions.” He also followed his denial to the FBI by saying he couldn’t recall all of the conversation, officials said.
Any decision to prosecute would ultimately lie with the Justice Department. A spokesman for Flynn said he had no response. The FBI and the Justice Department declined to comment.
Flynn spoke to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak following Trump’s election and denied for weeks that the December conversation involved sanctions the Obama administration imposed on Russia in response to its purported meddling in the U.S. election. Flynn’s denial to the FBI was similar to what he had told Trump’s advisers, according to the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
In a recent interview with the Daily Caller, Flynn said he didn’t discuss “sanc- tions” but did discuss the Obama administration’s expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats it said were “intelligence operatives.” The move was part of the sanctions package it announced on Dec. 29.
Earlier, in an interview with The Post, he denied discussing sanctions but later issued a statement saying “that while he had no recollection of discussing sanctions, he couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.”
Trump asked for Flynn’s resignation Monday night following reports in The Washington Post that revealed Flynn had misled Vice President Mike Pence in denying the substance of the call and that Justice Department officials had warned the White House that Flynn was a possible target of Russian blackmail as a result.
Two days after the FBI interview, then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates and a career national security official informed Donald McGahn, Trump’s White House counsel, about the contents of the intercepted phone call in a meeting at the White House. Yates and other officials were concerned that Russia could not only exploit the mischaracterization of the call — which Pence had repeated on nationwide television — but also did not think it was fair to keep Pence in the dark about the discrepancies, according to officials familiar with their thinking.
Senior officials who have reviewed the phone call thought Flynn’s statements to Kislyak were inappropriate, if not illegal, because he suggested that the Kremlin could expect a reprieve from the sanctions.
At the same time, officials knew that seeking to build a case against Flynn for violating an obscure 1799 statute known as the Logan Act — which bars private citizens from interfering in diplomatic disputes — would be legally and political daunting. Several officials said that while sanctions were discussed between Flynn and Kislyak in the December call, they did not see evidence in the intercept that Flynn had an “intent” to convey an explicit promise to take action after the inauguration.
“It wasn’t about sanctions. It was about the 35 guys who were thrown out,” Flynn told the Daily Caller in an interview just before he resigned and published Tuesday. “So that’s what it turned out to be. It was basically, ‘Look, I know this happened. We’ll review everything.’ I never said anything such as, ‘We’re going to review sanctions,’ or anything like that.”