Transcripts released of Flynn’s calls with diplomat

Transcripts of phone calls that played a pivotal role in the Russia investigation were declassified and released Friday, showing that Michael Flynn, as an adviser to then-President-elect Donald Trump, urged Russia’s ambassador to be “evenkeeled” in response to punitive Obama administration measures, and assured him “we can have a better conversation” about relations between the two countries after Trump became president.

Democrats said the transcripts showed that Flynn had lied to the FBI when he denied details of the conversation, and that he was undercutting a sitting president while ingratiating himself with a country that had just interfered in the 2016 presidential election. But allies of the president said the transcripts showed Flynn had done nothing wrong and that FBI had no reason to investigate him in the first place.

The transcripts were released by Senate Republicans on Friday after being provided by Trump’s new national intelligence director, John Ratcliffe, who waded into one of the most contentious political topics in his first week on the job. Ratcliffe’s extraordinary decision to disclose transcripts of intercepted conversations with a foreign ambassador is part of ongoing efforts by Trump allies to release previously secret information from the Russia investigation in hopes of painting Obama-era officials in a bad light.

The newly released documents do not include the intelligence that initially concerned Obama administration national security officials about Flynn. He was not identified by name in those reports, and the officials’ use of a routine process known as “unmasking” to learn his identity has become a major issue for Trump supporters. But the transcripts shed no light on the unmasking issue.