Flynn had undisclosed meeting with Russian ambassador in 2015
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn met with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. in December 2015, shortly after Flynn first met then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to a Republican congressional report.
The previously unknown meeting, which was also attended by Flynn’s son, took place at Ambassador Sergey Kislyak’s Washington, D.C., residence on Dec. 2, 2015, according to a declassified report on Russian election meddling compiled by the GOPcontrolled House Intelligence Committee.
Emails “indicate that the meeting was arranged at the request of Gen. Flynn or his son,” according to the House report, which was made public Friday.
In an email to the Russian Embassy afterward, Michael Flynn Jr. described the sitdown as “very productive.”
About a week after the meeting, Flynn traveled to Moscow to hold a paid speech at a gala hosted by Russian state-owned media organization RT. Flynn was seated next to President Vladimir Putin during the gala.
A few months after that speech, Flynn formally joined the Trump campaign as a national security adviser.
Flynn met again with Kislyak shortly before Trump took office — a meeting that led to his unceremonious ouster from the White House after it was revealed he had lied to the FBI about it. Flynn subsequently pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators and is now cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and the Russian government.
It’s unclear what was discussed during the December 2015 meeting or why Flynn requested it. Flynn’s attorney did not respond to emailed questions from the New York Daily News.
The House Intelligence Committee never interviewed Flynn or his son because they both filed written statements announcing that they would invoke their Fifth Amendment rights in order to avoid self-incrimination as it applied to Mueller’s sweeping Russia investigation. The committee instead subpoenaed records from Flynn and his company.
The highly redacted report from the House Intelligence Committee also unearthed a previously undisclosed email sent from Flynn to an unnamed Trump campaign staffer on July 15, 2016.
“There are a number of things happening (and will happen) this election via cyber operations (by both hacktivists, nation-states and the DNC),” Flynn wrote in the email, using an acronym for the Democratic National Committee.
Seven days later, WikiLeaks published its first batch of hacked DNC emails. The email dump proved particularly embarrassing for Hillary Clinton and her Democratic presidential campaign.
In addition to Flynn, Mueller’s investigation has produced federal indictments against ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, ex-Trump campaign aide Rick Gates and ex-campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos.