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The Flynn Plea: A Quick and Dirty Analysis

By Susan Hennessey, Matthew Kahn, Vanessa Sauter, Shannon Togawa Mercer, Benjamin Wittes

Friday, December 1, 2017, 5:19 PM

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What Flynn Admits

Narrow though their coverage is, the documents released Friday shed a lot of light on several aspects of L’Affaire Russe. Let’s start with the facts to which Flynn has admitted.

According to the statement of the offense, on Jan. 24, 2017, Flynn voluntarily agreed to an interview with FBI agents, during which he said “he did not ask Russia’s Ambassador to the United States … to refrain from escalating the situation in response to sanctions that the United States had imposed against Russia.” He also said “he did not remember a follow-up conversation in which the Russian Ambassador stated that Russia had chosen to moderate its response” in response to Flynn’s sanctions.

Those statements were false. Flynn now says he knew during the Jan. 24 interview that on Dec. 28, President Barack Obama had signed an executive order imposing sanctions against Russia for its interference in the 2016 presidential election. That same day, Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak contacted Flynn.

The next day, Flynn “called a senior official of the Presidential Transition Team … who was with other members of the Presidential Transition Team at the Mar-a-Lago resort … to discuss what, if anything, to communicate to the Russian Ambassador” about the sanctions. Flynn’s conversation with the transition-team official included “the impact of those sanctions on the incoming administration’s foreign policy goals” and “that the members of the Presidential Transition Team at Mar-a-Lago did not want Russia to escalate the situation.”

Immediately after the Mar-a-Lago phone call, Flynn called Kislyak to ask “that Russia not escalate the situation and only respond to the U.S. Sanctions in a reciprocal manner.” Shortly after his conversation with Kislyak, Flynn called the official at Mar-a-Lago again “to report on the substance of his call with the Russian Ambassador, including their discussion of the U.S. Sanctions.” Flynn knew that on Dec. 30, “Vladimir Putin released a statement indicating that Russia would not take retaliatory measures in response to the U.S. Sanctions at that time.” On Dec. 31, Kislyak called Flynn “and informed him that Russia had chosen not to retaliate in response to [his] request.” Flynn then “spoke with senior members of the Presidential Transition Team about [his] conversations with the Russian Ambassador regarding U.S. Sanctions and Russia’s decision not to escalate the situation.”

Sanctions aren’t the only subject on which Flynn acknowledges making false statements. During the Jan. 24 interview, Flynn also made false statements “about calls he made to Russia and several other countries regarding a resolution submitted by Egypt” to the U.N. Security Council on Dec. 21, 2016, condemning Israeli settlements. Flynn told FBI agents “that he only asked the countries’ positions on the vote, and that he did not request that any of the countries take any particular action on the resolution.” He “also falsely stated that the Russian Ambassador never described to him Russia’s response to [his] request regarding the resolution.”

Flynn now admits that he knew at the time that the Security Council was scheduled to vote on the resolution Dec. 22, the day after it was introduced. On Dec. 22, “a very senior member of the of the Presidential Transition Team directed [Flynn] to contact officials from foreign governments, including Russia, to learn where each government stood on the resolution and to influence those governments to delay the vote or defeat the resolution.” (Note the word “very” before “senior” in that sentence.) That day, Flynn contacted Kislyak about the vote. He “informed the Russian Ambassador about the incoming administration’s opposition to the resolution, and requested that Russia vote against or delay the resolution.” The following day—Dec. 23—Flynn spoke to Kislyak, who told Flynn that “if it came to a vote Russia would not vote against the resolution.”

Finally, Flynn made false statements in FARA filings pertaining to a project that his company, the Flynn Intel Group, performed “for the principal benefit of the Republic of Turkey.” Flynn made “materially false statements and omissions,” including that (1) the Flynn Intel Group “did not know whether or the extent to which the Republic of Turkey was involved in the Turkey project”; (2) “the Turkey project was focused on improving U.S. business organizations’ confidence regarding doing business in Turkey”; and (3) an op-ed that Flynn wrote and “published in The Hill on November 8, 2016 was written at his own initiative.” He also omitted “that officials from the Republic of Turkey provided supervision and direction over the Turkey project.”

What It All Means

The most important revelation here is that contrary to Cobb’s statement Friday morning, Flynn is saying clearly that he was not a rogue actor but was operating at the behest of the presidential transition team.

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Second, take a moment to remember the context in which Flynn’s underlying conduct took place: He and apparently the Trump transition team were working to undermine U.S. foreign policy goals endorsed by both parties. In December 2016, President Obama authorized sanctions against Russia in response to cyber-enabled election interference. He did so with broad bipartisan support to deter such activity in the future against the U.S. and its allies.

[...]

Flynn was sworn in as national security adviser on Jan. 22, 2017, and the FBI interviewed him about his exchanges with Kislyak only two days later, on Jan. 24. It was in that interview that he denied the conversations in December. Later that week, on Jan. 26, the acting attorney general, Yates, reportedly warned the White House counsel that Flynn had lied about his contact with Kislyak. On Jan. 27, Yates and McGahn had another meeting, after which (according to then-press secretary Sean Spicer) McGahn determined that Flynn had not broken any laws. The same day, Trump reportedly sat down for dinner with then-FBI Director Comey and asked for a pledge of loyalty.

The Flynn plea both clarifies and raises questions about this timeline. It answers the question of what precisely concerned Yates, a matter on which she could not testify with precision because of investigative secrecy. Assuming she was aware of the truth of Flynn’s interactions with Kislyak, she would have known he had lied to the FBI, as he has now admitted.

But Flynn’s story raises new questions about the president’s interactions with Comey. President Trump has denied that he knew Flynn had talked sanctions with Kislyak. Asked at a Feb. 16 press conference, “Did you direct Mike Flynn to discuss the sanctions with the Russian Ambassador,” Trump responded: “No, I didn’t. No, I didn’t.” When pressed on why he fired Flynn, Trump’s answer concluded, “No, I fired him because of what he said to Mike Pence, very simple. Mike was doing his job. He was calling countries and his counterparts. So it certainly would have been okay with me if he did it. I would have directed him to do it if I thought he wasn’t doing it. I didn’t direct him but I would have directed him because that’s his job … No, I didn’t direct him, but I would have directed him if he didn’t do it, okay?”

It isn’t clear from the Flynn documents whether Trump specifically was informed of Flynn’s activities, though ABC News reported Friday that a confidant of Flynn’s said that Flynn is prepared to testify that Trump directed him to contact the Russians. Adding to current ambiguity, the Washington Post has separately reported that people familiar with the matter have said Jared Kushner was the “very senior” transition team member who instructed Flynn to contact Russia on the U.N. resolution.

What is clear is that when Trump demanded loyalty from Comey in January and later, on Feb. 14, when he asked that Comey drop the Flynn matter, he did so with at least senior transition aides fully aware of Flynn’s behavior, with his White House aware that Flynn’s interview had raised alarm bells at the Justice Department, and with a White House that had been actively misrepresenting the matter.

All of which is to say: Color us less confident than Cobb that the Flynn plea moves this matter toward a conclusion any time in the near future.

With links: https://www.lawfareblog.com/flynn-plea-quick-and-dirty-analysis

Oops. Another tweet problem.

Trump's lawyer says he wrote the president's tweet about Flynn's dismissal

By Jordyn Phelps Katherine Faulders Devin Dwyer Dec 3, 2017, 10:47 PM ET
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-lawyer-wrote-presidents-sloppy-tweet-flynns-dismissal/story?id=51541650

See also:

Michael Flynn has signed a plea deal with Robert Mueller. Trump should be very worried
[...]
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Did [Trump] know that Flynn’s story was an important piece in the larger picture, one that he did not want revealed? Or did he know that the FBI’s pressure on Flynn could force him to give up other incriminating evidence? Far from simply acting to shield a former subordinate and ally, was Trump actually just trying to protect himself, and those close to him?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then Trump’s actions will have a very different feel to them, and his potential defenses much harder, if not impossible, to swallow.
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