Special counsel Robert Mueller on Monday released the interview notes written by the FBI agents who interviewed Michael Flynn detailing just what President Trump’s disgraced national security adviser lied about.
The notes, commonly referred to as a “302,” detail the two lies Flynn told the FBI agents who interviewed him on Jan. 24, 2017, at the White House.
Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in December 2017, subsequently took a plea deal, and will be sentenced in Washington early Tuesday.
The original FBI 302 of the Flynn interview was finalized on Feb. 15, 2017 — two days after he was forced to leave his post in the Trump administration.
In the interview, Flynn told FBI agents he did not talk with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about post-election sanctions by the Obama administration.
But in his guilty plea, Flynn admitted to asking the Russians to hold off on responding to the sanctions. Also in the plea, he admitted to calling a senior official on the Trump transition team in December 2016 to discuss sanctions.
FBI agents asked him about the U.S. expulsion of Russian diplomats and the closing of Russian properties and if he had encouraged Kislyak not to retaliate. The FBI specifically asked him about a call he made in December 2016 to Kislyak when Flynn was on vacation with his wife in the Dominican Republic.
“Flynn responded, ‘Not really. I don’t remember.’ It wasn’t, ‘Don’t do anything,'” the 302 memo said.
But the FBI knew otherwise, and in the charging document against Flynn, Flynn admitted he asked Kislyak to “refrain from escalating the situation.”
Flynn also admitted to discussing his calls with Kislyak with other unnamed members of the Trump transition team.
As for the second lie, the 302 describes how Flynn told the FBI he did not press Russia to vote one way on a United Nations Security Council resolution dealing with Israel.
Flynn told FBI agents that he called officials in several countries in December 2016, including Israel and the United Kingdom, and possibly Russia.
When pressed whether he asked Kislyak to vote one way or another, Flynn said “No” and that “his calls were about asking where countries would stand on a vote, not any requests of, ‘Hey, if you do this …’”
But in his guilty plea, Flynn said that transition officials with Trump’s team in December 2016 had him work to get Russia to vote against the resolution.
…….
- Discussion
-
Newly-released Mueller memo details Michael Flynn's lies to the FBI https://t.co/gh3rw1XXzh
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) December 18, 2018
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.