An Explanation Of The Flynn Mess

Click here for an article in The New York Times by Adam Goldman and Mark Mazzetti entitled "Trump White House Changes Its Story on Michael Flynn."

Don't lose sight of the fact that Flynn twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about telephone conversations he had had with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak. The view expressed by the White House three years ago was that "Mr. Flynn ... had lied to Vice President Mike Pence and other aides about the nature of his calls to the ambassador, had lied repeatedly to F.B.I. agents about the calls, and might have made himself vulnerable to Russian blackmail."

Marshall L. Miller, a former top prosecutor in Brooklyn and the principal deputy of the Justice Department’s criminal division, says “Mr. Flynn admitted twice under oath that he lied to the F.B.I. Political appointees at D.O.J. are now trying to rewrite the law to erase the crime.”

Mr. Flynn’s troubles began with a phone call.

It was Dec. 29, 2016, the day the outgoing Obama administration announced sanctions against Russia for the country’s widespread effort to disrupt the 2016 presidential election. Mr. Flynn, who was Mr. Trump’s incoming national security adviser, urged Mr. Kislyak in a phone call not to escalate tensions with a retaliatory move against the United States — perhaps by kicking American diplomats and spies out of Russia.

Given the circumstances, the call was remarkable. The United States government had just determined that its longtime adversary had launched a concerted effort to sabotage a presidential election, and the incoming national security adviser was having a back-channel discussion with a top Russian official that might lead to the new Trump administration gutting the sanctions its predecessor put in place to punish the Russians.

As time went by, "The matter took on greater urgency when Mr. Flynn’s discussions with Mr. Kislyak were revealed publicly by David Ignatius, a Washington Post columnist."

Top Trump transition officials — including Mr. Pence as well as Reince Priebus, who was to be White House chief of staff, and Sean Spicer, the incoming White House press secretary — questioned Mr. Flynn about the Washington Post column. Mr. Flynn denied that he spoke about sanctions with Mr. Kislyak, and Mr. Spicer repeated those claims to members of the news media. "Days later, on Face the Nation, Pence stated what Flynn had told him: "'They did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia,' the vice president said."

Mr. Pence’s interview set off alarms at the F.B.I. and the Justice Department. If Mr. Flynn had lied to the vice president, the Russians knew that and could use it as leverage over Mr. Flynn. Newly disclosed documents made public in Mr. Flynn’s criminal case show officials were also concerned that Mr. Pence might have been lying, as well.

“The implications of that were that the Russians believed one of two things — either that the vice president was in on it with Flynn, or that Flynn was clearly willing to lie to the vice president,” Mary B. McCord, a former top national security at the time, said in an interview with the special counsel’s office.

That was when the FBI decided to find out what was going on. Comey sent a pair of FBI agents to interview Flynn, who by then was a few days into his job as national security adviser. That was when Flynn lied repeatedly, denying that he had discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador [how could he not have known that Kislyak's phone calls were tapped, and the FBI knew he was lying?]

“McGahn [White House counsel] and Priebus [White House chief of staff] concluded that Flynn could not have forgotten the details of the discussions of sanctions and had instead been lying about what he discussed with Kislyak.”

Mr. McGahn and Mr. Priebus decided that Mr. Flynn needed to go and made that recommendation to Mr. Trump.

So it was Trump and his White House staff who made the decision to fire Flynn for what they believed was good cause, although they are now maintaining that Flynn is a victim of bullying by the Obama administration as part of a "silent coup" to take Trump down. In June of 2019 Flynn got a new lawyer, a woman named Sidney Powell, who stated that “it is increasingly apparent that General Flynn was targeted and taken out of the Trump administration for concocted and political purposes.”