Michael Flynn charged with making false statements to FBI about conversations with Russian ambassador – By Natasha Bertrand (businessinsider.com) / Dec 1 2017
The former national security adviser Michael Flynn was charged Friday with one count of making false statements to federal investigators.
He is expected to plead guilty to the charge on Friday.
Experts say it’s a sign he’s cooperating with the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 US election.
The former national security adviser Michael Flynn has been charged with making false statements to federal investigators about his conversations in December with Russia’s ambassador to the US at the time, Sergey Kislyak.
A plea hearing was scheduled for 10:30 a.m. ET Friday at the federal courthouse in Washington. Flynn is expected to plead guilty.
“This is completely indicative of cooperation with the government,” said Andrew Wright, a former associate counsel to President Barack Obama and Vice President Al Gore. “You have a right to a grand-jury indictment, but Flynn evidently waived that right in order to plead guilty. So that is a clear sign that he is cooperating.
“The price of admission for him was to plead guilty to a single-count felony,” Wright said. “That was the easiest one for the government to write and requires them to show the fewest cards.”
An indictment filed by the special counsel Robert Mueller’s office says Flynn “falsely stated” on December 29, 2016, that he did not ask Kislyak “to refrain from escalating the situation in response to sanctions that the United States had imposed against Russia that same day,” and that Flynn did not recall Kislyak “subsequently telling him that Russia had chosen to moderate its response to those sanctions as a result of his request.”
Obama imposed sanctions on Russia on December 29 over its meddling in the US election. Mueller is investigating that election interference and whether any Trump campaign associates colluded with Russian officials.
Flynn also told Mueller’s team that he did not ask Kislyak to “delay the vote on or defeat a pending United Nations Security Council resolution” and that Kislyak “subsequently never described to Flynn Russia’s response to his request.”
Flynn is the 3rd person in Trump’s orbit charged
Flynn is the third person in President Donald Trump’s orbit to be indicted as part of Mueller’s investigation.
A federal grand jury indicted Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and Manafort’s former business associate Rick Gates on 12 counts at the end of October. Manafort and Gates pleaded not guilty to the charges, which were related to money laundering, tax fraud, and failing to register as foreign agents.
NBC reported last month that Mueller had compiled enough evidence to bring charges against Flynn and his son, Michael Flynn Jr., related to Flynn’s lobbying work throughout the latter half of 2016 — while he was a top Trump campaign surrogate — for a businessman with ties to the Turkish government.
It had not been reported previously, however, that Flynn had lied to federal agents about his conversations with Kislyak.
Former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee earlier this year that she had warned the White House about Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak so that the Trump administration “could take action” amid concerns Flynn could have been subject to blackmail by Russians.
Yates said she had had “two in-person meetings and one phone call” with the White House counsel, Don McGahn, in January about Flynn.
“We told them that the conduct Flynn had engaged in [speaking to Kislyak] was problematic in and of itself,” Yates recalled. “We said that the vice president was entitled to know that the information he was giving the American people was not true. And we told him we were concerned that the American people had been misled about what General Flynn had done, and that we weren’t the only ones who knew about this.”
While he was the vice president-elect, Pence insisted in an interview with CBS that Flynn and Kislyak “did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia” — a statement that turned out to be untrue and set off alarm bells at the Justice Department.
Yates said the Russians “also knew what Flynn had done, and that he had misled the vice president and others.”
“This was a problem, because the Russians likely had proof of this information, which created a situation where he could be blackmailed by the Russians,” she added.
Flynn was forced to resign roughly 18 days after Yates first warned McGahn about his conversations with Kislyak.
PB/TK – To get Flynn to talk they had to indict him on the lesser charge and not go after Flynn Jr.
