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Flynn pleads guilty to lying to the FBI
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President Trump’s short-lived first national security advisor, Michael Flynn, on Friday morning pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents in one of the most dramatic developments yet in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the US election.
Flynn is the first official to hold a formal office in the Trump administration to be brought down by the Mueller probe, which is examining potential ties between the campaign and Moscow during the 2016 election.
The plea agreement is also a strong signal that Flynn has become a cooperating witness for Mueller.
A low-level campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, has also pleaded guilty to lying to investigators and is cooperating with Mueller’s team, according to court documents — but Flynn, as a one-time close confidante of the president and a sitting administration official for 24 days, is a much bigger fish.
Two other campaign officials, former campaign chair Paul Manafort and his aide Robert Gates, also face charges in the investigation. They have both pleaded not guilty.
According to court documents filed by Mueller, Flynn lied when he told investigators that he did not ask Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak to 'refrain from escalating the situation' in response to sanctions that then-President Obama had levied on the Russian Federation. Flynn also lied, the counsel alleges, when Flynn said he did not ask the ambassador to either delay or defeat a related U.N. Security Council vote.
Flynn's misrepresentation of his conversations with Kislyak — which took place in December, before Trump took office — were the justification for his ouster from the White House after just 24 days.
Reporting based on leaks of U.S. surveillance revealed in February that Flynn had misled Vice President Pence about the contents the phone call, saying that sanctions were not mentioned — an account Pence then repeated to the American people.
At the time, then-deputy Attorney General Sally Yates warned the White House that Flynn created a 'compromise situation' and could have been 'blackmailed.'
“We weren’t the only ones that knew all of this,” Yates testified earlier this year, referring to the revelation that Flynn misled Pence about the true content of a December call with Kislyak. “The Russians also knew about what General Flynn had done. The Russians also knew that General Flynn had misled the vice president and others.”
Flynn was interviewed by the FBI in its investigation into Russian interference in the election in January, when Mueller's office now says he made false statements about the phone calls with Kislyak.
The White House fired him 18 days after learning of his misrepresentation.
Speculation has swirled for weeks about when — or if — Mueller would move to charge Flynn, who was seen almost universally as legally vulnerable for a myriad of reasons beyond the Kislyak calls.
According to multiple outlets, Flynn is also under investigation for an alleged quid pro quo with the Turkish government, in which Flynn would have been paid millions of dollars in exchange for the extradition of a Muslim cleric living in the U.S.
Federal records show that Flynn did not register the $530,000 he was paid during the 2016 campaign for work he did that the Justice Department said principally benefitted Turkey — a potential violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
And heightening the personal drama, Flynn's son is also thought to be a focus of the Mueller probe, giving the special counsel another way to put pressure on Flynn.
The Kislyak calls, meanwhile, appear to be a potential violation of the Logan Act, an obscure and likely unenforceable 1799 law prohibiting private citizens from engaging in foreign policy. No one has ever been successfully prosecuted under that law.
Given the breadth of potential charges Flynn could have faced — at least if the reporting is accurate — the single count of lying to investigators is incredibly light, analysts say. It carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
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