Michael Flynn
Expected to Plead
Guilty to Lying to
the F.B.I.
Expected to Plead
Guilty to Lying to
the F.B.I.
New York Times
8 mins ago
Trump's ex-adviser
Flynn expected to
plead guilty to lying
to FBI
Flynn expected to
plead guilty to lying
to FBI
Michael Flynn Arrives at Court for Plea Deal
Michael Flynn, President Trump’s
former national security adviser, was charged with lying to the F.B.I.
about two conversations with the Russian ambassador last December.
By CBS, VIA REUTERS.
Photo by Stephen Crowley/The New York Times.
Watch in Times Video »
WASHINGTON
— President Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn,
is expected to plead guilty on Friday to lying to the F.B.I. about two
conversations with the Russian ambassador last December during the
presidential transition.
The charges were the latest indication that Mr. Flynn was cooperating
with the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III,
into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. Mr. Flynn
was scheduled to appear in federal court in Washington at 10:30 on
Friday morning.
A
plea deal with Mr. Flynn brings Mr. Mueller’s investigation into Mr.
Trump’s inner circle. Such an agreement suggests that Mr. Flynn provided
information to prosecutors, which may help advance the inquiry.
The
development came at a particularly sensitive moment for the White
House, just as Mr. Trump and Republican congressional leaders are
toiling to hold together a tenuous coalition to push through a large tax
cut plan. It marked an unwelcome headline at a time when the
president’s team is hoping to focus public attention on what they argue
is an impressive list of accomplishments in his first year.
The White House had no immediate response on Friday to requests for comment on Mr. Flynn’s guilty plea.
Continue reading the main story
Mr.
Flynn’s lawyers recently told the president’s legal team that they
could no longer discuss the special counsel’s investigation as they had
been — a sign that Mr. Flynn had decided to cooperate with the
prosecution. The investigation has dogged Mr. Trump’s first year in
office.
Mr.
Flynn is the fourth Trump associate to be charged. He was accused of
making false statements to F.B.I. agents about two discussions with the
Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey I. Kislyak. Lying to the
F.B.I. carries a penalty of up to five years in prison.
In
one of the conversations described in court documents, the men
discussed an upcoming United Nations Security Council vote on whether to
condemn Israel’s building of settlements. At the time, the Obama
administration was preparing to allow a Security Council vote on the
matter.
Mr.
Mueller’s investigators have learned through witnesses and documents
that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked the Trump
transition team to lobby other countries to help Israel, according to
two people briefed on the inquiry. Investigators have learned that Mr.
Flynn and Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, took
the lead in those efforts. Mr. Mueller’s team has emails that show Mr.
Flynn saying he would work to kill the vote, the people briefed on the
matter said.
In
the other discussion, according to court documents, Mr. Flynn asked Mr.
Kislyak that Moscow refrain from escalating the situation in response
to sanctions announced by the Obama administration that day against Russia over its interference in the presidential election.
The
F.B.I. interviewed Mr. Flynn at the White House four days after the
president was sworn into office. American intelligence agencies had
grown so concerned about Mr. Flynn’s communications with Mr. Kislyak and
false accounts that he provided to Vice President Mike Pence that the
acting attorney general at the time, Sally Q. Yates, warned the White
House that its national security adviser might be compromised by the
Russians.
Mr. Flynn served just 24 days, resigning on Feb. 13
after it was revealed that he had misled Mr. Pence and other top White
House officials about his conversations with Mr. Kislyak.
See the Charges: U.S. v. Michael T. Flynn
Credit
But
after accepting Mr. Flynn’s resignation, the president repeatedly said
he thought Mr. Flynn was “a very good person” who had been treated
poorly. The day after Mr. Flynn resigned, Mr. Trump told the F.B.I.
director at the time, James B. Comey, “I hope you can see your way clear
to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” according to a memo Mr. Comey wrote describing that meeting.
In a news conference on Feb. 15, two days after Mr. Flynn’s resignation, the president blamed the media.
“General
Flynn is a wonderful man. I think he has been treated very, very
unfairly by the media, as I call it, the fake media in many cases,” Mr.
Trump said. “And I think it is really a sad thing that he was treated so
badly.”
But
even before Mr. Trump said he would appoint Mr. Flynn as his national
security adviser, questions swirled around Mr. Flynn’s connections to
Russia, particularly a dinner he was paid to attend in Moscow in 2015
when he sat at the same table as Russian President Vladimir V. Putin.
Throughout
the campaign, Mr. Flynn was an intense and vocal advocate of closer
relations with Mr. Putin, arguing that the United States must work with
the Russians to battle extremists. After he was named national security
adviser, he continued to urge closer cooperation between the two
nations.
The
White House has said that Mr. Flynn has no information to provide
prosecutors that would hurt Mr. Trump. A deal between Mr. Flynn and the
special counsel is nonetheless significant. He was a key figure in the
Trump campaign and the transition team. As Mr. Mueller tries to
understand the behind-the-scenes story of those months, hearing from Mr.
Flynn is important.
Mr.
Flynn was a sometimes high-profile member of Mr. Trump’s campaign,
often appearing on Fox News to advocate for the candidate’s foreign
policy views.
Like
Mr. Trump, Mr. Flynn was a brash, outspoken critic of former President
Barack Obama, asserting that Shariah, or Islamic law, was spreading in
the United States under his watch — a claim that was repeatedly debunked
— and saying that the United States is in a “world war” with Islamist
militants.
A
controversial figure in the defense and intelligence community before
joining Mr. Trump’s campaign, Mr. Flynn served as the head of Mr.
Obama’s Defense Intelligence Agency. But he repeatedly clashed with
Obama administration officials, who succeeded in persuading the former
president to push him out of the intelligence job.
After
he left the Obama administration, he formed a consulting group that led
to inquiries into questionable lobbying for foreign governments,
including the Turkish government, and hazy business ties with Middle
Eastern countries.
Investigators
working for the special counsel have questioned witnesses about Mr.
Flynn’s dealings with the Turkish government and whether he was secretly
paid by Turkish officials during the campaign. After he left the White
House, Mr. Flynn disclosed that the Turkish government had paid him more
than $500,000 to represent its interests in a dispute with the United
States.
White
House officials had been bracing for troublesome developments in the
special counsel investigation, even as the president and some of his
senior advisers had been saying in recent weeks that they believed Mr.
Mueller was nearing the end of his probe.
Mr.
Trump was not scheduled to make any public comments on Friday, though
Mr. Flynn’s plea provided an awkward backdrop for remarks he was
scheduled to give behind closed doors at an afternoon holiday reception
with members of the news media.
Correction: December 1, 2017
An earlier version of this article said Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser to President Trump, had pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. He was expected to plead guilty but had not entered a plea when the article was first published.
An earlier version of this article said Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser to President Trump, had pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. He was expected to plead guilty but had not entered a plea when the article was first published.
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