Former US national security advisor Michael Flynn has admitted lying to the FBI in January during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Flynn was forced to resign in February, less than a month into the job, after deceiving the White House about a meeting with the Russian ambassador before Donald Trump took office, the BBC reports.
“About four days after Trump became president, Flynn made ‘materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statements’ to law enforcement about a meeting he had with then-Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, according to court documents,” The Guardian reports.
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Flynn “wilfully and knowingly” misled investigators about his meeting with Kislyak, by denying that he asked the Russian ambassador to “refrain from escalating the situation after the United States imposed new sanctions on Russia” during the presidential transition. In a separate meeting, the documents say, he also asked the ambassador to delay a vote on a UN resolution - another claim he falsely denied.
And Flynn “failed to recall” that Kislyak promised him that Russia would moderate its response to the US sanctions as per his request.
Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI at a court hearing today, reports The Washington Post.
Flynn is the most senior member of Trump’s administration to be charged in the ongoing investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump team. Paul Manafort, the president’s former campaign chairman, and Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy, were charged of money laundering last month but pleaded not guilty, says The Daily Telegraph. George Papadopoulos, Trump’s former campaign foreign policy adviser, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI over his connections to the Russian government.
Flynn was forced out of Trump’s team after the White House was warned by the Justice Department that Flynn “could be subjected to blackmail because his dealings with Russians hadn’t been disclosed”, according to the New York Daily News.
“After he left the administration, Flynn filed a foreign registration form showing that he hadn’t disclosed multiple contacts and payments from foreign entities while serving as a campaign adviser to Trump starting in February 2016.”
Anne Milgram, former attorney general for the state of New Jersey and former federal prosecutor, told The Guardian that the prosecutor’s decision to only charge Flynn with lying indicates that a deal has been struck to ensure his cooperation.
“The retired lieutenant general, who had failed to declare payments from Turkish and Russian sources and who was reportedly under investigation for an alleged role in a kidnapping plot, had appeared vulnerable to much more serious charges,” the newspaper says.
Flynn’s legal team has previously dismissed reports of his connections to the Russia investigation as “unfounded allegations, outrageous claims of treason, and vicious innuendo directed against him”, The Independent reports.
