President Donald Trump said Saturday that he had fired his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty Friday in connection with the Russia investigation, because Flynn "lied to the vice president and the FBI."
While the president had previously said Flynn had been dismissed for having lied to Vice President Mike Pence about Flynn's interactions with the Russian ambassador, Trump's tweet on Saturday was the first suggestion that the firing was also related to Flynn's false statements to the FBI.
Trump tweeted, "I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"
Two people familiar with the message later denied that Trump had written the tweet, saying it was drafted by lawyer John Dowd.
[DOCUMENT: Read Flynn’s plea deal, indictment]
Lying to the FBI is a crime, and one that Flynn acknowledged Friday in pleading guilty and agreeing to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
Some read Trump's tweet to mean that he was now admitting that he had known of Flynn's misstatements to the FBI at the time he fired Flynn in February. But it was unclear what the tweet meant.
Later Saturday, Trump turned to Twitter again, asking why Flynn was prosecuted but his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, was not for her alleged misdeeds.
He tweeted: "So General Flynn lies to the FBI and his life is destroyed, while Crooked Hillary Clinton, on that now famous FBI holiday "interrogation" with no swearing in and no recording, lies many times...and nothing happens to her? Rigged system, or just a double standard?"
FLYNN’S FULL STATEMENT
After over 33 years of military service to our country, including nearly five years in combat away from
my family, and then my decision to continue to serve the United States, it has been extraordinarily
painful to endure these many months of false accusations of “treason” and other outrageous acts. Such
false accusations are contrary to everything I have ever done and stood for. But I recognize that the
actions I acknowledged in court today were wrong, and, through my faith in God, I am working to set
things right. My guilty plea and agreement to cooperate with the Special Counsel’s Office reflect a
decision I made in the best interests of my family and of our country. I accept full responsibility for my
actions.
December 1, 2017
[Via The Associated Press]
He then added: "Many people in our Country are asking what the "Justice" Department is going to do about the fact that totally Crooked Hillary, AFTER receiving a subpoena from the United States Congress, deleted and "acid washed" 33,000 Emails? No justice!"
Clinton was voluntarily interviewed for more than three hours at FBI headquarters in July 2016. She was not in custody during her interview and so, in accordance with standard FBI and Justice Department protocol, her interview would not have been recorded.
Flynn resigned in February, saying he had "inadvertently" briefed the vice president and others with "incomplete information" about his phone calls with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.
James Comey, the former FBI director, was leading an investigation into whether Trump's advisers had worked with Russia to affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Flynn, who served as Trump's national security adviser for less than a month, was on the FBI's radar over his Russia contacts.
A memo written by Comey revealed that Trump had asked him to end the inquiry into Flynn the day after Flynn was fired.
"I hope you can let this go," the president told Comey, according to the memo.
Comey did not comply, and he was fired in May.
If Trump had known at the time that Flynn lied to the FBI, that could amount to obstruction of justice. But the authorship of Saturday's tweet could reduce how significantly it communicates anything about when the president knew that Flynn had lied to the FBI.
[RUSSIA REPORT: Documents on Russian interference in election ]
Documents released as part of Flynn's plea agreement offer no insight into whether Trump knew about Flynn's talks with Kislyak.
Separately, emails among top transition officials, provided or described to The New York Times, suggest that Flynn was far from a rogue actor, showing that he was in close touch with other senior members of the Trump transition team both before and after he spoke with Kislyak about U.S. sanctions against Russia.
While Trump has disparaged as a Democratic "hoax" any claims that he or his aides had unusual interactions with Russian officials, the records suggest that the Trump transition team was focused on improving relations with Moscow and was willing to intervene to pursue that goal despite a request from then-President Barack Obama's administration that it not sow confusion about official U.S. policy before Trump took office.
On Dec. 29, a transition adviser to Trump, K.T. McFarland, wrote in an email to a colleague that sanctions announced hours before by Obama's administration in retaliation for Russian election meddling were aimed at discrediting Trump's victory. The sanctions could also make it much harder for Trump to ease tensions with Russia, "which has just thrown the USA election to him," she wrote in the emails obtained by The Times.
[PRESIDENT TRUMP: Timeline, appointments, executive orders + guide to actions in first 200 days]
It is not clear whether McFarland was saying she believed that the election had in fact been thrown. A White House lawyer said Friday that she meant only that the Democrats were portraying it that way.
But it is evident from the emails -- which were obtained from someone who had access to transition team communications -- that after learning that Obama would expel 35 Russian diplomats, the Trump team quickly strategized about how to reassure Russia. The Trump advisers feared that a cycle of retaliation between the United States and Russia would keep the spotlight on Moscow's election meddling, tarnishing Trump's victory and potentially hobbling his presidency from the start.
As part of the outreach, McFarland wrote, Flynn would be speaking with the Russian ambassador, Kislyak, hours after Obama's sanctions were announced.
"Key will be Russia's response over the next few days," McFarland wrote in an email to another transition official, Thomas Bossert, now the president's homeland security adviser.
In an interview, Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer handling the Russia inquiry, said there was nothing illegal or unethical about the transition team's actions. "It would have been political malpractice not to discuss sanctions," he said, adding that "the presidential transition guide specifically encourages contact with and outreach to foreign dignitaries."
The only problem, Cobb said, was that Flynn had lied to White House officials and to FBI agents about what he had told the Russian ambassador.
The Trump transition team ignored a pointed request from the Obama administration to avoid sending conflicting signals to foreign officials before the inauguration and to include State Department personnel when contacting them. Besides the Russian ambassador, Flynn, at the request of the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, contacted several other foreign officials to urge them to delay or block a U.N. resolution condemning Israel over its building of settlements.
Cobb said the Trump team had never agreed to avoid such interactions. But one former White House official has disputed that, telling Mueller's investigators that Trump transition officials had agreed to honor the Obama administration's request.
Bossert forwarded McFarland's Dec. 29 email exchange about the sanctions to six other Trump advisers, including Flynn; Reince Priebus, who had been named as chief of staff; Stephen Bannon, the senior strategist; and Sean Spicer, who would become press secretary.
Obama, she wrote, was trying to "box Trump in diplomatically with Russia," which could limit his options with other countries, including Iran and Syria. "Russia is key that unlocks door," she wrote.
In his phone call with Kislyak, Flynn asked that Russia "not escalate the situation," according to court documents released Friday. He later related the substance of the call -- including the discussion of sanctions -- to a senior transition official, believed to be McFarland. A few days later, he briefed others on the transition team.
Flynn's intervention appeared to have a dramatic effect. To the surprise of foreign policy experts, President Vladimir Putin of Russia did not immediately respond with retaliatory expulsions of Americans from Moscow.
Trump praised that decision in a tweet, writing: "Great move on delay (by V. Putin) -- I always knew he was very smart."
It is uncertain how involved Trump was in the discussions among his staff members of Flynn's conversation with the Russian ambassador. Spicer told reporters on the morning of Dec. 29 that the president-elect would be meeting with his national security team, including McFarland, that day. A phone call that included Trump, Flynn, McFarland, Priebus and Bannon was scheduled for 5 p.m., shortly after McFarland's email exchange. It is unclear whether the call took place.
Cobb said Trump did not know that Flynn had discussed sanctions with Kislyak in the call. After the inauguration, "Flynn specifically denied it to him, in the presence of witnesses," he said.
Information for this article was contributed by Christina Caron, Michael S. Schmidt, Sharon LaFraniere and Scott Shane of The New York Times; by Kristine Phillips, Aaron Blake, Carol D. Leonnig, Adam Entous, Devlin Barrett, Matt Zapotosky and John Wagner and staff members of The Washington Post; and by Calvin Woodward and Ken Thomas of The Associated Press.
A Section on 12/03/2017