When former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn met with the FBI about his contacts with Russia’s then-ambassador Sergey Kislyak, the White House was kept completely in the dark.
Flynn brought no lawyers. He didn’t tell President Donald Trump or any other senior administration officials, even though the meeting took place in the West Wing.
The FBI interview, conducted a year ago today, led to the extraordinary spectacle of Trump’s chief national security aide being ousted after just 24 days in the administration over concerns that he may have promised Moscow some sanctions relief while Barack Obama was still president.
Flynn’s secretive approach to his grilling was reported by NBC News, which described a scene where the FBI unexpectedly turned a perfunctory meeting into an exploration of his secret talks with Kislyak.
When former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn met with the FBI last year about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador, he hid it from the White House and didn’t bring a lawyer
Flynn allegedly spoke with then-ambassador Sergey Kislyak about a possible loosening of U.S.-Russia sanctions – during the weeks before Donald Trump became president
‘No one knew that any of this was happening,’ a senior White House official told the network.
‘Apparently it was not clear to Flynn that this was about his personal conduct,’ another said, ‘So he didn’t think of bringing his own lawyer.’
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s wide-ranging investigation into unproven claims that Trump’s campaign team colluded with Russia has led him to burrow deep inside the White House’s law enforcement and intelligence leadership.
Flynn pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI, in a move that was seen as a signal that he was cooperating with the probe.
Other top-echelon leaders who are, in some form, participating in the investigation include Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, former FBI director James Comey, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, NSA chief Mike Rogers, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former acting attorney general Sally Yates.
It was Yates who first told White House lawyers that Flynn had sat for an FBI interview, two days after it happened.
Trump fired Comey after allegedly asking him for a pledge of loyalty and reportedly hinting that he should drop his investigation of Flynn – claims that Trump has strongly denied.
Pompeo was reportedly asked by Trump to lean on Comey.
Trump has called the special counsel investigation into possible collusion between his campaign aides and Moscow a ‘witch hunt’ and a ‘hoax’
Despite Flynn meeting with FBI agents in the West Wing, neither the president nor the White House counsel was aware it was happening
Sessions was questioned for several hours last week, making him the first Trump cabinet member to submit to an interview with Mueller’s team.
He recused himself from the investigation early in 2017, declaring that he couldn’t lead it because he had been a Trump campaign adviser.
That move led to Mueller’s appointment.
The result, nearly a year on, is an ever-expanding probe that appears to be zeroing in on the Oval Office as Mueller focuses on determining whether obstruction of justice charges are warranted.
NBC reported that Pompeo, Coats and Rogers are ‘peripheral witnesses’ linked with the part of the saga related to the Comey firing.
Former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon is expected to meet with Mueller’s team this month.
It’s unclear whether the president himself will agree to meet with Mueller and his investigators.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Tuesday that Trump ‘wants to see this end, and he wants to see them finally come to the same conclusion that I think most everyone in America has, that there is nothing to this.’
She told reporters that Mueller’s group has ‘spent the better part – most of you have spent the better part of a year – looking, digging, obsessing over trying to find something and have yet to find anything.’
Trump has with regularity called the investigation a Democrat-generated ‘hoax’ and a ‘witch-hunt.’