On December 28, 2016, as his eight years in office came to a close, President Obama imposed new sanctions on Russia as punishment for its interference in the 2016 presidential election. Uncharacteristically, Russian president Vladimir Putin announced that he would take no immediate retaliation. President-elect Donald Trump tweeted that Putin’s move was “very smart.”
Putin’s restraint sparked confusion in Washington—until The Washington Post reported that Trump’s designated national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, spoke several times with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak on the day the new sanctions were announced. At first, Flynn insisted that the two had exchanged pleasantries and had not discussed the sanctions. Flynn offered that story to the public, privately to Vice President Pence—and, four days after Trump was inaugurated, to FBI agents sent to the White House to interview him about his Kislyak interactions. Flynn’s statements were false.
After the Post reported that Flynn had in fact talked sanctions with Kislyak, he resigned his White House job on February 14, 2017, after just twenty-four days in office. And ten months later, on December 1, he pleaded guilty to misleading the FBI and agreed to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III. This six-page statement of offense outlines exactly how Flynn lied. He agreed that he had asked Kislyak not to escalate the situation with the United States and had been told by Kislyak the next day that Putin’s restraint was a direct response to Flynn’s request. When Flynn resigned, Trump had said he had no idea that Flynn had talked to Kislyak about sanctions. But this document revealed that Flynn, who was traveling in the Dominican Republic at the time, had called a “senior official of the presidential transition team”—later identified as Flynn’s deputy K. T. McFarland—before speaking with Kislyak to strategize what Flynn should say about sanctions. McFarland was spending the holidays with other senior officials and Trump at the president-elect’s Florida club.
Flynn also agreed that he lied to the FBI about another contact with Kislyak, a December 2016 phone call in which Flynn asked if Russia would delay or vote against a proposed United Nations resolution critical of Israel. Flynn said he made this call at the direction of a “very senior member of the presidential transition team,” identified later as Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Flynn also agreed that he had submitted false information to the Department of Justice as he belatedly registered as a foreign lobbyist for work he conducted during the campaign to benefit the Turkish government.
Flynn was the highest-ranking Trump official to plead guilty and agree to assist Mueller, whose prosecutors praised Flynn’s cooperation as he sat for nineteen interviews over the following year. But at a stunning hearing in December 2018, US District Court judge Emmet G. Sullivan reminded the country of Flynn’s fall as he conducted secret work for a foreign government and lied to federal agents on the grounds of the White House: “Arguably,” Sullivan told Flynn, “you sold your country out.”