Newly released documents about the origins of the criminal case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn show that FBI officials feared that the new Trump White House might view the bureau as “playing games” if it sought to interview him without disclosing exactly what it was up to.
The four pages of records provided to Flynn’s defense attorneys last week and unsealed on Wednesday by a federal judge reflect internal brainstorming at the FBI in January 2017 about how to approach the politically explosive investigation into Flynn’s contacts with the Russian ambassador weeks earlier, during the presidential transition.
Flynn’s lawyers and supporters said the notes and emails were “smoking gun” evidence that he was railroaded by FBI officials intent on bringing him down. But defenders of the FBI’s handling of the investigation said the records showed thorough and thoughtful deliberation about how to handle an exquisitely sensitive inquiry into the president’s top national security aide just days into a new administration.
One page of handwritten notes dated the same day Flynn was interviewed, Jan. 24, 2017, appears to show a debate about how forthcoming to be with him or others at the White House about the nature of the FBI investigation.
“If we’re seen as playing games, WH will be furious,” the notes say. “Protect our institution by not playing games.”
The notes also reflect deliberation about whether confronting Flynn with a lie in real time would be helpful to their investigation.
“What is our goal? Truth/admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?” the notes read.
The public court filings that led to U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan’s order on Wednesday unsealing the records do not indicate who authored the handwritten notes.
However, they appear to bear the initials of E.W. “Bill“ Priestap, the head of the FBI‘s counterintelligence division at the time, and relate to a meeting with the bureau‘s then-deputy director, Andrew McCabe. McCabe was the one who ultimately called Flynn that day to ask him to meet with two FBI agents, Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka.
One issue that FBI officials considered was whether to show Flynn that they already knew details of his conversations with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the U.S. at the time. That knowledge came from court-ordered intercepts of the ambassador’s communications, but those details are redacted from the records that were released on Wednesday.
“We regularly show subjects evidence, with the goal of getting them to admit their wrongdoing,” the notes add. “I don’t see how getting someone to admit their wrongdoing is going easy on him.”
However, the notes also reflect seesawing positions on the matter: “I agreed yesterday that we shouldn’t show Flynn [redacted] if he didn’t admit,” they began.
According to the FBI’s official reports on the interview, the bureau’s agents never confronted Flynn with the intercepts during the session, although the then-national security adviser indicated that the FBI probably knew what had transpired. Nevertheless, Flynn denied discussing U.S. sanctions against Russia with Kislyak.
Acting Attorney General Sally Yates did go to White House counsel Don McGahn with evidence that Flynn’s statement on that account was false. President Donald Trump later fired Flynn, saying he’d lied to Vice President Mike Pence and the FBI.
Flynn’s comments in that interview were at the heart of his decision to plead guilty in December 2017 to a felony false-statement charge brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. Flynn now insists he never lied, and he is trying to back out of that plea.
The newly disclosed notes show that FBI officials even appear to have considered Trump’s political worldview as they assessed whether maintaining cordial relations with the White House might help the bureau win support for its work aimed at combating the influence of foreign-government actors in the U.S.
“Admin’s economic emphasis could be good for our CI [counterintelligence] efforts,” a sentence scrawled at the top margin of the handwritten page says.
Though the notes appear to reflect an unsettled deliberation, Trump allies quickly insisted on Wednesday that they amounted to irrefutable proof that the Flynn interview was a setup.
“Flynn doesn’t need to be pardoned, he did nothing wrong, he needs to be fully exonerated with all charges dropped immediately!” Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, wrote on Twitter.
The president himself tweeted out a Fox News story about the development.
Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, tweeted: “Clear now that General Flynn was set up by dirty cops at the highest levels of our government.”
In a court filing last week, Flynn’s lead lawyer, Sidney Powell, called the documents “stunning” and said the new evidence “proves Mr. Flynn’s allegations of having been deliberately set up and framed by corrupt agents at the top of the FBI.”
Supporters of the Mueller investigation said the documents contained no earth-shattering revelations and failed to demonstrate that the FBI unethically unleashed a “perjury trap“ for Flynn or that prosecutors withheld critical evidence Flynn‘s attorneys were entitled to under a half-century-old Supreme Court case, Brady v. U.S.
“Flynn told the Russian ambassador to ignore U.S. sanctions, for goodness sake! FBI had a legitimate purpose and even a duty to question Flynn,“ former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade told POLITICO via email on Wednesday night. “This is not a Brady violation. A Brady violation requires suppression of material evidence that tends to negate guilt or punishment. The strategy of the agents does not negate Flynn’s lies.“
Justice Department prosecutors agreed to a request by Flynn’s lawyers that the records be made public in the court file.
Prosecutors have previously defended the FBI’s work on the case and insisted that any mistakes or misjudgements by bureau personnel were immaterial to Flynn’s guilt.
It is unclear whether the Justice Department’s view on the case has shifted. Prosecutors have told Judge Sullivan that they are mulling a request by Flynn to withdraw his guilty plea on the grounds that he got bad advice from his previous defense lawyers.
The documents made public on Wednesday were obtained through a review that Attorney General William Barr ordered in January following persistent complaints by Flynn’s attorneys and supporters that the former national security adviser and Defense Intelligence Agency chief was framed.
Barr picked the U.S. attorney in St. Louis, Jeff Jensen, to oversee that review. No conclusion from Jensen has been made public, and Justice Department officials say his work is ongoing.
Last week, however, prosecutors began turning over to Flynn’s lawyers some of the records Jensen has turned up. A second set of documents, which Powell said totaled 11 pages, were given to defense lawyers on Wednesday.
On Twitter, the defense lawyer described the new batch as “even more appalling” than the material handed over last week.
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April 30, 2020 at 08:48AM
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Documents show FBI debated how to handle investigation of Michael Flynn - POLITICO
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