as they try to keep Gen Flynn muzzled...
https://www.theepochtimes.com/flynn...oddities-and-unusual-occurrences_3382308.html
The case of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn is inevitably heading toward its conclusion. While the presiding district judge, Emmet Sullivan, is trying to keep it going, there’s only so much he can do, chiefly because there’s nobody left to prosecute the case after the Department of Justice (DOJ) dropped it last month.
In the latest developments, the District of Columbia appeals court set a hearing in the case on June 12, while the DOJ’s solicitor general himself, as well as five of his deputies, urged the court to order the lower-court judge to accept the case dismissal.
“I cannot overstate how big of a deal this is,” commented appellate attorney John Reeves, former assistant Missouri attorney general, in a series of tweets on June 1.
Personal involvement of the solicitor general “is highly unusual and rare,” he said.
“Unusual” seems a fitting euphemism for the Flynn case, which has been filled with contradictions, falsehoods, apparent blunders, extraordinary moves, and strange coincidences.
The Epoch Times has so far counted 85 such instances.
Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency during the Obama administration and former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty on Dec. 1, 2017, to one count of lying to FBI agents during a Jan. 24, 2017, interview.
The FBI officially opened an investigation on Flynn on Aug. 16, 2016, based on a suspicion that he “may wittingly or unwittingly be involved in activity on behalf of the Russian Federation which may constitute a federal crime or threat to the national security.”
What activity? The case was opened under a broader investigation into whether the Trump 2016 presidential campaign conspired with Russia to steal emails from the Democratic National Committee and release them through Wikileaks.
Flynn was an adviser to the campaign at the time.
By its own admission, the FBI had little reason to suspect the campaign.
The bureau learned from the Australian government that its then-ambassador to the UK, Alexander Downer, spoke with Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who “suggested” that the campaign received “some kind of suggestion” that Russia could help it by anonymously releasing some information damaging to Trump’s opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The FBI didn’t know what Papadopoulos actually said or what he was talking about.
Officially, this information was used by the FBI to comb through its databases for information on people associated with the Trump campaign and open investigations on four individuals supposedly linked to Russia.
Because Flynn’s paid speaking engagements in years past included some for Russian companies—one for Kaspersky Lab and one for RT television in Moscow—the FBI decided to open a counterintelligence investigation on the retired three-star general.
But the FBI seemed to have trouble getting its story straight.
1. Comey Contradiction
The FBI officially opened the four individual cases in mid-August 2016.
But former FBI Director James Comey testified to Congress that he was briefed already “at the end of July that the FBI had opened counterintelligence investigations of four individuals to see if there was a connection between any of those four and the Russian effort.”
2. Unlikely Target
Suspecting a man with patriotic bona fides of Flynn’s caliber of having colluded with Russia based on two speaking engagements seemed particularly unusual.
Flynn’s command of military intelligence to aid American troops in combat has earned him great praise.
“Mike Flynn’s impact on the nation’s War on Terror probably trumps any other single person,” wrote then-Brig. Gen. John Mulholland in Flynn’s 2007 performance review.
Mulholland went as far as calling Flynn “easily the best intelligence professional of any service serving today.”
Flynn was driven out of his post in 2014 after he repeatedly embarrassed President Barack Obama by insisting, contrary to the administration’s official stance, that a resurgence of Islamic terrorism in the Middle East was imminent.
Two months after his resignation, the rise of ISIS proved him right.
3. A Name for the Spotlight
The Russia probe was titled “Crossfire Hurricane” (CH), and Flynn was given the code name “Crossfire Razor.”
This was unusual, according to Marc Ruskin, a 27-year veteran of the FBI and an Epoch Times contributor.
Rank-and-file agents would never pick a name like this, he told The Epoch Times in a previous interview.
“They would mock it as being overly dramatic,” he said.
4. Snooping During Briefing
The day after opening the Flynn case, the FBI participated in a strategic intelligence briefing given to Donald Trump and two of his advisers by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Because Flynn was to be present, the FBI took the extraordinary step of sending in supervisory special agent Joe Pientka to collect intel on Flynn for the investigation. Pientka was to assess Flynn’s “overall mannerisms” and listen for “any kind of admission” that could be used by the bureau, the DOJ’s inspector general (IG) said in a Dec. 9 report on the CH investigation (pdf).
The IG raised the question of whether snooping on officials the FBI is supposed to brief could have a “chilling effect” on any such intelligence briefings in the future.
5. Dossier Coincidence
The FBI directly targeted four Trump campaign aides, opening cases on three of them—Papadopoulos, Carter Page, and Paul Manafort—on Aug. 10, 2016. The IG never received an explanation for why the Flynn case was opened later. Incidentally, Page and Manafort had already been mentioned in the infamous Steele dossier since July 28, 2016. Flynn’s name, however, was only mentioned in the dossier report dated Aug. 10, 2016.
The dossier, which drummed up unsubstantiated allegations of a Trump–Russia conspiracy, was being spread to the media, the FBI, the State Department, the DOJ, and Congress by operatives funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
The CH investigation team members at the FBI told the IG they only received the dossier in September 2016, but there are indications they may have been aware of it earlier.
6. Halper Coincidence
One of the CH case agents, Stephen Somma, happened to have a longstanding relationship with Stephan Halper, a Cambridge professor who was also a longtime political operative and FBI informant.
Somma and another agent met with Halper on Aug. 11, 2016, and learned that, in a stunning coincidence, Halper was already in contact with Page, had known Manafort for years, and “had been previously acquainted with Michael Flynn,” the IG report said
The CH team “couldn’t believe [their] luck,” Somma told the IG.
7. Halper’s Story
Halper was accused of spreading rumors, starting in late 2016, that Flynn had an affair with a Russian woman while visiting the UK in 2014 for a dinner hosted by the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar co-convened at the time by Halper.
An “established” FBI informant told the CH team that the woman jumped in a cab with Flynn after the dinner and joined him for a train ride to London (pdf).
The woman in question was Svetlana Lokhova, a Cambridge historian of Russian descent. She has denied the rumor, saying that she was picked up after the dinner by her husband.
She said Halper was the one spreading the rumor to the media and the FBI, even though he didn’t actually attend the event. She unsuccessfully sued Halper for defamation in May 2019.
Somehow, Steele also became privy to the rumor and shared it with Adam Kramer, an aide to the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Kramer testified to Congress that he was in regular contact with Steele between Nov. 28, 2016, and early March 2017.
8. Unmasking
The names of Americans are normally masked—that is, replaced with generic names—in foreign intelligence reports. Many senior government officials have the authority to ask for names to be unmasked for various reasons, such as to understand the intelligence. There were dozens of unmasking requests for reports related to Flynn, between Nov. 8, 2016, and Jan. 31, 2017 (pdf). The number of unmasking requests has been described as alarming by some commentators, while others described it as routine.
9. Non-masking
There are also indications that Flynn’s name was never masked in summaries or transcripts of his calls with then-Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak on Dec. 29, 2016, and in the following days. FBI leaders were distributing the documents to top Obama officials. Even President Barack Obama himself was briefed on them on or before Jan. 5, 2017.
10. Who Briefed Obama?
Comey testified to Congress that it was then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper who briefed Obama on the Flynn–Kislyak calls (pdf). Clapper, however, denied this to Congress.
11. ‘Unusual’
Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, memorialized a Jan. 5, 2017, meeting with Obama, Comey, and then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. Rice wrote in an email to herself that Obama asked Comey whether he should withhold any Russia-related information from the incoming administration and from Flynn in particular.
“Potentially,” Comey replied, adding that “the level of communication” between Flynn and Kislyak was “unusual,” she wrote. There’s no indication Flynn was talking to Kislyak unusually often. He was at the time responsible for laying the groundwork for Trump’s foreign relations as president and was frequently on the phone with foreign dignitaries.
12. Late Memo
Rice’s memo itself is unusual. She emailed it to herself more than two weeks after the meeting took place, on the day of Trump’s inauguration.
13. Strzok Intervention
On Jan. 4, the FBI was already in the process of closing Flynn’s case. But the bureau’s counterintelligence operations head at the time, Peter Strzok, scrambled to keep it open, noting that the “7th floor,” meaning the FBI’s top leadership, was involved.
14. McCabe–Comey Contradiction
Comey testified that he authorized the Flynn case “to be closed at the … end of December, beginning of January.”
But his then-deputy, Andrew McCabe, told Congress that they weren’t in “the closing planning phase” at the time.
“I don’t think a closure would have been soon,” he said.
15. Shaky Theory
FBI documents and Comey’s testimony indicate that the bureau kept the Flynn case open solely based on a legal theory that he may have violated the Logan Act, even though the DOJ made clear that such charges wouldn’t pass muster in court—nobody has ever been successfully prosecuted for a Logan Act violation and the government last tried in 1852.
The law prohibits private citizens from engaging in diplomacy on their own with countries the United States is in dispute with. Not only have questions been raised as to whether the law would pass today’s constitutional scrutiny, which places greater emphasis on First Amendment protections, but also there’s no indication the law was conceived to apply to a president-elect’s incoming top adviser.
16. Call Leaks
In early January, information about Flynn’s calls with Kislyak was leaked to then-Washington Post reporter Adam Entous. He said there was a discussion at the paper about what to do with the information, as it would have been expected of Flynn, given his position, to talk to Kislyak (pdf). In the end, the paper ran a column on Jan. 12 by David Ignatius speculating that Flynn may have violated the Logan Act if he discussed fresh sanctions imposed on Russia during the calls.
Obama imposed the sanctions on Russian entities, including its intelligence services, on Dec. 29, 2016. At the same time, he also expelled 35 Russian intelligence officers.
17. Denial
The calls “had nothing whatsoever to do with the sanctions,” incoming Vice President Mike Pence told CBS News on Jan. 15, 2017, in an interview the network almost wholly dedicated to questions about Russia.
This wasn’t completely true.
Kislyak did bring up the issue of sanctions during the call, though Flynn didn’t engage him in a conversation on the topic.
Flynn raised the issue of the expulsions, which is technically a separate issue from sanctions, though both were announced at the same time. He asked for “cool heads to prevail” and for Russia to only respond reciprocally, as further escalation into a “tit for tat” could lead to the countries shutting down each other’s embassies, complicating future diplomacy.
18. ‘Blackmailable’
Yates said she wanted to inform Trump’s White House about the Kislyak calls as Russia would know that what Pence said wasn’t true and could thus blackmail Flynn with the information, according to an Aug. 15, 2017, FBI report from her interview with the Mueller team.
According to Ruskin, this was hardly a blackmail situation, which ordinarily involves serious compromising information, such as evidence of bribery or sexual misconduct.
Comey acknowledged to Congress in March 2017 that the idea that Flynn was compromised struck him “as a bit of a reach.”
19. Comey Blocked Information
Despite issues with Yates’s argument, informing the White House may have indeed cleared up the situation. However, Comey blocked it, saying it could have interfered with the investigation of Flynn—despite that it appears there was nothing for the bureau to investigate. At that point, the DOJ already had disapproved of the Logan Act idea. In any case, the probe was supposed to be about Russian collusion. The bureau could have closed it and opened a new one on the Logan Act, if it indeed had had sufficient predication. But it never opened such an investigation, the DOJ noted in its motion to dismiss Flynn’s case.
20. Another Comey–McCabe Contradiction
In the days before Jan. 24, 2017, top FBI officials were discussing plans to interview Flynn. Comey said the point of the interview was to find out why Flynn didn’t tell Pence that sanctions were discussed during the call (even though Flynn wasn’t actually the one talking about sanctions).
“My judgment was we could not close the investigation of Mr. Flynn without asking him what is the deal here. That was the purpose,” Comey testified.
McCabe, however, told a different story when then-Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) asked him, “Was [Flynn] interviewed because the Vice President relied upon information from him in a national interview?”
“No. I don’t remember that being a motivating factor behind the interview,” McCabe said.
21. No Mention of Pence
During the interview, the agents didn’t ask Flynn about what he did or didn’t tell Pence—an unusual approach if the point, as Comey said, was to find out why Flynn hadn’t “been candid” with Pence. The FBI, in fact, had no idea what Flynn did or didn’t tell Pence.
22. Slipped-In Warning
Agents regularly warn interviewees that lying to federal officers is a crime. Before the Flynn interview, however, McCabe’s special counsel Lisa Page emailed another FBI lawyer asking how the warning should be given and whether there was a way “to just casually slip that in.”
23. No Warning
In the end, the agents never gave Flynn any such warning.
24. ‘Get Him to Lie … Get Him Fired?’
The FBI officials agreed that the agents wouldn’t show Flynn the transcripts of the calls. If he said something that diverged from them, they would ask again, slipping in some words from the transcript. If that didn’t jog his memory, they were not to confront him about it.
On the day of the interview, then-FBI head of counterintelligence Bill Priestap wrote a note saying he told other officials to “rethink” the approach.
“What’s our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?” he wrote, noting, “We regularly show subjects evidence.”
Apparently, his concerns were ignored.
25. Discouraging Having a Lawyer Present
On the day of the interview, McCabe spoke with Flynn on the phone to ask him for the interview. McCabe said he told Flynn he wanted the interview done “as quickly, quietly, and discreetly as possible.” If Flynn wanted anybody to sit in, such as one of the White House lawyers, the DOJ would have to be involved, McCabe told him.
According to Ruskin, that was “egregious” behavior akin to discouraging a subject of an investigation from having a lawyer present for an interview.
26. No White House Notice
An FBI interview of a president’s national security adviser is a big deal. Normally, it would warrant a back-and-forth between the White House and the bureau on the scope, content, purpose, and other parameters. Most likely, multiple White House lawyers would sit in.
Comey, however, said in a public forum that he just sent the agents in, taking advantage of the fact that it was “early enough”—only four days after the inauguration.
27. No Notice Given to DOJ
According to Yates, Comey didn’t consult the DOJ about his intention to interview Flynn, even though the department would usually be involved in such decisions.
28. Not Quite a Denial From Flynn
After the interview, in which Strzok and supervisory special agent Pientka extensively questioned Flynn about his conversations with Kislyak, Comey said that Flynn denied talking to the ambassador about the sanctions. But the agents’ notes indicate that though Flynn denied it at first, he seemed unsure when the agents asked again.
“Not really. I don’t remember. It wasn’t, ‘Don’t do anything,’” he said, according to the notes.
Flynn said in a Jan. 29 declaration to the court that he still doesn’t remember talking to Kislyak about sanctions.
“I told the agents that ‘tit-for-tat’ is a phrase I use, which suggests that the topic of sanctions could have been raised,” he said.
29. UN Vote Denial
Based on the agent’s notes, Flynn did deny asking for Russia to delay a U.N. vote in Israeli settlements. One of the call transcripts indicates he in fact made such a request.
Flynn told the agents he was calling multiple countries regarding the vote, but it was more an exercise of how quickly he could get foreign officials on the phone since there was no way the transition team could convince enough countries to actually change the outcome. Indeed, the vote passed with only the United States abstaining.
30. No Indication of Deception
The agents came back with the impression “that Flynn was not lying or did not think he was lying,” according to Strzok.
Comey seemed on the fence.
“I don’t know. I think there is an argument to be made that he lied. It is a close one,” he testified.
31. Flynn Knew They Knew
According to McCabe, Flynn expressed awareness before the interview that the FBI knew exactly what he said during the Kislyak calls.
“You listen to everything they [Russian representatives] say,” Flynn told him, according to McCabe’s notes from that day.
32. Belated Report
The FBI interview summary, form FD-302, is required to be completed within five days of the interview. Flynn’s, however, took more than two weeks.
33. Rewritten 302
Strzok texted Page on Feb. 10, 2017, he was “trying to not completely rewrite” the 302 “so as to save [redacted] voice.” The redacted name was most likely Pientka’s.
34. Missing Original
Flynn was ultimately provided two draft versions of the 302—one from Feb. 10, 2016, and one from the day after. But based on Strzok’s texts, there should have been at least two draft versions produced on Feb. 10, 2016, or before.
In fact, Judge Sullivan said in a Dec. 17, 2018, minute order that the 302 “was drafted immediately after Mr. Flynn’s FBI interview.” It’s not clear what the judge was basing this assertion on or what happened to the early draft.
Flynn’s current attorney, former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell, later said she’d found a witness who saw an earlier draft and that it said “that Flynn was honest with the agents and did not lie.”
35. No Reinterview
It is common that when the FBI has questions after an interview about the candor of the subject, it would question the person again. But in this case, the FBI showed no interest in doing so.
36. Still Investigating What?
After the interview, Comey promptly agreed to Yates informing the White House about the call transcripts. Flynn was fired two weeks later. But, somehow, the investigation was still not over.
Comey said in his March 2, 2017, testimony that the bureau wasn’t investigating any possible Logan Act violation by Flynn and wouldn’t do so unless the DOJ directed it.
But he said the investigation was “obviously” still ongoing and “criminal in nature.”
McCabe said that “even following the interview on the 24th, we had a lot of work left to do in that investigation.”
By mid-February, the status of the probe wouldn’t have “changed materially” in his belief, he said.
“Like we were pursuing phone records and toll records at that time,” he said. “There were all kinds of really very basic foundational investigative activity that had to take place and we were committed to getting that done.”
It’s unclear what the point of the investigation was.
37. FARA Papers
Around Christmas 2016, Flynn found in the office of his defunct consultancy, Flynn Intel Group (FIG), a letter from the DOJ telling him he may need to file foreign lobbying disclosures under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
The DOJ’s National Security Division (NSD) wanted to know about a job FIG did earlier that year for Turkish businessman Kamil Ekim Alptekin.
It should have been a routine procedure. Washington lobbyists commonly flunk FARA rules and the NSD usually just asks them to register retrospectively because FARA cases are difficult to prosecute. Flynn hired a team from Covington and Burling led by Robert Kelner, a “never-Trumper” and an expert on FARA, to prepare the paperwork.
This time, the NSD was unusually eager. Heather Hunt, then-FARA unit chief herself, was repeatedly prompting the lawyers to expeditiously file the papers.
“We’ve never seen her this engaged in any matter (ever),” Kelner noted in an email to his colleagues.
Even the DOJ’s then-counterintelligence chief, David Laufman, got involved and personally questioned Covington on the FARA filings.
38. Comey Memo
Comey wrote in a personal memo that Trump told him in private in February 2017 that he hoped Comey could “let Flynn go.” Trump denied saying that. Trump’s lawyers have argued that the president didn’t know at the time that Flynn was still under investigation.
Comey’s leaking the content of this and other memos to the media served as a catalyst for then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointing former FBI head Robert Mueller as a special counsel to take over the CH probe.
39. Rosenstein’s Scope Memo Still Alludes to Logan Act
Even though Comey said in March 2017 that the FBI wasn’t investigating Flynn for a Logan Act violation, Mueller received in August 2017 a mandate from Rosenstein (pdf) to probe whether Flynn “committed a crime or crimes by engaging in conversations with Russian government officials during the period of the Trump transition.” That appears to be an allusion to the Logan Act.
Rosenstein testified to Congress that he simply put in the scope of Mueller’s mandate whatever the CH team was investigating at the time.
The scope memo also tasked Mueller with probing whether Flynn lied to the FBI during the interview, whether he failed to report foreign contacts or income on his national security disclosure forms, and whether the Turkey job by his firm meant that he “committed a crime or crimes by acting as an unregistered agent for the government of Turkey.”
40. Lawyers Delay Informing Flynn?
By mid-August 2017, Covington learned that prosecutors were looking at Flynn’s FARA filings. But the lawyers didn’t inform Flynn until weeks later, according to his current lawyer, Powell.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/flynn...oddities-and-unusual-occurrences_3382308.html
The case of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn is inevitably heading toward its conclusion. While the presiding district judge, Emmet Sullivan, is trying to keep it going, there’s only so much he can do, chiefly because there’s nobody left to prosecute the case after the Department of Justice (DOJ) dropped it last month.
In the latest developments, the District of Columbia appeals court set a hearing in the case on June 12, while the DOJ’s solicitor general himself, as well as five of his deputies, urged the court to order the lower-court judge to accept the case dismissal.
“I cannot overstate how big of a deal this is,” commented appellate attorney John Reeves, former assistant Missouri attorney general, in a series of tweets on June 1.
Personal involvement of the solicitor general “is highly unusual and rare,” he said.
“Unusual” seems a fitting euphemism for the Flynn case, which has been filled with contradictions, falsehoods, apparent blunders, extraordinary moves, and strange coincidences.
The Epoch Times has so far counted 85 such instances.
Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency during the Obama administration and former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty on Dec. 1, 2017, to one count of lying to FBI agents during a Jan. 24, 2017, interview.
The FBI officially opened an investigation on Flynn on Aug. 16, 2016, based on a suspicion that he “may wittingly or unwittingly be involved in activity on behalf of the Russian Federation which may constitute a federal crime or threat to the national security.”
What activity? The case was opened under a broader investigation into whether the Trump 2016 presidential campaign conspired with Russia to steal emails from the Democratic National Committee and release them through Wikileaks.
Flynn was an adviser to the campaign at the time.
By its own admission, the FBI had little reason to suspect the campaign.
The bureau learned from the Australian government that its then-ambassador to the UK, Alexander Downer, spoke with Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who “suggested” that the campaign received “some kind of suggestion” that Russia could help it by anonymously releasing some information damaging to Trump’s opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The FBI didn’t know what Papadopoulos actually said or what he was talking about.
Officially, this information was used by the FBI to comb through its databases for information on people associated with the Trump campaign and open investigations on four individuals supposedly linked to Russia.
Because Flynn’s paid speaking engagements in years past included some for Russian companies—one for Kaspersky Lab and one for RT television in Moscow—the FBI decided to open a counterintelligence investigation on the retired three-star general.
But the FBI seemed to have trouble getting its story straight.
1. Comey Contradiction
The FBI officially opened the four individual cases in mid-August 2016.
But former FBI Director James Comey testified to Congress that he was briefed already “at the end of July that the FBI had opened counterintelligence investigations of four individuals to see if there was a connection between any of those four and the Russian effort.”
2. Unlikely Target
Suspecting a man with patriotic bona fides of Flynn’s caliber of having colluded with Russia based on two speaking engagements seemed particularly unusual.
Flynn’s command of military intelligence to aid American troops in combat has earned him great praise.
“Mike Flynn’s impact on the nation’s War on Terror probably trumps any other single person,” wrote then-Brig. Gen. John Mulholland in Flynn’s 2007 performance review.
Mulholland went as far as calling Flynn “easily the best intelligence professional of any service serving today.”
Flynn was driven out of his post in 2014 after he repeatedly embarrassed President Barack Obama by insisting, contrary to the administration’s official stance, that a resurgence of Islamic terrorism in the Middle East was imminent.
Two months after his resignation, the rise of ISIS proved him right.
3. A Name for the Spotlight
The Russia probe was titled “Crossfire Hurricane” (CH), and Flynn was given the code name “Crossfire Razor.”
This was unusual, according to Marc Ruskin, a 27-year veteran of the FBI and an Epoch Times contributor.
Rank-and-file agents would never pick a name like this, he told The Epoch Times in a previous interview.
“They would mock it as being overly dramatic,” he said.
4. Snooping During Briefing
The day after opening the Flynn case, the FBI participated in a strategic intelligence briefing given to Donald Trump and two of his advisers by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Because Flynn was to be present, the FBI took the extraordinary step of sending in supervisory special agent Joe Pientka to collect intel on Flynn for the investigation. Pientka was to assess Flynn’s “overall mannerisms” and listen for “any kind of admission” that could be used by the bureau, the DOJ’s inspector general (IG) said in a Dec. 9 report on the CH investigation (pdf).
The IG raised the question of whether snooping on officials the FBI is supposed to brief could have a “chilling effect” on any such intelligence briefings in the future.
5. Dossier Coincidence
The FBI directly targeted four Trump campaign aides, opening cases on three of them—Papadopoulos, Carter Page, and Paul Manafort—on Aug. 10, 2016. The IG never received an explanation for why the Flynn case was opened later. Incidentally, Page and Manafort had already been mentioned in the infamous Steele dossier since July 28, 2016. Flynn’s name, however, was only mentioned in the dossier report dated Aug. 10, 2016.
The dossier, which drummed up unsubstantiated allegations of a Trump–Russia conspiracy, was being spread to the media, the FBI, the State Department, the DOJ, and Congress by operatives funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
The CH investigation team members at the FBI told the IG they only received the dossier in September 2016, but there are indications they may have been aware of it earlier.
6. Halper Coincidence
One of the CH case agents, Stephen Somma, happened to have a longstanding relationship with Stephan Halper, a Cambridge professor who was also a longtime political operative and FBI informant.
Somma and another agent met with Halper on Aug. 11, 2016, and learned that, in a stunning coincidence, Halper was already in contact with Page, had known Manafort for years, and “had been previously acquainted with Michael Flynn,” the IG report said
The CH team “couldn’t believe [their] luck,” Somma told the IG.
7. Halper’s Story
Halper was accused of spreading rumors, starting in late 2016, that Flynn had an affair with a Russian woman while visiting the UK in 2014 for a dinner hosted by the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar co-convened at the time by Halper.
An “established” FBI informant told the CH team that the woman jumped in a cab with Flynn after the dinner and joined him for a train ride to London (pdf).
The woman in question was Svetlana Lokhova, a Cambridge historian of Russian descent. She has denied the rumor, saying that she was picked up after the dinner by her husband.
She said Halper was the one spreading the rumor to the media and the FBI, even though he didn’t actually attend the event. She unsuccessfully sued Halper for defamation in May 2019.
Somehow, Steele also became privy to the rumor and shared it with Adam Kramer, an aide to the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Kramer testified to Congress that he was in regular contact with Steele between Nov. 28, 2016, and early March 2017.
8. Unmasking
The names of Americans are normally masked—that is, replaced with generic names—in foreign intelligence reports. Many senior government officials have the authority to ask for names to be unmasked for various reasons, such as to understand the intelligence. There were dozens of unmasking requests for reports related to Flynn, between Nov. 8, 2016, and Jan. 31, 2017 (pdf). The number of unmasking requests has been described as alarming by some commentators, while others described it as routine.
9. Non-masking
There are also indications that Flynn’s name was never masked in summaries or transcripts of his calls with then-Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak on Dec. 29, 2016, and in the following days. FBI leaders were distributing the documents to top Obama officials. Even President Barack Obama himself was briefed on them on or before Jan. 5, 2017.
10. Who Briefed Obama?
Comey testified to Congress that it was then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper who briefed Obama on the Flynn–Kislyak calls (pdf). Clapper, however, denied this to Congress.
11. ‘Unusual’
Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, memorialized a Jan. 5, 2017, meeting with Obama, Comey, and then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. Rice wrote in an email to herself that Obama asked Comey whether he should withhold any Russia-related information from the incoming administration and from Flynn in particular.
“Potentially,” Comey replied, adding that “the level of communication” between Flynn and Kislyak was “unusual,” she wrote. There’s no indication Flynn was talking to Kislyak unusually often. He was at the time responsible for laying the groundwork for Trump’s foreign relations as president and was frequently on the phone with foreign dignitaries.
12. Late Memo
Rice’s memo itself is unusual. She emailed it to herself more than two weeks after the meeting took place, on the day of Trump’s inauguration.
13. Strzok Intervention
On Jan. 4, the FBI was already in the process of closing Flynn’s case. But the bureau’s counterintelligence operations head at the time, Peter Strzok, scrambled to keep it open, noting that the “7th floor,” meaning the FBI’s top leadership, was involved.
14. McCabe–Comey Contradiction
Comey testified that he authorized the Flynn case “to be closed at the … end of December, beginning of January.”
But his then-deputy, Andrew McCabe, told Congress that they weren’t in “the closing planning phase” at the time.
“I don’t think a closure would have been soon,” he said.
15. Shaky Theory
FBI documents and Comey’s testimony indicate that the bureau kept the Flynn case open solely based on a legal theory that he may have violated the Logan Act, even though the DOJ made clear that such charges wouldn’t pass muster in court—nobody has ever been successfully prosecuted for a Logan Act violation and the government last tried in 1852.
The law prohibits private citizens from engaging in diplomacy on their own with countries the United States is in dispute with. Not only have questions been raised as to whether the law would pass today’s constitutional scrutiny, which places greater emphasis on First Amendment protections, but also there’s no indication the law was conceived to apply to a president-elect’s incoming top adviser.
16. Call Leaks
In early January, information about Flynn’s calls with Kislyak was leaked to then-Washington Post reporter Adam Entous. He said there was a discussion at the paper about what to do with the information, as it would have been expected of Flynn, given his position, to talk to Kislyak (pdf). In the end, the paper ran a column on Jan. 12 by David Ignatius speculating that Flynn may have violated the Logan Act if he discussed fresh sanctions imposed on Russia during the calls.
Obama imposed the sanctions on Russian entities, including its intelligence services, on Dec. 29, 2016. At the same time, he also expelled 35 Russian intelligence officers.
17. Denial
The calls “had nothing whatsoever to do with the sanctions,” incoming Vice President Mike Pence told CBS News on Jan. 15, 2017, in an interview the network almost wholly dedicated to questions about Russia.
This wasn’t completely true.
Kislyak did bring up the issue of sanctions during the call, though Flynn didn’t engage him in a conversation on the topic.
Flynn raised the issue of the expulsions, which is technically a separate issue from sanctions, though both were announced at the same time. He asked for “cool heads to prevail” and for Russia to only respond reciprocally, as further escalation into a “tit for tat” could lead to the countries shutting down each other’s embassies, complicating future diplomacy.
18. ‘Blackmailable’
Yates said she wanted to inform Trump’s White House about the Kislyak calls as Russia would know that what Pence said wasn’t true and could thus blackmail Flynn with the information, according to an Aug. 15, 2017, FBI report from her interview with the Mueller team.
According to Ruskin, this was hardly a blackmail situation, which ordinarily involves serious compromising information, such as evidence of bribery or sexual misconduct.
Comey acknowledged to Congress in March 2017 that the idea that Flynn was compromised struck him “as a bit of a reach.”
19. Comey Blocked Information
Despite issues with Yates’s argument, informing the White House may have indeed cleared up the situation. However, Comey blocked it, saying it could have interfered with the investigation of Flynn—despite that it appears there was nothing for the bureau to investigate. At that point, the DOJ already had disapproved of the Logan Act idea. In any case, the probe was supposed to be about Russian collusion. The bureau could have closed it and opened a new one on the Logan Act, if it indeed had had sufficient predication. But it never opened such an investigation, the DOJ noted in its motion to dismiss Flynn’s case.
20. Another Comey–McCabe Contradiction
In the days before Jan. 24, 2017, top FBI officials were discussing plans to interview Flynn. Comey said the point of the interview was to find out why Flynn didn’t tell Pence that sanctions were discussed during the call (even though Flynn wasn’t actually the one talking about sanctions).
“My judgment was we could not close the investigation of Mr. Flynn without asking him what is the deal here. That was the purpose,” Comey testified.
McCabe, however, told a different story when then-Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) asked him, “Was [Flynn] interviewed because the Vice President relied upon information from him in a national interview?”
“No. I don’t remember that being a motivating factor behind the interview,” McCabe said.
21. No Mention of Pence
During the interview, the agents didn’t ask Flynn about what he did or didn’t tell Pence—an unusual approach if the point, as Comey said, was to find out why Flynn hadn’t “been candid” with Pence. The FBI, in fact, had no idea what Flynn did or didn’t tell Pence.
22. Slipped-In Warning
Agents regularly warn interviewees that lying to federal officers is a crime. Before the Flynn interview, however, McCabe’s special counsel Lisa Page emailed another FBI lawyer asking how the warning should be given and whether there was a way “to just casually slip that in.”
23. No Warning
In the end, the agents never gave Flynn any such warning.
24. ‘Get Him to Lie … Get Him Fired?’
The FBI officials agreed that the agents wouldn’t show Flynn the transcripts of the calls. If he said something that diverged from them, they would ask again, slipping in some words from the transcript. If that didn’t jog his memory, they were not to confront him about it.
On the day of the interview, then-FBI head of counterintelligence Bill Priestap wrote a note saying he told other officials to “rethink” the approach.
“What’s our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?” he wrote, noting, “We regularly show subjects evidence.”
Apparently, his concerns were ignored.
25. Discouraging Having a Lawyer Present
On the day of the interview, McCabe spoke with Flynn on the phone to ask him for the interview. McCabe said he told Flynn he wanted the interview done “as quickly, quietly, and discreetly as possible.” If Flynn wanted anybody to sit in, such as one of the White House lawyers, the DOJ would have to be involved, McCabe told him.
According to Ruskin, that was “egregious” behavior akin to discouraging a subject of an investigation from having a lawyer present for an interview.
26. No White House Notice
An FBI interview of a president’s national security adviser is a big deal. Normally, it would warrant a back-and-forth between the White House and the bureau on the scope, content, purpose, and other parameters. Most likely, multiple White House lawyers would sit in.
Comey, however, said in a public forum that he just sent the agents in, taking advantage of the fact that it was “early enough”—only four days after the inauguration.
27. No Notice Given to DOJ
According to Yates, Comey didn’t consult the DOJ about his intention to interview Flynn, even though the department would usually be involved in such decisions.
28. Not Quite a Denial From Flynn
After the interview, in which Strzok and supervisory special agent Pientka extensively questioned Flynn about his conversations with Kislyak, Comey said that Flynn denied talking to the ambassador about the sanctions. But the agents’ notes indicate that though Flynn denied it at first, he seemed unsure when the agents asked again.
“Not really. I don’t remember. It wasn’t, ‘Don’t do anything,’” he said, according to the notes.
Flynn said in a Jan. 29 declaration to the court that he still doesn’t remember talking to Kislyak about sanctions.
“I told the agents that ‘tit-for-tat’ is a phrase I use, which suggests that the topic of sanctions could have been raised,” he said.
29. UN Vote Denial
Based on the agent’s notes, Flynn did deny asking for Russia to delay a U.N. vote in Israeli settlements. One of the call transcripts indicates he in fact made such a request.
Flynn told the agents he was calling multiple countries regarding the vote, but it was more an exercise of how quickly he could get foreign officials on the phone since there was no way the transition team could convince enough countries to actually change the outcome. Indeed, the vote passed with only the United States abstaining.
30. No Indication of Deception
The agents came back with the impression “that Flynn was not lying or did not think he was lying,” according to Strzok.
Comey seemed on the fence.
“I don’t know. I think there is an argument to be made that he lied. It is a close one,” he testified.
31. Flynn Knew They Knew
According to McCabe, Flynn expressed awareness before the interview that the FBI knew exactly what he said during the Kislyak calls.
“You listen to everything they [Russian representatives] say,” Flynn told him, according to McCabe’s notes from that day.
32. Belated Report
The FBI interview summary, form FD-302, is required to be completed within five days of the interview. Flynn’s, however, took more than two weeks.
33. Rewritten 302
Strzok texted Page on Feb. 10, 2017, he was “trying to not completely rewrite” the 302 “so as to save [redacted] voice.” The redacted name was most likely Pientka’s.
34. Missing Original
Flynn was ultimately provided two draft versions of the 302—one from Feb. 10, 2016, and one from the day after. But based on Strzok’s texts, there should have been at least two draft versions produced on Feb. 10, 2016, or before.
In fact, Judge Sullivan said in a Dec. 17, 2018, minute order that the 302 “was drafted immediately after Mr. Flynn’s FBI interview.” It’s not clear what the judge was basing this assertion on or what happened to the early draft.
Flynn’s current attorney, former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell, later said she’d found a witness who saw an earlier draft and that it said “that Flynn was honest with the agents and did not lie.”
35. No Reinterview
It is common that when the FBI has questions after an interview about the candor of the subject, it would question the person again. But in this case, the FBI showed no interest in doing so.
36. Still Investigating What?
After the interview, Comey promptly agreed to Yates informing the White House about the call transcripts. Flynn was fired two weeks later. But, somehow, the investigation was still not over.
Comey said in his March 2, 2017, testimony that the bureau wasn’t investigating any possible Logan Act violation by Flynn and wouldn’t do so unless the DOJ directed it.
But he said the investigation was “obviously” still ongoing and “criminal in nature.”
McCabe said that “even following the interview on the 24th, we had a lot of work left to do in that investigation.”
By mid-February, the status of the probe wouldn’t have “changed materially” in his belief, he said.
“Like we were pursuing phone records and toll records at that time,” he said. “There were all kinds of really very basic foundational investigative activity that had to take place and we were committed to getting that done.”
It’s unclear what the point of the investigation was.
37. FARA Papers
Around Christmas 2016, Flynn found in the office of his defunct consultancy, Flynn Intel Group (FIG), a letter from the DOJ telling him he may need to file foreign lobbying disclosures under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
The DOJ’s National Security Division (NSD) wanted to know about a job FIG did earlier that year for Turkish businessman Kamil Ekim Alptekin.
It should have been a routine procedure. Washington lobbyists commonly flunk FARA rules and the NSD usually just asks them to register retrospectively because FARA cases are difficult to prosecute. Flynn hired a team from Covington and Burling led by Robert Kelner, a “never-Trumper” and an expert on FARA, to prepare the paperwork.
This time, the NSD was unusually eager. Heather Hunt, then-FARA unit chief herself, was repeatedly prompting the lawyers to expeditiously file the papers.
“We’ve never seen her this engaged in any matter (ever),” Kelner noted in an email to his colleagues.
Even the DOJ’s then-counterintelligence chief, David Laufman, got involved and personally questioned Covington on the FARA filings.
38. Comey Memo
Comey wrote in a personal memo that Trump told him in private in February 2017 that he hoped Comey could “let Flynn go.” Trump denied saying that. Trump’s lawyers have argued that the president didn’t know at the time that Flynn was still under investigation.
Comey’s leaking the content of this and other memos to the media served as a catalyst for then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointing former FBI head Robert Mueller as a special counsel to take over the CH probe.
39. Rosenstein’s Scope Memo Still Alludes to Logan Act
Even though Comey said in March 2017 that the FBI wasn’t investigating Flynn for a Logan Act violation, Mueller received in August 2017 a mandate from Rosenstein (pdf) to probe whether Flynn “committed a crime or crimes by engaging in conversations with Russian government officials during the period of the Trump transition.” That appears to be an allusion to the Logan Act.
Rosenstein testified to Congress that he simply put in the scope of Mueller’s mandate whatever the CH team was investigating at the time.
The scope memo also tasked Mueller with probing whether Flynn lied to the FBI during the interview, whether he failed to report foreign contacts or income on his national security disclosure forms, and whether the Turkey job by his firm meant that he “committed a crime or crimes by acting as an unregistered agent for the government of Turkey.”
40. Lawyers Delay Informing Flynn?
By mid-August 2017, Covington learned that prosecutors were looking at Flynn’s FARA filings. But the lawyers didn’t inform Flynn until weeks later, according to his current lawyer, Powell.