After lying to the FBI and the media, former Deputy National Security Advisor K.T. McFarland, who insisted Michael Flynn never improperly discussed sanctions with former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, now says maybe he did.
When FBI agents first visited her at her Long Island home in the summer of 2017, McFarland denied ever talking to Flynn about any discussion of sanctions between him and the ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, in December 2016 during the presidential transition.
For a time, investigators saw her answers as “inconsistent,” putting her in legal peril as the FBI tried to determine if she had lied to them.
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team is examining whether Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak are in any way related to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. At the time, some suggested Flynn might have violated the Logan Act, a law that prohibits private citizens from conducting foreign policy. It’s highly unlikely Flynn would have faced any consequences from the Logan Act, which has not been used in more than 150 years. But Flynn put himself in legal peril when he told investigators he did not discuss sanctions with the ambassador.
Flynn pleaded guilty last December to lying to the FBI about his calls with Kislyak and has been cooperating with Mueller. He is scheduled to be sentenced in mid-December.
Court papers filed in connection with Flynn’s plea indicated that a senior Trump transition official was involved in strategizing over the conversations with Kislyak. That official was not identified in the court papers, but people familiar with the case have said it was McFarland.
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Not long after Flynn’s plea, McFarland was questioned by investigators again about her conversations with Flynn, and she walked back her previous denial that sanctions were discussed, saying a general statement Flynn had made to her that things were going to be okay could have been a reference to sanctions, these people said.
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Eventually, McFarland and her lawyer Robert Giuffra were able to convince the FBI that she had not intentionally misled the bureau but had rather spoken from memory, without the benefit of any documents that could have helped her remember her exchanges with Flynn about the Kislyak conversations, these people said.
Mueller’s team appears to be satisfied with McFarland’s revised account, according to people familiar with the probe.
Just days after Flynn talked to Kislyak, however, McFarland said that her memory was clear, and that the two had never discussed sanctions or how the incoming Trump administration hoped Russia would respond.
Early on the morning of Jan. 13, 2017, McFarland phoned one of the authors of this article to rebut a column in The Washington Post, which said Flynn and Kislyak had spoken “several times” on Dec. 29, the day the Obama administration announced it was expelling 35 Russian officials and taking other punitive measures.
McFarland insisted in an on-the-record conversation that Flynn and Kislyak had never discussed sanctions and that they had actually spoken prior to the administration’s announcement on Dec. 29.
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McFarland said that Flynn “called me right after” his call with Kislyak and conveyed the details of their conversation. She said she knew that the call took place before Dec. 29 because by then she had left Trump’s Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where she had been staying with other members of the transition team.
But according to Flynn’s guilty plea, McFarland was still at Mar-a-Lago on Dec. 29. And before Flynn ever called Kislyak, he spoke to McFarland to discuss what he should tell the ambassador, if anything, about the sanctions.
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Emails among transition officials at the time of Flynn’s contacts also show McFarland communicating about how to respond to sanctions, according to people who have seen the messages.
McFarland’s statements about Flynn and Kislyak also came under scrutiny by lawmakers and helped scuttle her nomination as the U.S. ambassador to Singapore.
Full story: Former top White House official revises statement to special counsel about Flynn’s calls with Russian ambassador (WaPo)