Saturday, May 5, 2018

What does the unredacted intelligence reports say about the Flynn situation?

According to the unredacted intelligence report, the only known statement Flynn made regarding the sanctions (in his call with Ambassador Kislyak) was a request that Russian not escalate the situation by doing anything other than respond in kind. This is literally what the intelligence report offers as the extent of the conversation. That doesn't necessarily mean that there wasn't more that wasn't important enough to be included, but this appears to be the part of the conversation that was under scrutiny.

Now we do not know either the context of Flynn's statement to Kislyak or the context of the questions that the FBI asked General Flynn. What we do know is that the FBI agents who interviewed General Flynn did not feel that Flynn was outwardly lying.

So the original conversation between Kislyak could be any number of things. It could be that this was an hour conversation and that there was a 30 second back and forth about the existing sanctions. It could be that the Ambassador brought up sanctions and tried to engage Flynn, and Flynn felt that he was effectively cutting off any real discussion by making a general statement and leaving it at that. Or it could be Flynn brought up the sanctions, and offered his opinion as part of a back and forth discussion on the subject.

As far as the FBI questioning is concerned... it could be that Flynn was asked about whether or not there were any discussions with the Ambassador about what the Trump administration planned to do with Sanctions, in which case a question and any statements about existing sanctions would not qualify. Or if the FBI generically asked if there were any discussions about Sanctions, Flynn could have honestly viewed the question being brought up and put to rest by one statement as an avoidance of any real discussion. On the flip side, if the FBI just asked if the subject of sanctions even came up, and Flynn denied that it never came up, that would require an honest belief that Flynn simply didn't recall that part of the conversation.

What we can devise here is that there is simply no evidence that Flynn was conspiring with the Russian Ambassador, and there is no evidence that there was any discussions that could lead the FBI back to any election promises. General Flynn appeared to be just a normal incoming National Security Adviser who was simply doing his job.

No comments: