Michael Flynn Pleads Guilty: What You Need to Know
This past Valentine's Day, President Trump asked then FBI Director James Comey to stick around following a meeting with a group of national security officials in the Oval Office. It was a dramatic moment. After the others filed out, Trump made an insistent plea to Comey – who, it turns out, kept careful memos of this and other interactions he had with the president – to take it easy on General Michael T. Flynn, his national security adviser who'd been fired the previous day. "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go," Trump begged Comey. "He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go."
Comey, naturally, didn't let it go. The FBI folded Flynn into an official investigation into the possibility that Team Trump colluded with Russia, an inquiry that began in July 2016 after the U.S. intelligence community picked up reports of a pattern of odd contacts between the Trump campaign and an assortment of Russians. In May, Trump fired Comey over "this Russia thing with Trump and Russia," as Trump described it. Comey's ouster was a stunning event, one that led directly to the appointment of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel for Russiagate.
On Friday, this all came full circle. The disgraced Flynn – who was fired for covering up his interactions last December with Sergei Kislyak, then Russia's ambassador to the United States – pleaded guilty to charges filed by Mueller that Flynn lied to the FBI about those talks with Kislyak. Flynn's guilty plea opens the door for him to tell Mueller's team everything he knows about whether Trump's aides, associates and hangers-on colluded with, cooperated with or encouraged Moscow's scheme to intervene in the 2016 election. (Three documents from Mueller's office, the statement of criminal information, the plea agreement with Flynn and the "statement of the offense," are all available to read in full.)
That is, undoubtedly, why Trump made his special plea to Comey in February, why Trump fired Comey and why the White House has circled the wagons against Mueller's Russiagate investigation. We don't yet know how much Flynn knows about collusion – but Mueller surely would not have accepted the guilty plea he did unless Flynn had promised to, or already has, delivered some juicy information to the prosecutors and the FBI. Trump's worst fears may soon be realized.
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