Former U.S. National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was charged with making false statements to the FBI and is expected to plead guilty Friday morning in federal court in Washington.
A two-page information filed Thursday in federal court lists a number of false statements that Flynn is accused of making about his interactions with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in late December 2016.
It says that Flynn falsely claimed that he had not asked Kislyak “to refrain from escalating the situation in response to sanctions that the U.S. had imposed against Russia,” and that he didn’t recall Kislyak telling him Russia had decided to moderate its response as a result of his request.
It also says he falsely claimed that he didn’t ask Kislyak to “delay a vote on or defeat” a U.N. Security Council resolution, and then falsely denied that Kislyak had described Russia’s response to the request.
According to the special counsel’s charge, Flynn made the false statements on Jan. 24. That was two days after he was sworn in as national security adviser.
Sally Yates, who was acting attorney general in January, told the Senate in May that she had warned White house lawyers in late January that Flynn might be vulnerable to blackmail from the Russians.
Yates said she had told White House counsel Don McGahn that Flynn had not told the truth to Vice President Pence about his conversations with Kislyak about sanctions.
“To state the obvious, you don’t want your national security adviser compromised with the Russians,” Yates told the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism.
Flynn’s lawyer did not immediately return a request for comment. The White House referred questions about Flynn to outside counsel Ty Cobb.
NBC News reported last month that federal investigators had gathered enough evidence to bring charges in their investigation of President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation.
Flynn, who was fired after just 24 days on the job, was one of the first Trump associates to come under scrutiny in the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller into possible collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign.
Flynn is the fourth person to be charged in the Mueller probe.
Mueller’s investigators have been examining Flynn’s lobbying work, including whether he laundered money, according to three sources familiar with the investigation.
Mueller’s team is also examining whether Flynn attempted to orchestrate the removal of a chief rival of Turkish President Recep Erdogan from the U.S. to Turkey in exchange for millions of dollars, two officials said.
Flynn’s son, Michael G. Flynn, who worked closely with his father, accompanied him during the campaign and briefly worked on the presidential transition, could be indicted separately or at the same time as his father, according to three sources familiar with the investigation.
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