PRESIDENT Donald Trump’s ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn has been charged in a court in Washington today of lying to the FBI.
Flynn has been charged specifically with lying about his contracts with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, and a plea hearing is set for Friday.
The incident in question occurred when FBI agents were investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
The court concluded that a few days after Trump became president, Flynn made “materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statements” to law enforcement regarding a meeting he had with then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
WATCH: Michael Flynn arrives at federal court for guilty plea hearing. pic.twitter.com/slDz4yOaAM
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) December 1, 2017
Flynn made a false statement to investigators at the time, outrightly denying that he had asked Kislyak to refrain from escalating the situation after the United States imposed new sanctions on Russia, and falsely denied that he had asked the ambassador in a separate meeting to delay a vote on a UN resolution, according to court documents.
The documents also revealed that he failed to recall being told by Kislyak that Russia had decided to moderate its response to the new sanctions at Flynn’s requests
The former adviser is at the center of a broader investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into links between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives.
Flynn had also failed to declare payments from Turkish and Russian sources and was reportedly under investigation for an alleged role in a kidnapping plot.
The White House declined to comment on the news.
“The White House is not going to respond to this,” deputy press secretary Raj Shah was quoted by CNN as saying. “Ty Cobb will at some point.”
Flynn, unlike others, was part of Trump’s inner circle during the presidential campaign, frequently introducing Trump at campaign events and working closely with members of Trump’s family including son Donald Trump Jr and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Former FBI director James Comey, whom Trump fired in May, said that the president had asked him in February to drop an investigation into Flynn’s activities – the very investigation in which Flynn had, according to the charges, lied about a month earlier.
“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Comey quoted Trump as saying. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”
Flynn resigned after 24 days as national security adviser when US surveillance records came to light indicating that he had discussed sanctions with Kislyak, despite a public denial at the time by vice president Mike Pence that such a discussion had taken place.
Flynn led chants urging to "lock her up" in reference to Hilary Clinton during the presidential campaign. Many on Twitter enjoyed the irony of the situation.
Here’s video of Michael Flynn leading a chant to “lock her up!”
Sweet vindication. #LockFlynnUp pic.twitter.com/t3tP2Se70n— Scott Dworkin (@funder) December 1, 2017
Michael Flynn: “Lock her up!…If I did a tenth, a tenth of what she did, I would be in jail”
Says the national security adviser who is pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about talks with a foreign adversary where he promised relief of Obama's sanctions…pic.twitter.com/lvCBzn1O6T— rantt (@ranttmedia) December 1, 2017
