Tag: Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn

Trump Lawyer Pushed Pro-Russia Deal For Ukraine

The setting was a Manhattan restaurant, and after 25 minutes what allegedly emerged was a pro-Russian peace plan for Ukraine that its author believes may have ended up in the White House.

In a CNN interview, Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Artemenko said he discussed his left-field proposal for Ukraine in January with US President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who offered to deliver the plan to the Trump administration.

The exact details of the plan are unclear, yet reports have suggested it revolves around leasing Crimea — annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014 — to Moscow for 50 to 100 years. In exchange, Russia would withdraw its troops from the separatist regions in Ukraine’s war-torn east.

Artemenko declined to discuss the plan’s details, yet hinted that a lease might be part of the idea.

The lawmaker says Cohen, who has long advised Trump, wanted to take the plan to Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser.

Any suggestion that the White House might consider a plan that formalizes Russia’s control of Crimea would cause consternation in Kiev and among its allies in Europe. The White House has flatly denied any knowledge of the proposal.

In his interview with CNN, Artemenko shines a light on how a key Trump associate was allegedly prepared to push a controversial peace plan that might benefit Russia at a time when questions were being raised about the Trump’s ties to that country.

The Ukrainian member of parliament told CNN he met Cohen through a mutual acquaintance, businessman Felix Sater, and that the three had dinner in a Manhattan hotel in January.

Cohen told CNN in a text message that although he had dinner with Artemenko, they never discussed peace in Ukraine. Other media organizations reported that he offered them a different account. The White House has denied that Cohen delivered any peace plan to Flynn.

Russia and Ukraine have since rejected the plan, and Artemenko has now become the subject of investigation for treason for suggesting it to Cohen.

In a hurried interview in a Kiev hotel, Artemenko said Cohen told him that Flynn — who resigned in mid-February due to a controversy over calls with the Russian ambassador to the US — was his best connection at the White House.

“Michael Flynn is the best person, the best of my connections in the Trump administration, who if he likes [it], it’s going to [get] huge support, huge support,” Cohen said, according to Artemenko.

Flynn did not respond to CNN’s request for comment on this story.

Artemenko knew the proposal would be controversial as it undercuts both the US and Ukrainian diplomatic corps, and he says he knows it angered Kiev, who will have seen it as a pro-Russian proposal.

“That’s why I feel pressure, and for sure today I can see people accusing me, and I see the prosecutor of Ukraine is trying to do something, to open a new case, to do an investigation about me,” he told CNN.

He said of the January meeting that Sater invited Cohen to “a dinner in the hotel in Manhattan, and we probably spoke around 20-25 minutes, where I presented my intentions, my peace plan for the Ukraine, how we can stop the war, how we can stop the killing.”

Artemenko said he had never dreamed that his proposal would be seen by the White House, but he claims Cohen said the plan had “great potential” and wanted to deliver it to the Trump administration.

“It was Michael Cohen’s idea,” he said. “He [Cohen] mentioned his name first in my meetings. And he said ‘listen, Michael Flynn’ — from his personal opinion — ‘is most powerful man who can really support this idea, who can support, who can help you, who can provide this information to President Trump.'”

Flynn resigned 24 days into the job after misleading administration officials regarding his communications with the Russian ambassador to the US before Trump took office.

Flynn made several calls to the ambassador in December, including some on the same day that the outgoing Obama administration placed fresh sanctions on Russia over alleged election meddling.

The Justice Department also warned the Trump administration in January that Flynn could be subject to Russian blackmail, a person familiar with the matter told CNN last month.

In a text message to CNN, Cohen denied delivering any documents to Flynn, and refuted Artemenko’s recollection of their January conversation.

“If this continued fake news narrative wasn’t so ridiculous, I would be angered. Despite the multitude of statements issued denying any nexus between Presidents Trump and [Russian President Vladimir Putin], the main stream media just keeps on trying to perpetuate this lie.

“I acknowledge that the brief meeting took place, but emphatically deny discussing this topic or delivering any documents to the White House and/or General Flynn; something I stated to the New York Times.”

According to the Times, Cohen said he left a sealed envelope with the proposed peace plan in Flynn’s office. Later, Cohen denied delivering a peace plan to Flynn.
Artemenko insists, however, that it was Cohen’s idea to show the peace proposal to the senior White House official. “It was his idea, absolutely his idea,” he said.

After Russia seized the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, it sent military help to separatists in the country’s east, where violent conflict over disputed territory drags on to this day.

Kiev has refused to discuss the official transfer of the peninsula to Russia, and dismissed Artemenko’s plan as a result.

Moscow considers the peninsula already its territory, after its residents — under a substantial Russian military presence — voted in a 2014 referendum to join the Russian Federation.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov says Russia refuses to discuss the lease of a region it already controls: “How can Russia rent its own region? This question itself is absurd.”

Sater, who attended the dinner with Artemenko, did not respond to emailed questions, yet he emphatically denied any links between the Trump camp and Russia in an interview with Fox News: “What could be wrong in helping stop a war and trying to achieve peace? I have done so much for my country and thought that promoting peace was a good thing. People are getting killed, it’s a war.”

A White House spokesman offered this statement in response to CNN’s request for comment: “No one in the White House — including the President, Vice President and senior members of the NSC — has spoken to Mr. Cohen about any Russia-Ukraine peace proposal, and no one has spoken to Andrii Artemenko at all about any matter.

“In addition, the NSC keeps comprehensive records of documents received, and we have no record of receiving any proposal from Mr. Cohen. This is another absurd, misleading attempt to distract from the real reform taking place under President Trump.”

Artemenko left the interview with CNN to attend what he said was a meeting with the President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, although the presidential administration denied such a meeting took place.

Yet moments after leaving the interview, Ukrainian prosecutors announced he would be investigated for “treason” over the deal.

(h/t CNN)

Trump Says Flynn Was Treated Unfairly, A Day After Spicer Said He Was Fired Because of a Lack of Trust

President Trump  criticized the intelligence community and the media Wednesday for the news reports that ultimately led to national security adviser Michael Flynn’s resignation Monday night, less than four weeks into his White House tenure.

“I think he’s been treated very, very unfairly by the media — as I call it, the ‘fake media,’ in many cases — and I think it’s really a sad thing that he was treated so badly,” Trump said at a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “I think in addition to that, from intelligence, papers are being leaked, things are being leaked.”

Trump added that the leaks were a “criminal action, criminal act.”

The president was responding to a question from the Christian Broadcasting Network about whether he thinks that recent reports concerning Russia — that Flynn misled government officials, including now-Vice President Pence, about conversations Flynn had with the Russian ambassador involving sanctions, as well as news that members of the Trump campaign had repeated contact with Russian intelligence officials — could undermine the goal of preventing a nuclear Iran.

His response, in which he defended Flynn as a “wonderful man,” added confusion to the White House’s account of Flynn’s dismissal and conflicted with his press secretary’s assertion that Trump fired Flynn.

“People are trying to cover up for a terrible loss that the Democrats had under Hillary Clinton,” Trump said. “I think it’s very, very unfair what’s happened to General Flynn, the way he was treated, and the documents and papers that were illegally — I stress that — illegally leaked. Very, very unfair.”

On Tuesday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer emphasized that Trump asked Flynn to resign because he could no longer be trusted, particularly after misleading Pence about discussing with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak sanctions put in place by the Obama administration.

“The evolving and eroding level of trust as a result of this situation and a series of other questionable instances is what led the president to ask for General Flynn’s resignation,” Spicer said during his press briefing.

Spicer told reporters Wednesday afternoon that he didn’t see a need to “square” his earlier comments with the president’s praise of Flynn of earlier in the day.

“The president is very clear that Gen. Flynn has served this country, both in uniform and here, with distinction,” he said. “There’s a clear difference between his commitment to caring about this country and the trust the president had to execute those jobs.”

Trump’s comments at the news conference followed a blitz of angry tweets Wednesday morning over Flynn’s departure and what Trump said were leaks from intelligence agencies.

The direct slam against the leaks suggested deepening struggles within the Trump White House as it faces growing questions — and possible congressional probes — about how and when the president and other top officials dealt with the disclosures that Flynn conducted private outreach with Russia’s ambassador before Trump took office. Intercepts showed that Flynn discussed U.S. sanctions in a phone call with the ambassador — a conversation topic that Flynn first denied and then later said he could not recall.

Trump’s ire over the insider tips to journalists also contrasted with his indirect praise of the disclosure of leaked internal emails from the Clinton campaign made public by WikiLeaks during the lead-up to the election.

Trump tried to brush off the mounting pressures on his administration as a diversion by opponents, even though senior Republican lawmakers have indicated that investigations into Russian contacts will be expanded. On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said it was “highly likely” that the events leading to Flynn’s departure would be added to a broader probe into alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election.

“This Russian connection non-sense is merely an attempt to cover-up the many mistakes made in Hillary Clinton’s losing campaign,” Trump tweeted Wednesday.

The president was referring to recent stories by the New York Times and The Washington Post. Both outlined questionable — and potentially illegal — contact between his aides and Russia.

An article posted by the New York Times late Tuesday reported that members of his presidential campaign team, as well as other Trump associates, were repeatedly in contact with senior Russian intelligence officials during the campaign. And several articles by The Post reported that Flynn had misled administration officials, including Pence, about his discussions with the Russian ambassador to the United States over sanctions before Trump was sworn in.

(h/t Washington Post)

 

Trump Told Weeks Ago That Michael Flynn Withheld Truth on Russia

President Trump was informed weeks ago that his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, had not told the truth about his interactions with Russia’s ambassador and asked for Mr. Flynn’s resignation after concluding he could not be trusted, the White House said on Tuesday.

At his daily briefing, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said the president’s team has been “reviewing and evaluating this issue on a daily basis trying to ascertain the truth,” and ultimately concluded that while there was no violation of law, Mr. Flynn could no longer serve in his position.

“The evolving and eroding level of trust as a result of this situation and a series of other questionable incidents is what led the president to ask General Flynn for his resignation,” Mr. Spicer said.

(h/t The New York Times)

Flynn Resigns Amid Controversy Over Russia Contacts

Embattled White House national security adviser Michael Flynn resigned Monday night, an abrupt end to a brief tenure.

His departure came just after reports surfaced that the Justice Department warned the Trump administration last month that Flynn misled administration officials regarding his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States and was potentially vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians.

“I inadvertently briefed the Vice President-elect and others with incomplete information regarding my phone calls with the Russian ambassador. I have sincerely apologized to the President and the Vice President, and they have accepted my apology,” Flynn wrote, according to a copy of his resignation letter obtained by CNN.

“I am tendering my resignation, honored to have served our nation and the American people in such a distinguished way,” he wrote. “I know with the strong leadership of President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence and the superb team they are assembling, this team will go down in history as one of the greatest presidencies in US history.”

The move comes less than a month into the job, making him one of the shortest-serving senior presidential advisers in modern history.

Gen. Keith Kellogg will be the interim national security adviser, multiple sources tell CNN. He most recently served as National Security Council chief of staff.

A senior administration official said Kellogg, retired Gen. David Petraeus and former Vice Admiral Bob Harward are possible replacements for Flynn. Another senior official told CNN Tuesday that Harward is considered the top contender for the job.

Petraeus is going to the White House Tuesday, according to sources inside and close to the administration.

“He is making a run” for the job, one source said, but noted “he has a lot of baggage.”

Pressure building

The sudden exit marks the most public display yet of disarray at the highest levels of the new administration, which has faced repeated questions over a slew of controversies and reports of infighting among senior aides during its first three weeks.

The resolution had been heading this way for three days, an administration source told CNN.

More than whether he really had a conversation with the Russians about sanctions, the key issue internally was whether he told the truth to Pence, the source said.

The White House concluded at the very least, Flynn didn’t mean to mislead the vice president, but may have because he couldn’t remember what he said to the Russians.
“Not remembering is not a quality we can have for the national security adviser,” the source said.

An administration source said that Trump “hung in there” when it came to Flynn, but there was a “flood of information” that finally made it clear he had to resign.

Asked if Trump is disappointed, another administration official said: “He’s moving on.”

‘Full classified briefing’

A pair of Democratic lawmakers — Reps. John Conyers, Jr., top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, and Elijah Cummings, top Democrat on the House oversight Committee — sent a request for a “full classified briefing” on the circumstances surrounding Flynn to the Justice Department and FBI Monday night following Flynn’s resignation.

“We in Congress need to know who authorized his actions, permitted them and continued to let him have access to our most sensitive national security information despite knowing these risks. We need to know who else within the White House is a current and ongoing risk to our national security,” they wrote in a statement.

They added: “This new disclosure warrants a full classified briefing by all relevant agencies, including the Department of Justice and the FBI, as soon as possible and certainly before Thursday, February 16. We are communicating this request to the Department of Justice and FBI this evening.”

Aftermath

The shakeup now leaves Trump without one of his closest and longest-serving advisers. Flynn had counseled Trump on foreign policy and national security matters since early in the 2016 presidential race.

Flynn was not able to definitively refute a Washington Post story late last week that his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak included communication about the sanctions. It is illegal for unauthorized private citizens to negotiate with foreign governments on behalf of the US.

The controversy intensified after the report put Vice President Mike Pence and several senior White House advisers in an uncomfortable position, as they had denied in TV interviews weeks earlier that Flynn discussed sanctions with the ambassador. Some administration officials said Flynn must have misled Pence and others.

“The knives are out,” a White House official told CNN on Friday, noting that “there’s a lot of unhappiness about this.”

Concerns

Many expressed concern at the idea that Flynn, a retired lieutenant general who headed the Defense Intelligence Agency, would discuss sanctions with a foreign official whose calls are regularly monitored by US intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

A US official confirmed to CNN on Friday that Flynn and Kislyak did speak about sanctions, among other matters, during a December call.

But after the call was made public, Pence told CBS News on January 15 that Flynn did not talk with Kislyak about the sanctions, which the Obama administration recently levied due to Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 elections.

“They did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia,” Pence told CBS News.

On Friday, an aide close to the national security adviser told CNN that Flynn could not rule out that he spoke about sanctions on the call.

The White House official blamed much of the outcry against Flynn on a Washington culture always in search of a scalp, but people within Trump’s orbit did little to defend Flynn during appearances on Sunday news shows.

Stephen Miller, White House policy director, was asked directly about Flynn’s future on a number of Sunday talk shows. Miller responded by saying he was not the appropriate official to ask.

“I don’t have any answers today,” Miller said in response to questions about whether Flynn misled the vice president. “I don’t have any information one way or another to add anything to the conversation.”

(h/t CNN)

Despite Denials, Russians Were in Contact with Trump Campaign

Weeks before President Trump’s inauguration, his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, discussed American sanctions against Russia, as well as areas of possible cooperation, with that country’s ambassador to the United States, according to current and former American officials.

Throughout the discussions, the message Mr. Flynn conveyed to the ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak — that the Obama administration was Moscow’s adversary and that relations with Russia would change under Mr. Trump — was unambiguous and highly inappropriate, the officials said.

The accounts of the conversations raise the prospect that Mr. Flynn violated a law against private citizens’ engaging in diplomacy, and directly contradict statements made by Trump advisers. They have said that Mr. Flynn spoke to Mr. Kislyak a few days after Christmas merely to arrange a phone call between President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Mr. Trump after the inauguration.

But current and former American officials said that conversation — which took place the day before the Obama administration imposed sanctions on Russia over accusations that it used cyberattacks to help sway the election in Mr. Trump’s favor — ranged far beyond the logistics of a post-inauguration phone call. And they said it was only one in a series of contacts between the two men that began before the election and also included talk of cooperating in the fight against the Islamic State, along with other issues.

The officials said that Mr. Flynn had never made explicit promises of sanctions relief, but that he had appeared to leave the impression it would be possible.

Mr. Flynn could not immediately be reached for comment about the conversations, details of which were first reported by The Washington Post. Despite Mr. Flynn’s earlier denials, his spokesman told the Post that “while he had no recollection of discussing sanctions, he couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.”

During the Christmas week conversation, he urged Mr. Kislyak to keep the Russian government from retaliating over the coming sanctions — it was an open secret in Washington that they were in the works — by telling him that whatever the Obama administration did could be undone, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing classified material.

Days before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, Vice President-elect Mike Pence also denied that Mr. Flynn had discussed sanctions with Mr. Kislyak. He said he had personally spoken to Mr. Flynn, who assured him that the conversation was an informal chat that began with Mr. Flynn extending Christmas wishes.

“They did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia,” Mr. Pence said on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.”

Some officials regarded the conversation as a potential violation of the Logan Act, which prohibits private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments in disputes involving the American government, according to one current and one former American official familiar with the case.

Federal officials who have read the transcript of the call were surprised by Mr. Flynn’s comments, since he would have known that American eavesdroppers closely monitor such calls. They were even more surprised that Mr. Trump’s team publicly denied that the topics of conversation included sanctions.

The call is the latest example of how Mr. Trump’s advisers have come under scrutiny from American counterintelligence officials. The F.B.I. is also investigating Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort; Carter Page, a businessman and former foreign policy adviser to the campaign; and Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative.

Prosecutions in these types of cases are rare, and the law is murky, particularly around people involved in presidential transitions. The officials who had read the transcripts acknowledged that while the conversation warranted investigation, it was unlikely, by itself, to lead to charges against a sitting national security adviser.

But, at the very least, openly engaging in policy discussions with a foreign government during a presidential transition is a remarkable breach of protocol. The norm has been for the president-elect’s team to respect the sitting president, and to limit discussions with foreign governments to pleasantries. Any policy discussions, even with allies, would ordinarily be kept as vague as possible.

“It’s largely shunned, period. But one cannot rule it out with an ally like the U.K.,” said Derek Chollet, who was part of the Obama transition in 2008 and then served in senior roles at the State Department, White House and Pentagon.

“But it’s way out of bounds when the said country is an adversary, and one that has been judged to have meddled in the election,” he added. “It’s just hard to imagine anyone having a substantive discussion with an adversary, particularly if it’s about trying to be reassuring.”

(h/t New York Times)

Trump Foreign Policy Advisor Retweets Anti-Semitic Post

Twitter

One of Donald Trump’s senior foreign policy advisors has apologized for sharing a blatantly anti-Semitic post on Twitter over the weekend.

Retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn on Sunday responded to the claim made by Hillary Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook that Russian intelligence agencies were behind the Democratic National Committee hack that exposed tens of thousands of staffers’ emails.

“The corrupt Democratic machine will do and say anything to get #NeverHillary into power. This is a new low,” Flynn tweeted, sharing a link to a tweet from user Saint Bibiana who wrote “>Cnn implicated. ‘The USSR is to blame!’ … Not anymore, Jews. Not anymore.”

The user’s tweet linked to a CNN Politics clip of Mook’s comments.

Flynn, who spoke at the Republican National Convention last week, deleted the Tweet and issued an apology hours after posting it, saying it was “a mistake” and that he only meant to share the CNN video.

This is not the first time that the Trump campaign has had to answer for sharing anti-Semitic messages.

Earlier this month, Trump shared a post accusing Clinton of corruption that featured a photo of the Democratic nominee along with piles of cash and a six-pointed star that resembled the Star of David. The campaign insisted the image was not meant to be anti-Semitic and that it was actually a “plain” or “sheriff’s” star, though the user who originally posted it regularly shared other anti-Semitic messages.

Jewish journalists covering the Trump campaign have faced anti-Semitic harassment from his supporters, and he has repeatedly had to disavow the support of David Duke, an avowed anti-Semite and former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

(h/t Talking Points Memo)

Trump Adviser Calls on Long Deceased Muslim Leader to Condemn Nice Attack

Hiring ‘the best people‘ shouldn’t be this difficult.

Former Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, an adviser to Donald Trump who was rumored to be on his list of possible running mates, called on Muslim leaders to condemn the attack in Nice, France.

“The radical Islamist ideology is alive, well and kicking,” Flynn said in an interview with “Fox and Friends” Friday morning.

“In the last 24 hours I have called out for the leaders of Iran — Khomeini — and the leaders of the Muslim world, and I can tick them off if you want, there’s a bunch of countries with a bunch of so-called leaders, to step up and call this what it is. They know they have a problem inside of their own system.”

(h/t The Hill)

Reality

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s supreme leader, died in 1989. He was replaced by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Media

 

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