In what could be a setback to the Trump administration in the lingering probe into Russian meddling in the US presidential election, former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn pleaded guilty on Friday to the charge of lying to the FBI over his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the US last December during the presidential transition.
The former close aide to President Trump and retired lt. General appeared in a Washington federal court after he was charged for making “false, fictitious and fraudulent representations” to the FBI.
In terms of the plea deal, Flynn has agreed to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Flynn is the fourth Trump aide to face criminal charges in the probe, but the first to be prosecuted for things that happened after Trump took office.
The one count of lying for which Flynn has been indicted deals with his private discussions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak regarding US sanctions imposed on Moscow by the Obama administration, a court document said.
The document filed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller said that Flynn “did willfully and knowingly make materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statements and representations” to the FBI regarding his interaction with then-Russian Envoy Sergey Kislyak.
In early December, after the November presidential election in which Trump emerged victorious, Flynn and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner are said to have met with Kislyak at Trump Tower.
On December 29, Flynn called Kislyak five times, and the two spoke about sanctions against Russia that had just been imposed by President Obama over Russia’s meddling in the US elections.
Prosecutors charged that Flynn falsely told FBI agents that he did not ask Kislyak to delay a vote on a pending United Nations Security Council resolution.
Flynn had also faced scrutiny over his business dealings, including $530,000 in earnings from a Dutch firm with ties to the Turkish government, and payment for his 2015 Moscow speech. He was not a registered foreign agent as required when he accepted money from the Dutch company.
The action against Flynn comes on top of the indictment of Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates in October. The two pleaded not guilty in federal court.
A fourth Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI about the nature of his relationship with “certain foreign nationals whom he understood to have close connections with senior Russian government officials”.