Many Americans have grown tired of the whole "Russian Conspiracy" narrative spouted
out by the mainstream media.
Even when further investigation led to Hillary Clinton having ties to Uranium One and Russian
companies, the media still continued to claim that Trump has ties to Russia.
Now however, President Trump's ex-national security adviser has decided to plead guilty
about lying to the FBI.
He claims that he lied to the Bureau about his post-election conversations with Russian
ambassadors, and is now going to cooperate with the investigation into President Trump.
It does not appear that his testimony will implicate the President, as he admits to speaking
to only one member of the Trump transition team about Russia.
During the hearing, the judge read over several documents from a federal envelope marked "sealed,"
reporters inside the court room said.
However, it is not clear what was in the documents, as the judge did not make the evidence public,
and was for his eyes only.
CNBC reports:
President Donald Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty
Friday to lying to the FBI about his post-election contacts with Russia's ambassador to the
United States — and is now cooperating with a probe into links between the Trump campaign
and Russia.
Flynn surrendered to law enforcement Friday morning for a plea hearing in Washington,
D.C. federal court.
Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, pleaded guilty to a single criminal count
of knowingly making materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statements to FBI agents.
The charge was lodged by prosecutors for Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is probing connections
between the Trump campaign with Russians.
At that hearing, prosecutors said that Flynn last year had spoken with senior members of
Trump's transition team about his conversations with the Russian ambassador, which were related
to sanctions imposed by the Obamac administration.
Specifically, a prosecutor said, Flynn spoke to one senior official who was at Trump's
Mar-A-Lago resort property in Floriday about what to say to the ambassador.
A leading criminal defense lawyer not connected to the case told CNBC that Flynn's plea
is "a very big deal" that signals Mueller believes information from Flynn will be used
to successfully prosecute other people in Trump's orbit.
"It's the beginning of the end," said that lawyer, Gerald Lefcourt of New York,
a past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Flynn is the "key to the whole thing," Lefcourt said, referring to Mueller's probe.
Trump has denied any improper dealings with Russians.
Flynn's plea caps weeks of speculation about his fate and marks a new stage in Mueller's
investigation into links between Trump's top advisers and representatives of the Russian
government both before and after the 2016 presidential election.
In late October, Mueller's team charged former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort
and his business partner Richard Gates for working as unregistered agents on behalf of
the government of Ukraine, among other charges.
At the time those charges were announced, it was revealed that ex-Trump campaign foreign
policy adviser George Papadopoulos had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his own contacts
with Russian agents.
Flynn admitted to falsely claiming he had not asked Russia's ambassador to the United
States, Sergey Kislyak, last Dec. 29 "to refrain from escalating the situation in response
to sanctions that the United States had imposed against Russia that same day."
Then-President Barack Obama had announced those sanctions along with the expulsion of
35 Russian diplomats in retaliation against the Kremlin for interfering with the 2016
presidential election.
Flynn also admitted to investigators by telling them that "he did not recall the Russian
Ambassador subsequently telling him that Russia had chosen to moderate its response to those
sanctions as a result of his request," the information says.
Flynn admitted to stating that he "did not ask the Russian Ambassador to delay the vote
on or defeat a pending United Nations Security Council resolution," according to the filing.
Members of Trump's transition team, including Flynn, orchestrated a failed bid to prevent
the UN Security Council from adopting a resolution condemning Israeli settlements.
The charge against Flynn carries a maximum possible prison sentence of five years.
Flynn's son Michael G. Flynn, whose work for his father's consulting group was reportedly
being scrutinized by investigators, is not expected to be charged, a source told The
Washington Post.
The guilty plea comes a week after news broke that Flynn's lawyers had informed Trump's
legal team that they could no longer communicate about Mueller's probe.
That shutdown from the Flynn team was taken as a sign that he was cooperating with Mueller's
expansive investigation.
Flynn's lawyers met with Mueller's team on Monday.
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