The Ball Is Rolling Faster Now

Talking Points Memo has been digging into the court documents filed in Mike Flynn’s guilty plea, and it’s a href=”http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/mueller-trump-team-flynn-meddling”>damning stuff he’s pleading to.

Flynn has now admitted that in a voluntary Jan. 24 interview with FBI he made false statements about a push by the Trump transition team to persuade officials from a foreign government to delay or defeat a United Nations Security Council vote on a resolution to condemn Israeli settlements. … According to prosecutors, after Egypt submitted the UN resolution on Israeli settlements on Dec. 21, “a very senior member” of Trump’s transition team “instructed” Flynn to “contact officials from foreign governments, including Russia, to learn where each government stood on the resolution and to influence those governments to delay the vote or defeat the resolution.”
Flynn went on to discuss the vote with Kislyak on Dec. 22, and informed him that Trump’s incoming administration opposed it, according to prosecutors. Kisylak informed him the next day that Russia would not vote against the resolution, Mueller’s team said.

About a week later, as the Obama administration was getting ready to impose sanctions on Russia related to its interference in the 2016 election, Kislyak reached out to Flynn. The next day, Dec. 29, according to prosecutors, Flynn called a senior presidential transition team official who Mueller dubs the “PTT official.” The official, who was at Mar-A-Lago with other members of Trump’s transition team, discussed with Flynn what he should communicate to Kislyak, prosecutors said. “The PTT official and Flynn also discussed that the members of the presidential transition team at Mar-A-Lago did not want Russia to escalate the situation,” Mueller’s court documents said.

Flynn called Kislyak immediately after his call with the official, where he asked that Russia not escalate the situation in its response to the sanctions, according to prosecutors. Flynn spoke to the transition official shortly thereafter, according to prosectors, to debrief the official on the call with Kislyak. Kislyak called Flynn again on Dec. 31 to inform him Russia would not escalate its response, and after the call, “Flynn spoke with senior members of the Presidential Transition Team” about his conversations with the ambassador about the sanctions, the Mueller filing said.

As the story notes, given Flynn’s claim of talking to others in the inner circle about this undermine White House attorney Ty Cobb’s response that “nothing about the guilty plea or the charge implicates anyone other than Mr. Flynn.” That statement was written before the full range of Mueller’s allegations became public.