States, “I believe Putin.” The president of the Russian Federation was at the time was telling Trump, contrary to what the U.S. president was hearing from his own intelligence community, that no such launch had occurred.115 By July 2017, however, the Trump administration will have conceded that the launch did in fact take place.116
* * *
Just a matter of weeks after he meets with Nader, MBZ, and el-Sisi on the Red Sea, MBS announces, on December 14, 2015, a new “Saudi-led Islamic alliance to fight terrorism … and train, equip, and provide forces if necessary for the fight against Islamic State militants.”117 One of the men most likely to be intrigued by MBS’s new anti–Islamic State alliance is Michael Flynn, who sources in the American intelligence community will tell the New York Times in June 2017 was “willing [in 2015 and 2016] to be used by Russia if he could advance his views on forging a united front to battle the Islamic State.”118 A united front to battle the Islamic State is exactly what MBS is offering by mid-December 2015, and his proposed alliance will indeed require Russian assistance—as the Russians are already fighting the Islamic State in Syria, just as MBS’s Saudi-led coalition is hoping to do.
On December 2, less than two weeks before MBS’s announcement, Flynn and his son meet with Russian ambassador Kislyak at his home in Washington.119 According to emails later reviewed by the House Intelligence Committee, not only is the meeting set up by the Flynns rather than Kislyak, but Flynn Jr. contacts the Russian embassy following the meeting to describe the encounter as “very productive.”120 In May 2017, Reuters will report that, according to six “current and former U.S. officials,” “before the election, Kislyak’s undisclosed discussions with … Flynn focused on fighting terrorism and improving U.S.-Russian economic relations,” which the news outlet takes to mean an adjustment of the sanctions regime leveled on the Kremlin after Putin’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014.121 Prior to the Reuters report, it had not been known that Flynn secretly met with the Kremlin’s top agent in the United States during the presidential campaign, and, moreover, at a time when he was Trump’s top national security advisor.
Reuters makes a further revelation, however, that is even more surprising: that Flynn’s December 2015 face-to-face contact with Kislyak was not his only pre-election conversation with the Russian ambassador. As part of its reporting that in 2016 “there were at least 18 undisclosed calls and emails between Trump associates and Kremlin-linked people in the seven months before the November 8 presidential election, including six calls with Kislyak,” Reuters will note that two U.S. officials “familiar with those 18 contacts said Flynn … [was] among the Trump associates who spoke to the ambassador by telephone.”122 The report will also indicate that Jared Kushner spoke to Kislyak via telephone—and failed to report it—sometime between April 2016 and Election Day, with the exact date of the call unknown. According to Reuters, it is “not clear whether Kushner engaged with Kislyak on his own or with other Trump aides,” nor whether the call occurred before or after the nation learned, in mid-2016, that the Kremlin was behind the hacking of the DNC and the Clinton campaign.123
Flynn’s pre-election contacts with Kislyak involved even more than phone calls and a meeting at the Russian ambassador’s personal residence, however. In December 2018, a major investigative report by Mother Jones will reveal that in the months leading up to Election Day, Michael Flynn told close associates that he was having a series of clandestine contacts with Kislyak—contacts that apparently included not just phone calls but also texts and in-person contacts.124 The nature and timing of these contacts creates the appearance of Flynn “try[ing] to strike a ‘grand bargain’ with Moscow as it attacked the 2016 election,” writes Mother Jones—a particularly troubling prospect given that Flynn was present with Trump at the August 17, 2016, classified intelligence briefing at which Trump was thoroughly briefed on the scope of the Kremlin’s illegal election interference (see chapter 5).
The extent to which the “grand bargain” Flynn is discussing with the Russians in the weeks before the 2016 election is the same as the bargain discussed by MBS, MBZ, and el-Sisi on the Red Sea a year earlier is unknown—but there are compelling indications that the two are in fact one and the same. Per Mother Jones, one of the Flynn associates who speaks with Flynn about his pre-election contacts with Kislyak reports that “Flynn