discussed with Kislyak a grand bargain in which Moscow would cooperate with the Trump administration to resolve the Syrian conflict and Washington would end or ease up on the sanctions imposed on Russia for its annexation of Crimea and military intervention in Ukraine.”125 A second Flynn associate tells Mother Jones that “Flynn said he had been talking to Kislyak about Syria, Iran, and other foreign policy matters that Russia and the United States could tackle together were Trump to be elected.”126 A third associate of Flynn’s speaks of identical subject matter being discussed by Flynn and Kislyak, without specifying the timing of the discussion: the “associate recalls that shortly after the election, Flynn told him he had been in contact with Kislyak about Syria,” writes Mother Jones.127 The Mueller Report will indicate, with respect to Flynn’s pattern of behavior in 2016, that his known telephonic negotiations with Kislyak in December 2016 only occurred after repeated check-ins with the campaign to be certain he was authorized to say what he planned to say.128 Whether Flynn followed a different protocol with respect to any pre-election negotiations he had with Kislyak is unknown.
The December 2018 report by Mother Jones, written by David Corn, author of Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump, implicitly makes the case that—if Flynn indeed had the contacts he claims, and if he indeed sought approval for his pre-election Russia contacts just as he did for all his post-election ones—the Trump campaign committed the federal crime of “aiding and abetting” Russian election crimes after the fact, as it offered the Russian Federation policy inducements after it learned, via the briefing Trump and Flynn received in August 2017, that the Kremlin was committing crimes against the United States.129 Aiding and abetting a crime that has already been committed or is in the midst of commission is an act that falls under a different federal statute, with different statutory elements, than a before-the-fact “conspiracy”—the statutory offense investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller with respect to the Trump campaign and two Russian government entities, the Internet Research Agency and Russian military intelligence (GRU).130 As Corn writes for Mother Jones, if “Flynn held clandestine meetings or communications with Kislyak during the 2016 general election, it would mean Trump’s chief national security aide was secretly interacting with the representative of a foreign power as that government was mounting information and cyber warfare against the United States. Such an interaction could signal to the Vladimir Putin regime that Trump didn’t mind the Kremlin’s interference in the election and would be willing to work with Moscow despite its efforts to subvert the U.S. election.”131 Moreover, writes Corn, “If Flynn held such conversations with the Russian ambassador, this could have bolstered the Kremlin’s preference for Trump … especially if there was any talk of a sanctions-for-Syria deal.”132 Such actions could therefore be considered “inducement” under the federal aiding and abetting statute (18 U.S.C § 2), with their immediate and foreseeable effect being that the Kremlin would continue to commit computer crimes against the United States.133
Eight days after Michael Flynn and his son meet with Sergey Kislyak at his D.C. home in December 2015, and just four days prior to MBS’s announcement of a counterterrorism alliance almost certainly requiring Russian cooperation, Flynn—who is in contact with the Saudis on foreign policy issues (see chapter 5)—receives $45,000 from RT, the Kremlin-financed news network, to attend and speak at a gala event in Moscow; at the event, which his son also attends, Flynn dines with Vladimir Putin.134 As NBC News will note, Flynn was “already advising” Trump at the time of both his face-to-face meeting with Kislyak in D.C. and his face-to-face meeting with Putin in Moscow, and was almost certainly brought to Moscow because of that role. “It is not coincidence that Flynn was placed next to President Putin [at the RT gala],” former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul tells NBC in April 2017. “Flynn was considered a close Trump adviser. Why else would they want him there?”135 Whether Flynn and Putin discuss in more detail the secret counterterrorism plan Trump had hinted at in Iowa four weeks earlier—a plan the evidence suggests was Flynn’s—is unknown.
While in Moscow, Flynn “trie[s] repeatedly to meet officers at the C.I.A.’s station in Moscow—housed inside the American Embassy—to press for closer ties with Russia’s spies.”136 The CIA declines to have anyone meet with him, however.137
In his address to an audience of influential Muscovites