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Peter Debbins, Shrink-Wrapped Spy

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Update: Debbins was sentenced to 188 months, slightly less than the government had requested. 

Peter Debbins, the former Special Forces guy who pled guilty to spying for GRU through 2011 last November, will be sentenced today at 10AM ET. Because the sentencing hearing will be in person in the press-stifling Eastern District of VA, there will be scant coverage of the hearing. So I wanted to make an observation beforehand, in case it’s useful for anyone who does show up to EDVA.

The government’s sentencing memo, which was entirely unredacted, basically gave Debbins some credit for cooperating, while at the same time suggesting that they didn’t really believe he had stopped spying at precisely the moment, in 2011, when a renewed TS/SCI clearance would have made him more useful as a spy.

Debbins’ sentencing memo basically argued that evil Russians exploited his same-sex attraction to psychologically torture him, which is why he spied.

Mr. Debbins is extremely self-reflective, recognizing that he had “excellent work performance, high social standing, many friends, and a happy family,” but that on the inside, “with all this psychological and physiological torture” all he wanted was to “unload these racing thoughts to pass my polygraph, without considering the legal ramifications.” Id. Looking back, Mr. Debbins “regrets going to Russia” because he should have known better how “its nefarious government regards people as an expendable commodity, ubiquitous with no intrinsic value and I was especially vulnerable.” Id. More powerfully, Mr. Debbins “regrets not confronting my mental illness earlier and am so heartbroken for all the pain and suffering it caused my family and country.” Id. In his final paragraphs, Mr. Debbins exclaims that the “the Russian GRU ruined my honor and potential as an American,” and asks this Court for its leniency to “restore to me what the Kremlin stole from me, my integrity as an American,” so that “Americans who wish to escape a similar situation are not hopelessly trapped.”

He submitted a declaration describing the symptoms of the “insanity” that caused him to spy.

I descended into insanity unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy, and from 2014 until my arrest, I experienced the following:

  • Suffered from insomnia which gave me 3 hours of sleep a night
  • Had bizarre dreams, night terrors, and hallucinations of meeting with the GRU. I even thought they were in my house and I removed the smoke detectors believing they were surveillance devices.
  • Crossed moral boundaries
  • Was always in a manic state of high energy
  • My mind would race constantly
  • Conducted trances to enter into the “subconscious universe”
  • Believed I could communicate via telepathy and dreams
  • Excessively used caffeine, alcohol, and sleeping medication
  • Believed in signs and omens
  • Was paranoid of the GRU and loved ones. I thought my wife and daughter were working for the GRU, which may explain why I didn’t pass the 2019 FBI polygraph. The FBI didn’t believe me when I told them that I had no post-2010 contacts
  • Believed the souls of my aunts and uncles who perished from Stalin’s famines were living through me
  • Created fantasies of past misdeeds needing atonement
  • Had delusions of becoming a double agent
  • As a CI professional, I was becoming that what I gazed upon and demonized myself as having affinity to Russia.

The government’s response to Debbins’ submission, which was heavily redacted, basically called bullshit on Debbins’ explanations, laying out with a declaration from one of the FBI Agents who interviewed Debbins over a series of meetings from July to December 2019 how Debbins’ current claims to be motivated by shame about his same-sex attraction conflicts with his comments throughout 2019, when Debbins said he spied out of loyalty to Russia.

During the last interview conducted on December 20,2019, I asked Debbins, “what was the biggest thing … that you think they used, overtly, covertly, implicitly, to encourage the relationship?” Debbins answered, “They just let me feel validated. You know … my meaning … was as a loyal son of Russia. Uhm, I felt, you know, encouragement from them.” Debbins explained, “my mother being Russian, … they … help[ed] reinforce that self-image. “

I assumed, as I know several other people tracking this case assumed, that the large redactions in the government filing were — as most redactions in EDVA are — about national security. I assumed that the boilerplate in the motion to seal the government response would, like most boilerplate in EDVA, discuss the need to seal for national security purposes.

But it doesn’t. It reveals that those sealed sections address Debbins’ confidential health information, his psychiatric diagnosis.

The United States seeks to file the Government’s Response Brief under seal because it contains information from two filings that the Court recently sealed at the request of the defense. See Order (May 10, 2021) (Dkt. No. 52). As the defense explained in its motion to seal, those filings contained confidential health information regarding the defendant.

Sure, the government cheated in one redaction in their footnote 3, which probably rebuts Debbins’ claim to have been fully cooperative with the FBI. But otherwise, we should assume the large swaths of redacted material address Debbins’ psychiatric evaluation.

That’s important, because Debbins is relying on a psychiatric assessment by David Charney.

This behavior from years ago corroborates Dr. Charney’s psychiatric assessment of Mr. Debbins as it relates to his [redacted]

[snip]

This Court is extremely familiar with other such espionage cases, like that of Robert Hanssen, whose espionage activities led to both the imprisonment and deaths of Americans. Another individual, Aldrich Ames, compromised more highly classified CIA assets than any other spy in history, until Robert Hanssen came along. Both Hanssen and Ames received life sentences. Earl Pitts, with whom Dr. Charney is intimately familiar, sold secrets to the Soviets and received hundreds of thousands of dollars for his information. Mr. Pitts received a twenty-seven (27) year sentence. Brian Regan wrote letters to Saddam Hussein, Libya, and China offering to sell information for millions of dollars. He had downloaded tens of thousands of classified documents and was arrested on a plane to Switzerland with the documents. He was sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty by a jury.

[snip]

As such, considering these facts and the psychiatric assessment by Dr. Charney, Mr. Debbins is deserving of a sentence significantly below the low-end of the guidelines.

David Charney is a psychiatrist who worked with the defense teams of Earl Pitts, Robert Hanssen, and Brian Regan — several of those spies that, Debbins is arguing, he is not as bad as. Charney has a non-profit pitching an alternative approach for insider threats, reconciliation, which involves lowering the costs of spies turning themselves in.

Charney alluded to working with Debbins in a December Spy Talk piece in which he argued that rather than the obvious motivations (in Debbins’ case, that he’s loyal to Russia), people actually spy for subconscious reasons only accessible with the help of a shrink.

Trying to understand the psychology of a mole is tougher than it first appears. The acronym MICE is bandied about in intelligence community circles because it seems to cover all the bases of why trusted people turn coat: Money, Ideology, Compromise, Ego. From my experience with year-long interviews of three caught spies, including the notorious Robert Hanssen, and lately with a fourth spy I cannot yet name, I believe the acronym MICE does not suffice.

Human beings are far more complex than the limits of the acronym. There are deeper layers that, in fact, may be far more important. Those may not be fully clear even to the spies themselves: They are subconscious. To simplify things for themselves, disaffected spies try to apply a veneer to their motivations that seems internally plausible. They will seize upon rationalizations that elevate their motivations to appear to serve higher purposes, which is when ideology comes into play. Ideology provides a seemingly coherent higher purpose to their life choices, a morally glorious dimension to their decisions to cross the line. [my emphasis]

Charney’s theory (which he’s pitching to the IC) argues that if only spies can turn themselves in early in their career without the risk of prison time, it’ll lead more spies to do so when they first come to regret their decision.

When someone decides to step over the line to become an insider spy, he or she now find themselves stuck and trapped. It dawns on them that they have no way out. They come to realize it’s unthinkable to beg to be released from their handler because too many bad things can happen. Think of the Mafia.

By the same token, to turn themselves in to their home agency’s security office offers no better prospects. The insider spy cannot expect to be welcomed back. More likely, they spy will face severe punishments leading to career termination and everyone in the intelligence community knows this.

Being stuck in this no-win situation causes the insider spy to resign to stay put, take their chances, and hope for the best. Lacking any viable alternatives, they are forced deeper into the arms of the hostile intelligence service that owns them. And the damages they inflict on our national security accumulate year by year.

What if there were a way out? What if there were an alternative pathway (reconciliation) so an insider spy could voluntarily turn himself or herself in? What if there were a recognized, safe, government-sanctioned exit mechanism? Imagine such a thing.

If reconciliation were made available, what could possibly motivate an insider spy to consider it? The single most important motivator would be that he will not be sentenced to prison. From the perspective of an insider spy, prison would be a deal-breaker. [emphasis original]

Charney may well be right that the US government’s draconian approach to national security crimes ends up doing as much harm as good. But Charney has at the very least a predisposition — and possibly a significant financial incentive — to tell a story about Debbins that blames The Closet for his spying rather than ego, rather than the pride in being Russian that Debbins used to explain his spying before Charney got involved. And Debbins’ lawyer has an incentive to blame The Closet rather than Russian nationalism as well, if only to explain away lingering government concerns that there’s no way Debbins would have stopped spying just when the spying became really useful to Russia, when he got his TS/SCI clearance.

As the government notes in their response, however, Charney’s theory doesn’t apply here because Debbins only turned himself in after failing a polygraph.

There’s another problem with applying Charney’s theories to Debbins. Debbins is right that he’s different than those others in Charney’s comparison set: Pitts, Regan, and (especially) Hanssen. Debbins was not recruited at a time when he was disillusioned with his career, like Hanssen was. Rather, Debbins was recruited from a young age and most of the things he did before 2011 — before he got his TS/SCI restored — were largely grooming activities, grooming activities that largely governed the decisions that put Debbins in a national security position in the first place.

I assume the government makes some of these points in the redacted sections. So the hidden stuff is fairly explainable, once you realize that this is largely about Charney’s arguments about spying.

It’s the unredacted stuff in the government’s response that is still inexplicable. When someone reneges on a statement of responsibility, the government never blows that off in sentencing filings. When Mike Flynn reneged on responsibility for lying to the FBI, for example, prosecutors got all of DOJ to buy off on a much harsher sentencing memo, even though it would have no impact on Flynn’s sentencing guidelines.

Here, however, the government basically argues Debbins’ attempts to back out of things he said when he pled in November will all get accounted for in the sentence they requested before he disclaimed responsibility.

The Government submits that Debbins’s failure to accept responsibility for his conduct and false statements support a guidelines sentence of seventeen years.1

1 The Government does not request that the Court revise the guidelines calculation to take away the 3-level reduction that the probation officer credited Debbins for his timely plea under U.S.S.G. § 3E1.1. Instead, the Government asks the Court to consider Debbins’s failure to accept responsibility and false statements in imposing a substantial sentence within the guidelines range, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a).

Effectively, the government is doing the unheard of thing of having someone dismiss the damage he did to national security concerns with no cost imposed. In EDVA, no less!

The debate at EDVA today may be about Charney’s theories (though I would be shocked if Judge Claude Hilton buys any of this — I wouldn’t be surprised if he sentenced Debbins to more than the 17 years the government is requesting). But the real drama, in my opinion, has to do with why the government is acting so uncharacteristically forgiving.

The Mike Flynn Interviews, with Backup

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A few weeks ago, the government turned over the backup to some Mueller interviews, including a number of Flynn interviews, at least one Steve Bannon interview, and a Corey Lewandowski one.

I’ve long been tracking the public Mike Flynn interview records (one, two, three). This post is an update incorporating, best as I could, the backup materials along with the interview reports. One primary Mueller interview may remain outstanding, along with his EDVA interviews regarding secretly being an Agent of Turkey.

Generally, the headings consist of one of three things:

  • My summary of what got included in the Mueller Report (which is helpful to see what is new to this declassification)
  • “Missing” and/or EDVA, which is a reflection of what Bijan Kian’s lawyers claimed they had gotten by June 2019
  • New, with a description of the content

The backup fleshes out what Flynn was questioned about, and what remains sensitive. The government has released maybe half of the emails and pictures that Flynn was questioned about in interviews, based on the references to such things in the interviews themselves. In general, if BuzzFeed got the backup material, the link I’ve added should link directly to that item.

But key kinds of materials were withheld. For example, the following were withheld:

  • Communications surrounding a 2016 Egyptian meeting (which Mueller suspected may have involved a bribe)
  • A Kushner Blueprint for Russia sent to Flynn on January 1, 2017
  • To the extent Flynn was shown it in interviews, the David Ignatius story reporting the Kislyak calls; that was generally withheld both for classification but also ongoing investigation (reflecting John Durham’s leak investigation into it)
  • A January 5, 2017 email referencing the Logan Act
  • An email about the Steele dossier
  • A July 24, 2016 email involving Flynn making it clear he recognized Russia had hacked the DNC; Flynn would equivocate on the subject in the weeks after that

1. November 16, 2017: Trump appoint Flynn as NSA, first call with Putin, Israel vote, communications with Kislyak, December Kislyak call

Mueller attendees: James Quarles, Aaron Zebley, Brandon Van Grack, Zainab Ahmad

Entered: January 5, 2018

Nine months after Mike Flynn got fired, ostensibly for lying to the Vice President, Mueller’s team invited him for a mulligan on his January 24, 2017 interview in which he lied several times to the FBI. In advance discussions about that interview, Brandon Van Grack alerted Flynn’s lawyers that there were likely things Mueller’s team knew that Flynn’s did not.

There is information that you or your client might not be aware of. From where we’re sitting, there might still be value in sitting down with your client. We have a good sense of what Flynn knows and what Flynn doesn’t know.

As one indication of how badly Flynn had misled his attorneys, Rob Kelner expressed surprise that Flynn might be exposed for false statements from his interview at the White House.

Frankly, we are surprised by that. That is not consistent with what we have learned from press reports and other sources.

Zainab Ahmad warned,

You don’t know everything he knows.

This first interview, then, might be considered a test, whether Flynn was willing to tell the truth about his actions and those of Trump’s associates. He failed.

The interview front-loaded general information (how he came to work for Trump, though even there, later interviews would offer slightly different details as to timing), and questions about topics that Flynn was a tangential participant in — the DNC emails, the June 9 meeting, meetings with Egypt and Mueller’s suspicion that Trump got $10 million from them, ties with Qatar, Manafort’s role in the platform change, Brad Parscale’s operation, an the hush hush meeting with the UAE.

Only after asking questions about all that did Mueller’s team ask Flynn the same questions the FBI had asked him nine months earlier. He answered the questions the same way. He lied to hide the specific requests of Russia on Egypt’s UN proposal and he lied about whether he had discussed sanctions with Sergey Kislyak and discussed them with the Transition team at Mar-a-Lago with Trump.

Topics:

  • How he came to work for Trump
  • The $10 million campaign contribution (Mueller suspected it to be sourced from Egypt)
  • Hillary’s emails (Flynn lied and claimed he had never looked for them)
  • The DNC emails (Flynn lied about discussions about the topic)
  • No knowledge about June 9 meeting
  • The meeting with Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (and those suspected of brokering it); Flynn later admitted he met with Egyptians on more than one occasion
  • A reference to Qatar
  • Flynn’s views about Manafort, including the platform change
  • Flynn’s views on Russia
  • Flynn’s review of Parscale’s operations
  • Early congratulation calls, including Egypt, a botched one to Taiwan, and the first call with Putin
  • The meeting with Kislyak (Flynn claimed a back channel did not come up)
  • The call with Sergey Kislyak on 12/6/16, which he always insisted he didn’t remember, and a follow-up on December 7
  • The UAE meeting in NY
  • The UN vote (Flynn repeated his lies from earlier that year, twice)
  • The sanctions discussion (Flynn repeated his lies from earlier that year)

Backup

  • 9/15/16 email to Bannon regarding Egypt (A)
  • 12/7/16 email RE: Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak (regarding deferring all conversations until after inauguration) (B and C)
  • 3/27/2017 NYT article describing Kushner meeting (D)
  • 12/12/16 meeting keep UAE meeting to small circle (E)
  • Another email on Egypt

That night, Flynn’s lawyers told him he had botched the interview.

That same evening, after concluding the first proffer, we returned to the Covington offices where my attorneys told me that the first day’s proffer did not go well and then proceeded to walk me through a litany of conceivable charges I was facing and told me that I was looking at the possibility of “fifteen years in prison.”

2, November 17, 2017: Israel vote, December Kislyak call, especially comms with Mar a Lago, re Ignatius Flynn said he had not talked sanctions, Mar a Lago with Trump, Flynn’s last meeting with Trump, “we’ll take care of you”

Mueller attendees: James Quarles, Aaron Zebley, Brandon Van Grack, Zainab Ahmad (Zebley and Quarles in and out)

Entered: 1/5/18

According to Flynn, overnight his attorneys coached him on language to

“get through” the next day’s proffer and satisfy the special counsel.

Flynn shaded the truth in his November 17 interview — about the Trump Transitions contacts with their predecessors, about his discussions about sanctions with KT McFarland and Steve Bannon, about why he left no written record of having discussed sanctions. Still, it was a better interview, and after being confronted with just a selection of the communications that had recorded these communications in real time, his story edged closer to the truth, even while denying things (such as the explicit nod to their calls from Kislyak) that were in FISA transcripts. Among the things Flynn admitted that day was that he “knew he got involved in U.S. policy when he called KISLYAK.”

In addition, Flynn provided Mueller’s team what must have been important insight. He said that when he resigned, “TRUMP was tired and visibly shaken or upset.” But then when Sean Spicer explained his resignation, “It bugged FLYNN that SPICER said he (FLYNN) had been untruthful.” Flynn’s sense of betrayal would, at times, be powerful motivation for his cooperation with Mueller, until it wasn’t anymore.

Topics:

  • Calls with Kislyak, including January 12 one, (several iterations); Flynn lies abt Bossert speaking with Monaco, claims not to remember specifics of discussion with McFarland, makes excuses for not including sanctions in email, then backtracked somewhat, makes excuse for not telling Trump, claims he didn’t discuss it with Bannon
  • Flynn’s lies to others, including knights of the round table
  • His first FBI interview (several iterations)
  • Covington asks who he spoke with after the call, includes people (like Ted Gistaro) whom he didn’t tell
  • His resignation

Backup

  • 12/29/16 Text messages to Sara Flaherty (possible some withheld on b3) (A)
  • Some exhibit (possibly call records) eliciting a discussion about whether he and Michael Ledeen spoke about sanctions (B)
  • 12/30/16 email from McFarland relaying the talking points (C)
  • D [possibly comms from after he spoke with Kislyak]
  • 12/31/16 Keith Kellogg email (E)
  • Probably Ignatius article

Ongoing: Individual words redacted to hide an investigation into Ignatius’ source

3. November 20, 2017: Whether he told others at MAL, response to Ignatius

Mueller attendees: James Quarles, Aaron Zebley, Brandon Van Grack, Zainab Ahmad

Entered : 1/5/18

On November 20, Flynn inched still closer to the truth about what happened during the Transition period. He clarified a key detail about the $10 million infusion of cash that, Mueller suspected, had come from Egypt. Flynn described how Trump blamed him for not informing Trump that Vladimir Putin had been the first to call Trump after inauguration — something Trump had told Jim Comey.

And after being shown texts of the communications he had with Mar-a-Lago surrounding his calls with Sergey Kislyak, he effectively admitted that he had coordinated with Mar-a-Lago. There were still gaps. He had no explanation for why there was a meeting between him, KT McFarland, and Trump at 5PM, which would have been shortly after his call with Kislyak. Flynn inched closer to admitting that he and McFarland had agreed to leave mention of sanctions out of his text summarizing the call. And he admitted that he may have spoken about the sanctions discussion in some meetings with Steve Bannon at the latter’s townhome after the calls.

Once Flynn’s admissions about his own actions got closer to the truth, Mueller’s team asked him questions about Jared Kushner’s actions, especially a secret meeting with Mohammed bin Zayed in mid-December 2016.

Topics:

  • The Infusion of cash (correcting earlier explanation)
  • Theresa May arrival (included in Comey’s notes)
  • Calls with Kislyak (including texts with Flaherty)
  • Texts excluding sanction discussion
  • Meeting with Trump at 5PM on 12/29
  • Meeting with Bannon
  • Kushner’s blueprint for Russia
  • McFarland January 5, 2017 email
  • January 6, 2017 ICA briefing
  • Dossier
  • Cohen’s Ukraine plan
  • Someone who also believed CIA was bloated (and discussed UAE and Libya)
  • Seychelles meeting
  • Egypt package

Backup

Classified: Rex Tillerson? Some details about early January

Ongoing: Two b7A paragraphs in follow-up to Egypt package

4. November 21, 2017: Whether he told others at MAL, response to Ignatius, meeting with Trump [Missing]

Mueller attendees: James Quarles, Aaron Zebley, Brandon Van Grack, Zainab Ahmad; Mueller, briefly; Zebley left

Entered: 1/5/18

Having given Mueller’s team a passable explanation for his own actions, they focused the last interview on fine tuning that — particularly his admission to discussing the sanctions with Bannon — while getting him to talk about all the times he had been thrown under the bus by those who were in the know on the sanctions discussion, Bannon and McFarland.

Mueller’s team also got him to go over Kushner’s involvement in foreign policy, the relationship with Egypt, and the UAE meeting.

Topics:

  • Logan Act
  • Bannon’s townhouse (Bannon already knew content of conversation)
  • Knights of the round table meeting, Bannon and McFarland silent
  • Another instance of being thrown under the bus
  • Kushner on Mexico
  • Egypt
  • Rick Gerson and Tony Blair, the UAE meeting (April 2017 Flynn contact with Gerson)

Backup [large b4 redactions likely hiding a bunch]

  • Email on el-Sisi meeting
  • 9/16/16 email between Ivanka and Phares
  • Photo of Rick Gerson
  • Kushner email on keeping meeting small

Large b4 redactions (trade secrets), addressing two topics, which leads into Kushner on foreign policy.

5. November 29, 2017: Peter Smith [Missing]

Mueller attendees: Brandon Van Grack, Zainab Ahmad

Entered: 1/5/18

The November 29, 2017 meeting, when the two sides were already discussing a plea deal, seems to be focused on answering questions that Mueller’s team didn’t know the answers to, unlike the prior proffers. This covered some of Flynn’s other legal exposure (such as his non-disclosure of foreign travel on his clearance form and his financial disclosure), just bits about his ties with Turkish officials, WikiLeaks and the Peter Smith attempt to find Hillary’s email, as well as other election year digital activities.

The interview ended with a discussion about language in a draft statement of offense admitting that Flynn had initially not told the government that he and Steve Bannon discussed sanctions. That language was cut from the final statement of offense, but it provides important background to interviews with others, including McFarland and Bannon.

Topics:

  • Op-ed on Libya relying on WikiLeaks docs
  • Discussions about WikiLeaks having Hillary’s emails, no direct contact
  • WikiLeaks following Flynn starting in October or November 2016, DMs him on 12/5/16
  • An NSC hire
  • Flynn notes on index cards
  • Meeting with Turkish officials, including sitting with Foreign Minister at Trump International Hotel in January
  • More Turkish
  • Svetlana Lokhova, including congratulations sent after election
  • Jobs after DIA
  • Meetings Flynn set up
  • Foreign travel not included in SF-86, financial disclosure
  • Peter Smith (original contact cyber business), probably downplaying extent of their contacts
  • Rick Gates during transition
  • Putin congratulatory phone call (possibly different details than original version), asked about a “signal”
  • Rick Gerson notes on 12/14/16
  • WikiStrat
  • PsyGroup
  • Donbass
  • Meeting with Susan Rice
  • Strong dollar
  • Bannon townhouse language in statement of offense

Backup

  • 10/6/16 Curtis Ellis email, possibly relating to an op-ed on Libya, using classified information that had shown up on WikiLeaks
  • Possible b7A
  • Possible SF-86 and financial disclosure form
  • 12/4/16 notebook entries re Rick Gerson meeting
  • Possible media report that Trump asked him about strong dollar

b7E redactions

Ongoing: Four b7A redactions in discussion of what he did after he left DIA.

6. January 11, 2018: November 30 meeting with Kislyak [Missing]

Mueller attendees: Brandon Van Grack, James Quarles

Entered: 2/22/18

Starts with admonishment.

In Flynn’s first interview after pleading guilty, Mueller’s team asked him more generic details — about how he used his classified phone, whether he used encrypted apps, whether he knew about the Seychelles meeting. It’s not clear he told truth about those questions or not, but he did provide other useful information, such as how often Erik Prince was at Transition headquarters.

Topics:

  • Classified emails
  • Flynn claims he only used classified phone with Susan Rice
  • Encrypted apps (he preferred Signal), especially whether Bannon and Kushner used them
  • Kislyak meeting, starting w/12/1/16 (obtained his bio), still claimed no back channel, did not recall sanctions discussion
  • UN calls (including Nikki Haley’s, Bannon’s involvement)
  • Rebuff of Manafort’s 1/15/17 email (Manafort at National Prayer Breakfast)
  • UAE meeting
  • Another discussion of fire-the-CIA guy (could be Prince)
  • Prince at Trump Tower on daily basis, no knowledge of Seychelles
  • Kevin Harrington: Russia trying to usurp US role
  • Gitmo transfer
  • Parscale meeting in September 2016
  • Whom he has heard from post-plea

Backup:

Ongoing: Two b7A paragraphs between discussion of Manafort and Egyptian.

7. January 19, 2018: Flynn did not have specific recollection about telling POTUS on January 3, 2017

Mueller attendees: Brandon Van Grack, James Quarles, Andrew Goldstein

Entered: 6/21/18 [note: several other 302s have an entry date of 5/21, so this may be a typo]

In Flynn’s January 19, 2018 interview, he protected the President. He said, over and over, that he had no idea if he had spoken directly with Trump about sanctions, or even what he had said to KT McFarland. The Mueller team did not prompt him with information that might have been useful to force him to admit that he had told Trump.

Flynn did, however, admit that Trump had a better understanding of the timeline of Flynn’s calls with Kislyak than Flynn did, including a probable reference to Trump’s involvement in the December 22 call about Egypt.

This 302 was not finalized until June 21, a testament to how important Flynn’s claim not to remember discussing this with Trump was to Mueller’s case.

Topics:

  • Contacts with Mar-a-Lago, claims he assumed McFarland talked to Priebus and Bannon
  • Meeting with Bannon on 1/1/17
  • Whether it came up on 1/3/17
  • Ignatius, now says he’s worried he broke the law
  • His interview (with b5 that may have covered discussion within WH afterwards)
  • Trump corrects his date
  • Whether Trump specified calls with Daily Caller
  • Correcting Nikki Haley on Crimea

Backup:

  • Possibly Ignatius article

8. January 24, 2018: [New] Questions about George Nader and Erik Prince

Mueller attendees: Brandon Van Grack, Zainab Ahmad

Entered: 2/22/18

This interview took place in the wake of the George Nader detention at the airport, and reflects the first review of Nader’s phone. Prince was also a focus.

Topics:

  • Whether he recognized Nader
  • How Flynn arrived to the MbZ meeting and what was discussed
  • Whether Russia was discussed
  • Flynn’s meeting with Rick Gerson in December (which Tony Blair attended)
  • Erik Prince’s plans to outsource the IC and whether he was getting $$ from UAE
  • Prince’s presence in Trump Tower after the election
  • Extended b7A discussion

Backup:

9. April 25, 2018: Peter Smith

Mueller attendees: Brandon Van Grack, Zainab Ahmad, Andrew Weissmann, Aaron Zelinsky

Entered: 5/21/18

On April 25, 2018, after most Trump associates had had their first interviews and the Mueller team had begun to unravel Roger Stone’s role, Flynn had his first interview discussing those issues. It appears he shaded the truth, disclaiming to have been certain that Russia had hacked the DNC and disclaiming awareness of all the discussions in the campaign about WikiLeaks.

Nevertheless, Flynn likely said things at this interview that betrayed knowledge of far more, even if he didn’t understand that.

Topics:

  • How he got involved in the campaign, including discussions of Russia and Sam Clovis’ role in it, dates involvement from 2/22/16; officially joined June 2016
  • RT trip
  • Regular contact with retired military officer, including email 6/29/16
  • DNC hack, Flynn claims he was uncertain abt attribution [break to walk Flynn through specific dates], Ledeen on missing emails, no memory of Stone, contact with FBI
  • Debate prep included “leverage” discussions about Assange, Flynn did not know under indictment (??)

Backup:

10. May 1, 2018: Peter Smith

Mueller attendees: Brandon Van Grack, Aaron Zelinsky

Entered: 5/21/18

In this interview, Stone prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky tried to pinpoint Flynn’s vague memories from August 2016, specifically regarding his first flight with the campaign on August 3, 2016, in the middle of a period when Stone was in close contact with the campaign about WikiLeaks. In this interview, Flynn admitted that he had much higher certainty that Russia had done the hack than he had said weeks earlier.

Mueller’s team also asked him what amount to counterintelligence questions and started to figure out who in the FBI was undermining their case in Flynn’s name.

The meeting ended with a question about who used his IC badge to enter a classified facility on April 3, 2017.

Topics:

  • First trip on plane was 8/3/16, to Jacksonville, Flynn’s own assessment would be high likelihood Russia did the hack
  • Russian born investment capitalist talked about Clinton’s emails a lot
  • WikiLeaks reaches out to Flynn on 6/22/16 via publisher (recurring)
  • Flynn email 7/24/16 about attribution showing certainty–he walked back his certainty by August 3
  • Series of emails with someone military who moved to DIA, around first meeting with Manafort on 6/23/16
  • Question abt bots and social media
  • Email 11/2/16 may have clicked on the link
  • Trump’s 7/27/16 comment, specifically asked if Stone put it in his head
  • Contact in USDI
  • Retired general
  • 6/29/16 email from someone he was respectful of
  • Email 9/10/16 about speaking to Russia on Syria, someone pro-Russian
  • Dmitri Simes
  • Email sent to someone he met in August 2015 on 8/20/16
  • Contacts in FBI
  • Digital response team v. Parscales
  • Email 10/9/16 with link to Podesta
  • Extended discussion of Erik Prince, including transition
  • DIA visit on 4/3/17 (discussion about his IC badge)

Backup

Ongoing: Two b7A paragraphs abt discreet subject/person between discussion about WikiLeaks and about Prince.

11. May 4, 2018: [New: Manafort, Ledeen, and badging]

Mueller attendees: Brandon Van Grack, Aaron Zelinsky

Entered: 5/21/18

The next meeting started with the unexplained use of his badge (Flynn claimed he still hadn’t found it). It hit on his efforts to find Hillary’s emails with Barbara Ledeen, their search for the emails on servers in Ukraine, and a long call Flynn had with Manafort in June, when the WikiLeaks effort first began.

Topics:

  • Use of his badge 4/3/17
  • Barbara Ledeen, including password protected email on 10/29/16
  • Servers in Ukraine
  • Micro-targeting
  • Hour-long call with Manafort on 6/23/16; first met Manafort on 6/30/16
  • The dossier and ICA briefing
  • Transition meeting, some Captain sharing information, and KT McFarland

Backup:

12. May 17, 2018: [New: Ledeen’s tampering]

Mueller attendees: Brandon Van Grack, Zainab Ahmad

Entered: 6/1/18

Most of this meeting focused on ways that Flynn’s people were undermining the investigation, with a focus on Barbara Ledeen and Sara Carter (who published several false stories about the investigation). It also returned to the issue of what secure communications he used.

Topics:

  • Ledeen’s probes of the investigation
  • Sarah Carter’s propaganda (starting with possible immunity on 3/30/16)
  • Discussions about the investigation
  • Secure communications

Backup:

13. May 23, 2018:

Mueller attendees: Brandon Van Grack, Zainab Ahmad

Entered: 5/29/18

While this meeting returned focus to two key prongs of the Middle Eastern part of this investigation, UAE and Qatar, it also probed more about Flynn’s current job and the FBI agents tracking his case.

Topics:

  • Qatar
  • 12/12/16 Trump Tower meeting, possibly with QIA
  • His then-current consulting gig
  • FBI agents, including retired, who are tracking his case

Backup

  • Picture from QIA meeting

b3: An entire discussion covered by b3

14. June 13, 2018: [EDVA, Missing]

15. June 14, 2018: [EDVA, Missing]

16. June 25, 2018: [EDVA, Missing]

17. July 26, 2018, [EDVA, Missing, possibly two 302s]

18. September 17, 2018: [New: someone else’s tampering, probably Derek Harvey]

Mueller attendees: Brandon Van Grack, Zainab Ahmad

Entered: 9/28/18

The entirety of this, Flynn’s last meeting with the Mueller team, seems to focus on the role of Derek Harvey, whom Flynn hired into the NSC, and who played a key role in helping Devin Nunes undermine the entire investigation.

Topics:

  • Relationship with someone on HPSCI, probably Derek Harvey

September 26, 2018: Proffer response on meetings with Foresman

January 28, 2019: [EDVA Missing]

February 28, 2019: EDVA

April 5, 2019: [EDVA Missing]

June 6, 2019: EDVA — Flynn blows up his plea deal

When Fox News Generals Boasted of Brokering Russian Meetings with Mike Flynn

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Shortly after Mike Flynn pled guilty to lying to the FBI, a friendly leak to ABC reported that Flynn felt abandoned by Trump and promised “full cooperation” with Mueller that seems quaint in retrospect. The report also detailed that Trump had ordered Flynn to reach out to Russia on Syria.

Retired Lt. Gen Michael Flynn has promised “full cooperation” in the special counsel’s Russia investigation and, according to a confidant, is prepared to testify that Donald Trump directed him to make contact with the Russians, initially as a way to work together to fight ISIS in Syria.

The stunning turn comes as Flynn pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the FBI about his back-channel negotiations with the Russian ambassador – talks that occurred before Trump took office. The special counsel made the plea agreement public Friday morning.

The confidant provided ABC News with new details on Friday about Trump’s instructions to Flynn. During the campaign, Trump asked Flynn to be one of a small group of close advisors charged with improving relations in Russia and other hot spots. The source said Trump phoned Flynn shortly after the election to explicitly ask him to “serve as point person on Russia,” and to reach out personally to Russian officials to develop strategies to jointly combat ISIS.

At first, this friendly leak suggested Trump had ordered Flynn to reach out to Russia during the election, but the story was quickly corrected to say the order came after the election.

In any case, the leak seemed to be a message to others about what Flynn had been asked and would be asked.

Now that most of Flynn’s 302s have been released, it’s not entirely clear what he was talking about, if he was trying to leak the content of his interviews. In his interviews to that date, he described the meeting with Sergey Kislyak where Jared Kushner asked to set up a back channel so they could discuss Syria (in an interview where Flynn otherwise claimed not to remember a lot, he did remember that Kushner, Don Jr, and Ivanka all had a tie to this meeting). Entire swaths of his November 21, 2017 interview remain redacted, but the b4 (trade secret) redaction may suggest this was about his consulting. There’s a long b7A redaction, reflecting an investigation that was still ongoing in January, in his November 29, 2017 interview that might be that reference. There are descriptions of Putin’s congratulatory call immediately after the election, which has one sentence redacted, which might be related.

But there are no unredacted descriptions of Trump ordering Flynn to work with Russia on Syria — either after or before the election — from his early Mueller interviews.

The recent liberation of the backup files from his interviews, however, reveal that he was receiving emails about meeting with Russians well before the election. And it appears that then Fox News commentator Paul Vallely was involved in some way.

On April 25, 2018, Flynn was asked about an email he received from a retired Major General on June 29, 2016 at 7:27PM, which explained that he needed to talk to Flynn about “the Russia initiatives in Syria and Turkey.”

Flynn explained that the sender (whose name may be 7 characters long) “is a retired officer who was very active in Europe matters.” The person was “very pro-Russia.” The retired General “had very strong views on finding ways for the U.S. to work with Russia.”

Flynn explained he spoke to this person often, “sometimes daily.” But Flynn didn’t remember this specific email.

Then, on May 1, 2018, Flynn was asked about what appears to be a response to the original email from the same retired General three minutes later. “We need to somehow meet with [redacted] in DC or [redacted]. They are receptive to this…..

This iteration of the email reveals that “michael” also received the email (which could be a second Flynn email, his son Mike Jr, Michael Ledeen, or someone else entirely). Flynn explained that he didn’t know much about the two individuals the General wanted to meet, but he did say he was very respectful to the General.

Then, what appears to be the same General sent an email on September 10, 2016 to undisclosed recipients, BCCing someone (who, by dint of his copy noting the BCC, is likely Flynn), attaching a report from Retired General Paul Vallely.

The email introducing the report explains that the sender has had “close meetings with senior Russians in the past year and will be meeting” with someone else whose name is redacted “at the Russian Embassy in Washington on Oct 4th…” It states that, “Gen Flynn and I are the only senior people who have really reached out and have met with the Russians for solutions in Syria.” The General who sent the email went on to explain that “Trump is pressing the point” because “it is time to work with Russia much closer for solutions.”

The email also claims that “Putin has much more international respect and support than our President.” The report itself rants at length about Obama, claiming that he was “reducing our country to new lows and jeopardizing our very survival as a nation.”

Flynn,

speculated [redacted] was “flowering” who he was to a degree. [redacted] was someone FLYNN would have reached out to because [redacted] was pro-Russia and U.S. relations. [redacted] was also anti the previous administration. FLYNN’s contact with [redacted] was mainly through email messages.

It’s not certain that Vallely was the guy who sent the Vallely article to Flynn, but it’s a very good bet.

In addition to being a birther and having called for an uprising against Obama years before 2016, Vallely has predictably embraced QAnon. Vallely also signed a very recent letter similarly invoking apocalypse under a Democratic President.

By length of name (the redaction appears longer than 7 characters), I don’t think Vallely is the retired General and Fox contributor referenced in that same interview, one who introduced Flynn to another person who thought he had access to secret emails. Unlike the respect that Flynn had for the General addressing Russia, Flynn seemed more skeptical of this General and his associate, calling the General’s writings “conspiratorial” and the associate’s theories “a lot of B.S.”

Still, the pro-Russian General was representing to others that he and Flynn had reached out to Russians, and on precisely the Russia-Turkey-Syria nexus that Flynn would continue pursuing as he prepared to take over as National Security Advisor.

Update: Laura Rozen alerted me to this February 2017 Paul Vallely piece on Syria for the Valdai Discussion Group, which already features in the 2016 operation in Joseph Mifsud’s background.

“Oversight:” Mike Flynn Lied to Protect Barbara Ledeen, Who Then Fed Disinformation to Sara Carter

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In a footnote to an October 2019 filing, prosecutors in the Mike Flynn case suggested that Sidney Powell was misrepresenting Flynn’s “cooperation and candor” in his first interviews with Robert Mueller’s team, a claim that is consistent with Flynn’s own description of his lawyers’ unhappy review of it. The 302s liberated by BuzzFeed earlier this year show just how ridiculous some of the lies Flynn told in his November 16, 2017 meeting with Mueller’s prosecutors.

For example, in addition to repeating his lies about his conversations with Sergey Kislyak and claiming that he “did not specifically recall conversations regarding Wikileaks” during the campaign, Flynn also claimed that he never had conversations about how to get Hillary’s missing emails.

FLYNN did not recall discussions about a concerted effort to locate [Hillary’s] missing emails.

[snip]

FLYNN never had any conversations about how to get CLINTON’s missing emails. FLYNN did not remember hearing anyone else on the campaign discuss this either. The consensus was that they hoped the emails would be found all of a sudden.

Flynn would go on to unforget all three topics in the weeks and months ahead.

On the topic of searching for Hillary’s emails, however, Flynn was still shading the truth in his final interview before pleading guilty on November 29, 2017. Flynn described that he had met Peter Smith regarding business development in 2015, and described that Smith had emailed during the campaign. But, “FLYNN lost interest in what SMITH sent him because he ‘did not see any there, there’,” per the interview report. As to others who might be involved in the effort, Flynn described that “possibly Barbara LEDEEN” had been a recipient of some of the emails from Smith, though suggested Sam Clovis was a more important player.

It would be six months later, in an interview on May 4, 2018, before prosecutors returned to Flynn’s role in hunting down Hillary’s emails in depth. It appears that, at first, they asked Flynn generally about the Peter Smith effort, and this time, he remembered that “LEDEEN’s role” in the effort “was as a conduit.” Flynn explained that he gave “time and attention” to the effort “out of respect for his friendship with LEDEEN.” It was in that context that Flynn remembered that someone “sent files to FLYNN on one or two occasions,” though even then, he couldn’t remember whether the files were about Benghazi or the missing emails.

The prosecutors started asking Flynn about the actual emails — many of which were liberated in the documents liberated by BuzzFeed.

Prosecutors first asked about an email that the FBI Agent who wrote up the 302 described as a May 24, 2016 email from Ledeen to Flynn. But it’s actually an email Ledeen sent one of the chief purveyors of disinformation about the Flynn case, Catherine Herridge, promising “evidence” (though there are notations on it that may reflect Flynn got a hard copy).

Prosecutors then showed an email Flynn sent to Ledeen on June 16, 2016, in response to Ledeen’s question, “You got the Signal email.”

Flynn’s response reflects him having downloaded and read the report on the effort to obtain the emails. “amazing!” Flynn responded. “I’ll speak more off line with you about it this evening or tomorrow.”

On September 10, 2016, Ledeen wrote Flynn a “TIME SENSITIVE” email, explaining that “we are at the point of rubber hitting the road re the project you know I have been working on.”

In response to Ledeen’s request, the interview suggests, Flynn spoke with someone who had been an early campaign advisor, but he told Mueller’s team that “he did not really remember the details of the conversation.”

He claimed to remember nothing of the October 29, 2016 Hushmail promising a Phase II of the report, however.

“You’ve got me on this one,” Mike Flynn claimed, then described asking Barbara Ledeen, “Can’t you just tell me?” and imagining that, “he became frustrated trying to open the message.”

There was another HushMail on November 3, which Flynn suggested might pertain to Sidney Blumenthal.

But he suggested that “The servers may have been a second set of email messages to FLYNN,” and explained it was all “secret squirrel stuff.”

Flynn’s interview then proceeded to talk about an in-person meeting that Ledeen had set up, apparently with this same person, to discuss microtargeting; the pitch appeared to combine Sidney Blumenthal, servers in Eastern Europe, and microtargeting. It was in this context that, six months after claiming that he never spoke to anyone about getting Hillary’s missing emails, he admitted he actually talked about pursuing the Hillary emails “to anyone he was with on the Trump plane,” including Trump.

FLYNN conveyed to people that people were looking for the missing emails and were confident they would eventually find them. FLYNN would have said this to anyone he was with on the TRUMP plane. FLYNN does not know if specifically said he knew people but he could have. People on the plane include TRUMP. FLYNN did not believe he conveyed to the team information about the servers in the Ukraine or Eastern Europe. FLYNN was not ruling it out but does not recall exactly what he said.

Barbara Ledeen, still a key Senate Judiciary Committee staffer to Senators who have led the effort to undermine the Russian investigation, was right in the thick of all this during the 2016 election: Secret servers in Ukraine, missing emails, and microtargeting. That’s the woman overseeing the investigation into the investigation.

Which makes the other emails liberated in the BuzzFeed release implicating Ledeen all the more important.

It turns out that, before prosecutors asked about all this, they may have been alerted to a text Ledeen sent on May 1, 2018, inquiring about the status of Flynn’s case. Mueller’s team raised the text two weeks after the Peter Smith and microtargeting discussion, on May 17, 2018, when prosecutors focused on Ledeen’s extensive effort to monitor the Russian investigation (starting well before Mueller was appointed).

The backup liberated by Buzzfeed shows that Michael Ledeen inquired about whether he “and Sara” could say that Flynn was getting an immunity for testimony deal on March 31, 2017 (the same way Ledeen’s co-conspirators in Iran-Contra escaped accountability), establishing that the Ledeens funneled stories to Sara Carter.  A year later, Flynn conceded, he may have still been a source for Sara Carter stories via the Ledeens, in this case for a story about Flynn getting discovery.

BARBARA reached out FLYNN but he did not respond to her with anything specific. FLYNN may have told her they received discovery and were reviewing the documents.

FLYNN had many conversations around the time of this article but was never asked if the information could be shared with CARTER, nor did he direct anyone to share it with her.

Prosecutors asked about several other Carter stories, and Flynn’s long-suffering attorney, Rob Kelner, admitted that Carter had reached out several times before the plea deal and that he (Kelner) may have been the source for the detail that Andrew McCabe reached out to Flynn about an interview on short notice.

More interesting, however, are the emails between those Carter stories, which show Michael Ledeen (who, remember, was one of the first people Flynn called before secretly undermining sanctions with Sergey Kislyak in December 2016) reached out on April 17, 2017, telling Flynn, “it’s time…”

Then Michael Ledeen reached out the next day (apparently to a different Flynn email address) to arrange a pastrami dinner with extra pickles, Dr. Brown’s diet soda, and “a message for you.”

The meeting would have been on Monday April 24, 2017. Some of Carter’s scoops have been solid, albeit hyped. Others have been garbage. Her regurgitation of Sidney Powell’s false claims was pure propaganda. But she was also responsible, with John Solomon, for one of the most important unsubstantiated stories of the entire investigation, one that claimed Andrew McCabe had said they were going to “fuck Flynn” in a meeting after Flynn’s interview, an allegation that came up in Flynn’s last interview with Mueller (at a time when Mueller would replicate the two investigations that had been done on this allegation in the past).

The same interview reveals that Barbara Ledeen was responsible for another false claim that never died, that there was some original 302 that said something different from the one that recorded Flynn’s lies.

“Barbara tends to have a ‘big mouth,'” Flynn complained on May 17, 2018, as part of these discussions. But he still did what, according to the same interview report, she kept nagging him to do: withdraw his guilty plea. For a long time, it looked like she was simply protecting her husband Michael’s close friend. But with the backup materials, it seems just as likely that Ledeen’s efforts to undermine the Russian investigation are as much about her own complicity as Flynn’s himself.

A person who had a key role Senate Judiciary Committee oversight of the Russian investigation was sending Hushmail and Signal communications looking for secret servers in Ukraine during the events in question.

Update: Here’s my summary of what each of the 302s included from when they were released in January).

Update: In January, Flynn thought that the April message that Ledeen was passing on may have been from Trump.

Did John Durham Seize Journalists’ Call Records?

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The WaPo has revealed that DOJ obtained toll records on three journalists, covering a 3.5 month period in 2017, in 2020.

The Trump Justice Department secretly obtained Washington Post journalists’ phone records and tried to obtain their email records over reporting they did in the early months of the Trump administration on Russia’s role in the 2016 election, according to government letters and officials.

In three separate letters dated May 3 and addressed to Post reporters Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller, and former Post reporter Adam Entous, the Justice Department wrote they were “hereby notified that pursuant to legal process the United States Department of Justice received toll records associated with the following telephone numbers for the period from April 15, 2017 to July 31, 2017.” The letters listed work, home or cellphone numbers covering that three-and-a-half-month period.

[snip]

The letters do not say when Justice Department leadership approved the decision to seek the reporters’ records, but a department spokesman said it happened in 2020, during the Trump administration. William P. Barr, who served as Trump’s attorney general for nearly all of that year, before departing Dec. 23, declined to comment.

The WaPo cites two stories it think might be culprits:

But it misses a key story on which Ellen Nakashima — whose mobile phone and home numbers were seized — was the first byline.

There’s also one on which Nakashima was not the first byline that might be relevant.

Notably, the request goes through the time when Peter Strzok was on the Mueller team.

In August 2020, NYT reported that John Durham was investigating media leaks. As reported, that was focused on the original leak to David Ignatius that led Mike Flynn to respond. But it reported that it wasn’t clear whether the investigation included other leaks, such as the two stories based on leak intercepts from the period under subpoena.

This report looks like what you’d expect if Durham’s investigation was broader than that, covering the period through when Strzok was removed from Mueller’s team.

Update: Billy Barr told the AP that he had made Durham Special Counsel on December 1, just over 6 months before WaPo got notice that DOJ had seized their records. He did so, it’s now clear, so that whatever providers they were trying to obtain records for would know that he had the authority of Attorney General.

Update: What Durham is clearly pursuing is charging someone under 18 USC 798 for leaking signals intercepts that seeded three stories:

  • The David Ignatius story revealing Mike Flynn’s calls with Sergei Kislyak had been discovered
  • The WaPo story revealing that Jared Kushner’s effort to set up a back channel with Russia had been discovered
  • The WaPo story revealing that Jeff Sessions had lied when he said he hadn’t spoken to any Russians in his confirmation hearing

Update: To be quite clear: I have no reason to believe Durham has any evidence about Strzok. What I have is a bunch of evidence that 1) Durham doesn’t understand what he’s looking at and 2) he was hired to take out a couple of FBI people, starting with Strzok.

When No Means Yes: The Flynn and McFarland Response to Information to Paul Manafort

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Jason Leopold liberated a bunch of the A1 back-up files (meaning the documents about which witnesses get asked) to Mueller 302s last night.

In virtually every way — from Mike Flynn bragging about sitting with Putin at the RT gala, to Erik Prince pretending not to remember obvious references to Russia in dealings with George Nader, to the response to George Papadopoulos’ offer to set up a meeting with Russia — the files make Trump’s flunkies look worse than was already known.

I want to show one specific example of how that’s true.

The Mueller Report told the story of how, after a secret meeting in Madrid with Oleg Deripaska deputy Georgiy Oganov where the two discussed “recreating old friendship” that Manafort had with Deripaska, Manafort returned and reached out to incoming Deputy National Security Advisor KT McFarland.

He would have told her, among other things, to undermine the Russian investigation by pointing to problems with the Steele dossier that Deripaska had been feeding both sides of.

As the Mueller Report tells it, McFarland asked if she should respond to Manafort, Flynn advised her not to, and she did not.

On January 15, 2017, three days after his return from Madrid, Manafort emailed K.T. McFarland, who was at that time designated to be Deputy National Security Advisor and was formally appointed to that position on January 20, 2017.945 Manafort’s January 15 email to McFarland stated: “I have some important information I want to share that I picked up on my travels over the last month.”946 Manafort told the Office that the email referred to an issue regarding Cuba, not Russia or Ukraine, and Manafort had traveled to Cuba in the past month.947 Either way, McFarland- who was advised by Flynn not to respond to the Manafort inquiry appears not to have responded to Manafort. 948

The Senate Intelligence Report tells it slightly differently. It describes that Flynn told her they shouldn’t respond until they were “in the hot seats.”

(U) Manafort returned to the United States from Madrid on January 12, 2017.615 Three days later, Manafort sent an email to K.T. McFarland, who at the time was designated to become the number two official in Trump’s National Security Council and was serving as Flynn’s deputy on the Transition.616 In the email, Manafort asked McFarland if she was in Washington D.C. that week and, if so, if she was willing to meet informally.617 Manafort said he had “some important· information I want to share that I picked up on my travels over the last month.”618

(U) Before responding to Manafort, McFarland forwarded Manafort’s request to Flynn and inquired whether she should. agree to meet with Manafort.619 Flynn responded by recommending that McFarland not meet with Manafort “until we’re in the hot seats,” presumably a reference to their taking official roles in the U.S. Government. 620 It is unclear what Manafort hoped to speak with McFarland about, but he claimed to the SCO it involved matters related to Cuba, not Russia or Ukraine.621

That is, rather than telling McFarland not to take the meeting, Flynn told her to hold off until Trump was inaugurated.

The email itself provides more details.

First, Manafort was specifically suggesting they only meet if she was in DC.

That is, Manafort wanted to meet in person. He didn’t want to tell her his “important information” if they were in different cities.

And Flynn was not only aware that Manafort might be “working for” someone, but he was specifically concerned about the perception of meeting with Manafort, “especially now.”

Unmentioned in this exchange, but important background, is that the press was already focused on Flynn’s secret phone calls with Russia, and he had already committed himself to several public lies about when he spoke with Sergey Kislyak and when.

And curiously, even though it took less than an hour for McFarland to forward this to Flynn and him to respond, the government does not, apparently, have any response McFarland sent to Manafort.

That doesn’t mean McFarland was implicated in Manafort’s coziness with Russian intelligence. But it does demonstrate how Mueller put the email in a remarkably favorable light.

Where Were They Radicalized? Two Mike Flynn Supporters Guilty of Threatening Assassination

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Yesterday, two Trump supporters were held accountable for threats of violence against Trump’s perceived opponents.

In DC, QAnoner Frank Caporusso pled guilty to threatening Emmet Sullivan because of his decisions in the Mike Flynn case. His statement of facts admitted that he called Sullivan’s chamber and warned,

We are professionals. We are trained military people. We will be on rooftops. You will not be safe. A hot piece of lead will cut through your skull. You bastard. You will be killed, and I don’t give a fuck who you are. Back out of this bullshit before it’s too late, or we’ll start cutting down your staff. This is not a threat. This is a promise.

Caporusso faces an 18-24 month sentence, though will get credit for time served since August.

In New York, a jury found Trump supporter Brendan Hunt guilty of making death threats against government officials, including calling for the execution of AOC, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi on December 6. On January 8, he called to return to DC with guns to “slaughter these motherfuckers.” On January 12, in response to a General Flynn Parler text calling on people to act responsibly, Hunt responded, “enough with the ‘trust the plan’ bullshit. lets go, jan 20, bring your guns.”

Hunt’s sentence will likely be longer given that he went to trial, not to mention some violent behavior committed while detained pre-trial.

This is one day. One day, and two Trump and Flynn supporters found guilty of the same crime for threatening political violence.

Two One-Time Devin Nunes Flunkies Under Investigation for Leaks

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Michael Ellis, the Devin Nunes flunky who had been installed as NSA General Counsel over more qualified people, resigned from NSA after being placed on leave since Inauguration Day. I hadn’t realized until I read Ellen Nakashima’s report on Ellis’ resignation that he was being investigated for leaking classified information, though Catherine Herridge reported that investigation in real time, the very same day that Ellis’ attorney wrote NSA inquiring about the investigation.

Meanwhile, a long David Ignatius profile of another Nunes flunky, Kash Patel, mentions that he, too, is under investigation for leaking classified information.

Patel repeatedly pressed intelligence agencies to release secrets that, in his view, showed that the president was being persecuted unfairly by critics. Ironically, he is now facing Justice Department investigation for possible improper disclosure of classified information, according to two knowledgeable sources who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe. The sources said the investigation resulted from a complaint made this year by an intelligence agency, but wouldn’t provide additional details.

Both of these men (along with a third Nunes flunky, Derek Harvey) have been a real threat to national security and both have a history of writing crappy reports for Nunes (recent reporting reminds that Ellis was the author of an unnecessarily shitty Edward Snowden report, for example). There’s little doubt they have released the kinds of material that have never before been released, but much of that would either be legal and/or protected by Speech and Debate.

But the fact that both are being investigated for leaking classified information raises questions whether leak investigations are just being used as an easy way to take out intelligence community critics, whether they’re both suspected of leaking the same information, or whether there’s more there.

The Ignatius story, in particular, is of interest, not least because he’s the guy who first reported Mike Flynn’s conversation with Sergey Kislyak in a seemingly sanctioned leak, making this report a kind of book-end to the Trump Administration. All the more so given that Ignatius not only notes the sensitivity of the probe into Patel, but then tells a story that likely relies on classified information of how Patel’s incompetence almost blew up a SEAL rescue mission in Niger.

Anger toward Patel within the national security bureaucracy mounted after an Oct. 31, 2020, hostage rescue mission in Nigeria. The incident, never previously reported in detail, was described by four high-level sources.

It was a rescue mission that was nearly aborted partly because of inadequate coordination by Patel. SEAL Team Six had been assigned to rescue 27-year-old Philip Walton, a missionary’s son who had been kidnapped by gunmen in Niger, near the border with Nigeria. Patel, as a senior counterterrorism adviser, had assured colleagues that the mission had a green light, according to several sources. The SEALs were ready to parachute into the rescue site from high altitude (one source estimated 30,000 feet) when there was a last-minute hitch.

But as the SEALs were about to jump, military commanders and State Department officials realized that one necessary item hadn’t been completed: The Nigerian government hadn’t been informed prior to the operation inside their country, as required.

A frantic last-minute effort to obtain the necessary permission ensued. The SEAL team’s aircraft held over the target, flying in a racetrack pattern, for about 45 minutes while the State Department tried to locate a Nigerian national security official who could receive the official notice. Finally, just 15 minutes before the operational window closed, the Nigerians were given word, the SEALs parachuted down, and the hostage was rescued.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were angry that, in their view, Patel had prematurely said the operation was fully cleared, according to knowledgeable officials. One senior Pentagon official said he was “incensed” at Patel. A second senior Pentagon official described Patel’s actions as potentially “dangerous” for the SEALs.

The attack on Patel’s role in the hostage rescue may be a signal about what Patel is suspected of leaking.

While Ignatius provides no indication of what Patel is suspected of leaking, the WaPo columnist does link to an interview Patel did with Aaron Maté. The interview is about what you’d expect from a propagandist interviewing a propagandist.  Patel makes a slew of false claims that Maté encourages: the purpose of FISA, what normally goes in FISA applications, the intelligence against Carter Page, what servers the FBI obtained as part of its investigation into the hack (Maté still ascribes the single server fallacy!), what Crowdstrike actually had access to, what Bruce Ohr’s FBI interviews actually showed. Perhaps the most hysterical part of the interview is where Patel claimed that the way to conduct an investigation is to follow the money, but Maté never asked him why HPSCI didn’t follow the money on a single Trump associate, to say nothing of Trump’s role in money laundering for Russian oligarchs.

Nevertheless, in their discussion about the Russian investigation, Patel was quite careful to avoid revealing non-public information, not even for a report he authored claiming poor tradecraft on the Intelligence Community Assessment of the Russian attack that both SSCI and John Durham have investigated and dismissed.

Maté similarly let Patel dodge really answering questions about his conduct on January 6, even though some of the biggest questions about that day pertain to why DOD delayed for three hours before reinforcing the Capitol, including why it took over 30 minutes for an order to deploy to get from Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller to Guard Commander General William Walker who had been waiting on stand-by. In response to Maté’s question, Patel first repeated his selective breach of Executive Privilege to claim that Trump had already authorized Guard deployments, then answered a totally different question than the one Maté asked — not why DOD let the attack continue for 3 hours, long after it had gotten repeated requests for help, but how quickly DOD deployed the Guard after they had allowed an attack to happen across town while they watched.

We activated, from a start, the fastest augmentation and mobilization of uniformed military troops in the DC area since World War II, and we put 24,000 boots on the ground in less than 48 hours. I don’t know who’s saying we slow-rolled anything, because these are Guardsmen, they’re not active duty military.

While Patel violated Executive Privilege, there’s nothing classified about the belated Guard deployment.

It’s in-between those two conversations, though, where Patel may have succumbed to Maté’s persistent questioning about the very same topic about which Ignatius’ sources attack Patal: hostage rescues. Maté asked about a report that Patel had tried to negotiate the release of Austin Tice. Patel first responded to Maté by saying that he wouldn’t address whether Tice is alive or not. But then Maté followed up, and Patel told a self-serving story about his role in an attempt to free Tice. In it, Patel provided non-public details about his meeting with Assad representatives in Syria and may have confirmed an intercept on Bashar al-Assad.

Maté: Can you tell us anything about your discussions with Syrian officials, what they were asking from you, their level of openness to having talks with the US government?

Patel: Sure, I mean, look, that didn’t happen overnight. You know, one of President Trump’s priorities was, “go get American hostages home,” and I think we got over 50 — 53ish, hostages, detainees back — from 20-some countries maybe. Maybe a little less. But Austin Tice had been missing for, going on eight years, and we had made no headway, really, on it, so we made it a priority. We started working with our counterparts in the region. That trip was almost 18 months in the making. And we finally were able to land a meeting in Damascus because I told them, I said, “I’ll come see you. You send someone who can represent President Assad directly, because I can represent President Trump directly on this matter. And let’s go sit down.” And they said, “okay, come to Damascus.” And I don’t know if they thought we would show up or not. We did. And we were very clear. We said, “look, I understand I’m not getting Austin home on this trip, but I would like a proof of life. What would you like in return for that?” We had very frank conversations. They said, we want X amount of movement for the United States military. Troops stuff, and this and that. And I said, “look, all of that’s on the table. We can discuss all those things. I need a proof of life.” And they said they would take it back to Assad. Which they did. I know they did that. And then, I think shortly thereafter, I switched over to the Department of Defense, and tried to continue that mission, but, um, that one was one I just, unfortunately, didn’t succeed on. [my emphasis]

The most likely way that Patel would come to learn, with certainty, that whatever go-betweens he met with in Damascus actually did report back to Assad would be via an NSA or CIA intercept. If that is how he learned, then confirming that he knew Assad got a report back might have burned the intercept. Doing so with Maté at the Grayzone, which personally and as an outlet produce a lot of Assad apology, might be particularly sensitive. And the ease with which Maté appealed to Patel’s ego to get him to reveal these details would raise real questions about whether Patel played a role in the earlier WSJ story about the meeting, which was published on October 18, days before Patel almost fucked up the October 31 Niger mission.

That is, this Ignatius story seems like an effort to undermine Patel’s self-interested stories of heroism on hostage rescues, after he disclosed non-public details about one of them.

Which would also suggest that, whatever the merit of the investigation into Ellis (and I think GOP concerns about it have some merit), the investigation into Patel may be substantive.

675 Days In, the Durham Investigation Has Lasted Longer than the Mueller Investigation

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Today marks the 675th day of the Durham investigation into the origins and conduct of the investigation that became the Mueller investigation. That means Durham’s investigation has lasted one day longer than the entire Mueller investigation, which Republicans complained lasted far too long.

The single solitary prosecution Durham has obtained in that span of time in which Mueller prosecuted George Papadopoulos, Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Richard Pinedo, Alex Van der Zwan, Michael Cohen (for his lies about Trump’s Trump Tower Moscow deal) was the guilty plea of Kevin Clinesmith, based on conduct discovered by DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

In addition to those prosecutions, Mueller referred further Cohen charges to SDNY, Sam Patten for prosecution to DC, and Bijan Kian for prosecution in EDVA. Mueller charged Roger Stone and handed that prosecution off to DC. He further charged Konstantin Kilimnik, 12 IRA trolls, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, and 12 GRU officers. He referred Paul Manafort’s influence peddling partners, Republican and Democratic alike, for further investigation, leading to the failed prosecution of Greg Craig. Mueller referred 12 other matters — most still sealed — for further investigation, along with the Egyptian bribery investigation originally started in DC.

Meanwhile, Durham has never released a public budget, though by regulation he had to submit a budget request to DOJ in December.

Say what you will about Mueller’s investigation. But it was an investigation that showed real results. Durham, meanwhile, has been churning over the work that DOJ IG already did for as long as Mueller’s entire investigation.

Insurrection Inciters Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley Only Want the Violent January 6 Criminals Prosecuted

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I just waded through the 159 pages of culture war questions — God, guns, and racism — that GOP Senators posed to Merrick Garland to justify their votes opposing the widely-respected moderate to be Attorney General. Along with a seemingly broad certainty among the Republican Senators that John Durham will finally find something 21 months into his investigation and a committed belief in outright lies told about Mike Flynn’s prosecution, two of the Republicans — coup-sympathizers Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley — made it clear they think the only crime from January 6 that should be prosecuted is assault.

Cruz did so as part of a series of questions designed to both-sides domestic terrorism. While he may intend this question and a counterpart about all protests in Summer 2020 (whether conducted by leftists or not) to set up an attack on a DOJ appointee, Cruz created a false binary regarding crimes related to January 6, where people either simply “attended the Trump rally” or they “participate[d] in any act of violence.”

66. Do you believe that an individual who attended the Trump rally on January 6, 2021 did not participate in any act of violence should be prohibited in holding a political position in the Department of Justice in a future administration, even if he or she did not personally engage in any unlawful conduct?

RESPONSE: Americans have a constitutional right to engage in lawful, peaceful protest. If confirmed, I would assess any candidate’s fitness for a role in the Department on an individual basis and with the goal of hiring individuals who are capable of carrying out the Department’s important mission with integrity.

This ignores the people who committed a crime by peacefully entering the Capitol, as well as people who didn’t enter the building but in some other way participated in efforts to prevent the certification of the vote.

Cruz also challenged the description of January 6 in terms of domestic terrorism.

69. At your hearing, you stated that your definition of “domestic terrorism” is “about the same” as the statutory definition.

a. What is the statutory definition of “domestic terrorism”?

RESPONSE: The term “domestic terrorism” is statutorily defined in 18 U.S.C. § 2331.

b. What is your definition of “domestic terrorism”?

c. What is the difference between your definition and the statutory definition?

d. What relevance will your personal definition of “domestic terrorism” have to your duties, if confirmed, as Attorney General?

RESPONSE: At the hearing, I described domestic terrorism as using violence or threats of violence in an attempt to disrupt democratic processes, noting that this definition is close to the statutory definition of the term in the criminal code codified at 18 U.S.C. § 2331. If confirmed, all of my actions as Attorney General would be guided by the law as written.

Ultimately, Cruz seems to be objecting to treating the interruption of the certification of the vote as a particularly “heinous” crime, as Garland had labeled it during his confirmation hearing.

Meanwhile, Josh Hawley asked Garland how he intends to protect the First Amendment rights of Americans to “criticize their government and pursue political change” while investigating an insurrection that Hawley calls “rioting.”

5. If you are confirmed as Attorney General, as you conduct your investigation of the rioting that took place at the Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021, what specific steps do you intend to take to ensure that Americans’ First Amendment rights to criticize their government and pursue political change are not infringed?

RESPONSE: Americans have a fundamental right to engage in lawful, peaceful protest. If confirmed, I will vigorously defend this right. Acts of violence and other criminal acts are not protected under the Constitution.

As Cruz did, Hawley’s question treats the January 6 investigation as a binary, either violence or protected under the First Amendment.

This framework, in both cases, ignores that even those who didn’t enter the Capitol, along with people who entered as part of a larger violent effort, are being charged both for obstructing the vote certification (the treatment of which as terrorism offended Cruz) and for conspiracy in the larger goal of obstructing the certification.

Mind you, both of these men should be safe. They have the right to raise questions about the vote, and the effect of the insurrection was to interrupt whatever they were doing, even if it was, itself, delaying the certification. So their peaceful contributions to the events of January 6 should be fine.

Unless, of course, it can be shown that their efforts were coordinated with the larger effort, were an effort to buy time until the rioters could more effectively end the process of democracy that day.

In any case, both are very clearly working the soon-to-be ref here, hoping to limit the scope of the investigation to those who committed assault. As Hawley did the other day with his alarmed questions about normal legal process, we should expect Hawley to attempt to delegitimize any scrutiny into his far right allies from that day.