“Lt. General Flynn, his legal team, the judge and the American people can now see with their own eyes – for the first time – that all of the innuendo about Lt. General Flynn this whole time was totally bunk,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement. “There was nothing improper about his call, and the FBI knew it.”
Grassley added: “After all the screw-ups and malicious behavior by FBI and DOJ officials during the Russia investigation, we simply cannot take them at their word anymore. We need oversight and transparency to sort out this mess.”
The transcripts document conversations during the Trump presidential transition, including the men discussing sanctions.
In one conversation, Flynn implores Kislyak not to escalate a sanction war with the outgoing Obama administration.
Flynn said to the ambassador: “I know you have to have some sort of action, to only make it reciprocal; don’t go any further than you have to because I don’t want us to get into something that have to escalate to tit-for-tat. Do you follow me?”
In another conversation, Flynn talks about the incoming administration’s views on the Middle East.
“[Y]ou know that the strategic goal is stability in the Middle East,” Flynn said. “That’s the strategic goal. And, and, you know, between you and I, and you know this, and we know this, you know between Moscow and Washington. We will not achieve stability in the Middle East without working with each other against this radical Islamist crowd. Period.”
In an apparent reference to the UN vote that Flynn allegedly lied about, regarding Israeli settlements, the Trump adviser said: “we will try to help to postpone the vote and to allow for consultations.”
Trump Intelligence director John Ratcliffe sent the documents to Congress on Friday after they were declassified this week by his predecessor, acting director Ric Grenell.
Defenders of the retired Army general, including White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, point out that the FBI had the transcripts when they interviewed Flynn.
Recently released documents revealed that the FBI nearly closed an investigation into Flynn on Jan. 4, 2017, after finding no evidence that he was a Russian agent. But Strzok and his mistress, former FBI attorney Lisa Page, with whom he traded anti-Trump text messages, intervened to keep the case open citing the never-used Logan Act of 1799, which bans ordinary citizens from conducting foreign diplomacy. The law is widely considered unconstitutional.
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