U.S. Attorney John Durham is investigating the leaks of potentially classified information to the media in early 2017 about President Trump’s former national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, who resigned before getting swept up in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Durham, picked by Attorney General William Barr last year to lead a review of the actions taken by law enforcement and intelligence officials during the Russia investigation, is looking into media leaks, which dominated the Trump transition period and the early days of the Trump administration, including at least one widely reported story which revealed secretive details about Flynn’s contacts with a Russian envoy, according to sources cited in a new report by the New York Times.
The report signals the breadth of the DOJ investigation is wider than previously known, as Durham’s team is looking into claims made by Republicans that Obama holdovers were intentionally trying to kneecap Trump’s presidency by weaponizing sensitive information through the media.
The Connecticut federal prosecutor is reportedly looking into a Jan. 12, 2017 article in the Washington Post by columnist David Ignatius, which said Flynn “cultivates close Russian contacts” and cited a “senior U.S. government official” who revealed Flynn had talked to now-former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak on Dec. 29, 2016, which was the same day President Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian officials. It is likely that this revelation, and subsequent leaks about the alleged contents of Flynn’s discussions with Kislyak, were based on classified information. Ignatius also raised the possibility that Flynn had violated the Logan Act, a rarely enforced law, which former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and other Obama DOJ holdovers at least considered using against Flynn. Ignatius said he wanted answers on those issues about Flynn to avoid a “Shakespearean tragic ending” for Trump’s presidency.
The New York Times report said it is not known whether Durham has taken over a preexisting media leaks investigation or his is separate. It is also not known whether Durham is scrutinizing any other leaks.
A follow-up article by the Washington Post on Feb, 9, 2017, revealed likely-classified details from Flynn’s monitored calls with Kislyak, citing “nine current and former officials” who were in “senior positions at multiple agencies at the time of the calls” and who “spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.”
Attorney General Jeff Sessions confirmed on Fox News in 2018 that he believed these “leaks of classified documents” were “a violation of the law.” Sessions said the Justice Department was “pursuing it aggressively.”
Durham has reportedly reviewed former deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland’s FBI interviews during the Mueller investigation, scrutinizing what she and other witnesses have discussed about the Washington Post story, although the federal prosecutor has not questioned McFarland.
McFarland, who worked on Trump’s campaign and transition team and briefly served under Flynn, published a book earlier this year, Revolution: Trump, Washington, and “We the People,” in which she wrote about the leak. She said the newspaper “began a series of articles that would impact the first two years of the Trump presidency,” and that the Ignatius article “set off a chain of events that helped the leader to the Russia probe.” She said Ignatius was “known for his deep and long-standing connections to intelligence community sources” inside the Obama administration, and that his piece “set off a flurry of new accusations against Flynn, damaging his credibility and effectiveness before the administration even took office.” McFarland argued there was “some evidence” that Flynn was targeted from the start by “highly-placed” officials “as a way to get to Trump.”
McFarland is mentioned in Mueller’s report 150 times and was interviewed by the FBI in summer 2017. She initially denied talking to Flynn about any discussions he had with Kislyak about sanctions in December 2016. She reportedly revised her statement to say Flynn may have talked to her about the sanctions after his December 2017 guilty plea contradicted her. She told CPAC in February that Mueller’s investigators “wanted me to plead guilty for a crime I didn’t commit” in an attempt to get her to help them “implicate” Trump in wrongdoing. She said she avoided their “perjury trap.”
Flynn is fighting to dismiss the government’s case against him. He pleaded guilty in December 2017 for lying to investigators about his conversations with Kislyak on sanctions on Russia and a United Nations resolution on Israel. But he switched legal teams last year and told the court in January, “I am innocent of this crime.” He filed to withdraw his guilty plea after the Justice Department asked the judge to sentence Flynn up to six months in prison, though afterward, the department said probation would also be appropriate. Flynn’s team, led by Sidney Powell, is pressing for the dismissal of his case, arguing the FBI unfairly treated Flynn. Barr selected Jeffrey Jensen, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, to review the Flynn case.
Powell said on Friday that the FBI had handed over exonerating evidence they had concealed from Flynn.
“#BREAKING The government just provided the Flynn defense with remarkable new & long withheld BRADY evidence,” she tweeted. “Stay tuned.”
It is almost certain that one of the topics being reviewed by Durham’s team is intelligence reports on Russian disinformation efforts revealed in recently declassified footnotes from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the FBI’s Russia investigation. Newly public information from the December watchdog report showed the bureau had been aware of warnings that Russian intelligence efforts may have compromised British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s dossier, which was relied upon to obtain FISA warrants to surveil Page.
Durham is reportedly looking into numerous highly sensitive issues, including whether former Obama CIA Director John Brennan took politicized actions to pressure the rest of the intelligence community to match his conclusions about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s motivations during the 2016 presidential election.
