Trump’s former deputy national security adviser said Robert 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” President Trump in wrongdoing.
K.T. McFarland, who worked on Trump’s campaign and transition team and briefly served under national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, described her grilling by FBI agents during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday morning.
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 Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergey 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 described her initial eight-hour conversation with two FBI investigators who showed up at her house “unannounced,” telling her they wanted to find out what happened with Russian interference in 2016. She told them: “I want to find out too!” At the end of that discussion, during which she didn’t have an attorney, McFarland says the FBI told her “it’s probably good for you” that she answered thoroughly, which she took as a sinister hint of things to come.
McFarland was later interviewed at the special counsel’s office in Washington, D.C.
“I shook hands with Mr. Mueller, and I shook hands with his five killer lawyers,” McFarland said. “The implication of their questions is they wanted me to plead guilty for a crime I didn’t commit.”
McFarland said they either wanted to pressure her “to plead guilty to lying” and hoped “that I would implicate others, potentially even the president of the United States. … That was their narrative.”
This echoed her claims that Mueller tried to ensnare her in a “perjury trap.”
She said investigators backed off when she wouldn’t give them what they wanted, but she left the country for the “most remote Scottish islands” to reflect on what had happened.
McFarland quoted an English folk song — “I am hurt, but I am not slain” — and told the crowd, “I am back in this fight, and you need to be in this fight because you do not want a government that can do to you what it did to me and what it is trying to do to President Trump.”
McFarland announced a new book, Revolution: Trump, Washington, and “We the People,” and promised new insights in it.
The FBI interviewed the former deputy national security adviser in December 2017, and recently released redacted FBI notes show she described the events of late 2016 and early 2017. She offered information under a proffer agreement and discussed her conversations with Flynn and other members of the Trump administration, such as Trump campaign executive Steve Bannon and Trump chief of staff Reince Priebus.
“At some point, Trump asked her if the ‘Russians did it’ and she said yes,” McFarland said of a December 2016 conversation. “Trump repeated that he was not sure. … He said he had reason to doubt it was the Russians.”
McFarland also told the FBI about meetings on Feb. 22, 2017, in which Bannon and Priebus told her Trump wanted her to resign, with Priebus inquiring about an ambassadorship and Bannon suggesting Singapore.
The FBI notes state Priebus called McFarland back to his office later that day, and McFarland said he told her “the president would like you to send me an email saying [redacted] could she say the president never directed Flynn to call the Russians about sanctions.”
McFarland told the FBI she didn’t say yes or no, but called the National Security Council’s legal adviser John Eisenberg and told him what had happened, and he “offered his opinion that it was a bad idea to write the letter because it was awkward and looked like a quid pro quo situation.” Priebus later came back to her office and “told her not to do the email and to forget he even mentioned it.”
McFarland was nominated to be U.S. ambassador to Singapore after resigning but later withdrew from consideration amid the Russia controversy.
Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to investigators, but switched legal teams last year and told the court last month, “I am innocent of this crime.” He filed to withdraw his guilty plea after the Justice Department asked Judge Emmet Sullivan 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 recently selected Jeffrey Jensen, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, to review the Flynn case.
