Michael Flynn, President Trump’s first national security adviser, will be sentenced for lying to FBI agents just before noon on Tuesday with one of the most glaring questions about his self-destruction still unanswered: Why did he do it?
Under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to the FBI about the conversations he had during the presidential transition in late 2016 with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. A year later, it’s not clear why he lied.
“I suspect that Gen. Flynn has indeed explained to the special counsel why he lied to the FBI agents,” said Gene Rossi, a former federal prosecutor. “But the public will not know that motive too soon. Mueller’s office may be keeping motive under wraps because it is using his information on motive to pursue other leads and targets.”
Late Monday, in the lead up to the sentencing, Mueller released a memo summarizing the FBI’s interview January 2017 with Mueller in which he lied, detailing how FBI agents asked Flynn about his contacts with Russia and his trips to the country dating back to 2013. But the memo did not provide a clear motive for Flynn to lie.
In a court filing last Tuesday, lawyers for Flynn, rather than offering an explanation for why he lied to the FBI about the conversations, instead portrayed him as a victim of tactics used by FBI agents who tricked him into lying.
The lawyers said that Flynn was interviewed without a lawyer and was not told in advance that lying to the FBI was a federal crime.
In response, Mueller’s team said Friday in a memo that Flynn was given multiple chances by the agents who questioned him to correct the false statements he made.
“The interview was voluntary, and lacked any indicia of coercion,” said Mueller’s team, adding that “nothing about the way the interview was arranged or conducted caused the defendant to make false statements to the FBI.”
Ultimately, neither last week’s filings or Monday night’s shed light on Flynn’s motivations.
Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor who is now a CNN legal analyst, wrote in an op-ed on Sunday that Flynn’s motivation for lying “will hang over the proceeding.”
“Flynn’s lawyers conspicuously dodge this issue in his sentencing memo. Of all people, Flynn — a decorated military veteran, an accomplished intelligence officer and President Donald Trump’s short-lived national security adviser — should have understood that lying to the FBI would put himself in peril and might compromise the broader national interest,” wrote Honig.
There is a chance that Flynn does what Michael Cohen did last week in federal court when he was sentenced to three years in prison for campaign finance violations, in addition to lying to the special counsel. In his statement before the court, he all but named Trump and gave insight into why he did what he did.
Cohen said he took responsibility “for each act that I pled guilty to: The personal ones to me and those involving the President of the United States of America.”
“Recently the President tweeted a statement calling me weak and it was correct but for a much different reason than he was implying,” he said. “It was because time and time again I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds.”
