While Flynn pleaded guilty to that charge, he did so having not seen the transcript of his actual conversation with Kislyak. In seeking to withdraw his guilty plea, Flynn said he still doesn’t “remember if I discussed sanctions on a phone call with Ambassador Kislyak.” As Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell told me, his defense team “has been asking for the transcripts and recordings of his conversations with Ambassador Kislyak for almost a year.”
Yet Van Grack, the federal prosecutor who has since been removed from the Flynn case, refused to provide Powell with the transcript. Powell only received access to the details of the call following the recent declassification and release.
Further, Powell should not have even needed to ask for the transcript because presiding Judge Emmet Sullivan entered a standing order requiring the special counsel’s office to provide Flynn’s attorneys with all material exculpatory information. Yet Van Grack withheld the transcripts.
Later, when Sullivan directly ordered the government to file “the transcripts of any other audio recordings of Mr. Flynn, including, but not limited to audio recordings of Mr. Flynn’s conversations with Russian officials,” Van Grack refused, telling the court instead that it is not relying on that recording “for purposes of establishing the defendant’s guilt or determining his sentence.”
At least in that regard, Van Grack was being honest with the court: He was not relying on the transcript to establish Flynn’s guilt — because it didn’t! The transcript instead established Flynn’s factual innocence.
Not only did the special counsel’s office and then Van Grack, a holdover from the Mueller team, misrepresent to the federal court the substance of Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak, the special counsel repeated these lies to the American public.
For instance, the Mueller report falsely stated, “Flynn discussed multiple topics with Kislyak, including sanctions. … With respect to the sanctions, Flynn requested that Russia not escalate the situation, not get into a ‘tit for tat,’ and only respond to the sanctions in a reciprocal manner.”
The Mueller report also inaccurately reported that “on December 31, 2016, Kislyak called Flynn and told him the request had been received at the highest levels and that Russia had chosen not to retaliate to the sanctions in response to the request.”
