FBI agent: Russian official tried to arrange Trump-Putin call for day after inauguration

A top Russian official tried to set up a video teleconference between President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin of Russia on the day after Trump’s inauguration, according to a senior FBI agent’s interview notes released on Thursday.

Peter Strzok, at the time a lead FBI agent investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, heard about the attempt to connect Trump and Putin while he and another bureau agent interviewed the president’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, at the White House just days into the new administration.

Flynn relayed that he’d gotten the request to arrange a Trump-Putin call from Sergey Kislyak, then the Russian ambassador to the U.S., when the two men spoke shortly after Christmas in 2016 as part of a broader conversation covering a range of issues important to the two countries.

U.S. and Russian officials have never confirmed that a conversation took place between Trump and Putin on Jan. 21, 2017, though the White House on Jan. 28 of that year offered a readout of a “congratulatory call” from the Russian leader that happened that day.

“The positive call was a significant start to improving the relationship between the United States and Russia that is in need of repair,” the White House said at the time, describing a conversation lasting about one hour and involving issues including Syria and fighting Islamic terrorism.

Federal prosecutors released Strzok’s notes from his Jan. 24, 2017, interview with Flynn as part of the ongoing case against the former top Trump aide, who still awaits sentencing stemming from his December 2017 guilty plea for lying to the FBI about his conversations with Kislyak.

Strzok, a deputy FBI assistant director at the time of the Flynn interview, has been a top target for the president and his Republican allies after the disclosure that he’d sent a series of anti-Trump text messages to one of his colleagues. The FBI in August 2018 fired Strzok over the exchanges, a disciplinary move that Trump cited as reason to wrap up the Russia investigation that Strzok in its early stages had a senior role in leading.

Flynn’s case took several unexpected twists on Thursday as it inches toward closure. First, his longtime lawyers notified the presiding federal judge that their client had fired them and hired new attorneys. That move set off a raft of speculation in legal and political circles that Flynn is considering backing out of his plea deal with the government in a play for a presidential pardon.

Also on Thursday, federal prosecutors released the audio recording of a November 2017 voicemail left by John Dowd, Trump’s personal attorney at the time, to one of Flynn’s lawyers seeking information about discussions they were having with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators before Flynn ultimately pleaded guilty.

Mueller cited Dowd’s comments — he urged Flynn’s lawyers to “remember what we’ve always said about the president and his feelings toward Flynn, and that still remains” — in the obstruction of justice section of the special counsel’s final report, which was released in April.

Strzok’s notes from the FBI agents’ interview with Flynn, known in bureau parlance as a “302” for the form an agent fills out, offer several more details about multiple conversations between the Trump aide and the Russian ambassador after the 2016 election.

According to Strzok’s write-up, Flynn called Kislyak twice around Christmas 2016 to express condolences for a pair of tragedies — the murder of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey and an airplane crash in which members of a Russian choir were killed. Both calls, Flynn told the FBI agents, were to maintain a good relationship with his Russian counterpart.

On Dec. 28 of that year, Kislyak also texted Flynn, who told the FBI agents he was traveling in the Dominican Republican at the time and had poor cellphone reception, so therefore didn’t call Kislyak until the following day. Flynn told the agents that when the two connected, they discussed setting up the video call between Trump and Putin, as well as picking a representative to a terrorism conference in Khazakhstan.

That call was the same day that then-President Barack Obama announced he would expel 35 Russian diplomats in response to Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election. But Flynn said he didn’t recall any discussion with Kislyak about that. When agents pressed Flynn, asking specifically whether he had told Kislyak not to engage in a “tit-for-tat” with Obama, Flynn told them, “Not really.”

In Flynn’s guilty plea, he admitted that this version of events was untrue. He acknowledged speaking with a member of the Trump transition team about how to persuade Russia not to escalate the situation with the Obama administration, and immediately reported back to the team after his conversation with Kislyak. The next day, Putin agreed not to retaliate for the U.S. actions.

Flynn also told the FBI agents about the origins of his relationship with senior Russian officials, which began in 2013, when he was Obama’s defense intelligence chief. At the time, Flynn said, he was invited to the headquarters of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, for a “leadership development” program. Flynn met the head of the GRU, Igor Sergun, on that trip and kept in touch with him afterward, but their relationship abruptly ended when Russia invaded Crimea in 2014.

Flynn told the FBI agents that he and Sergun had “common ground” — both discussed their experiences in military conflict, and both had sons of about the same age. Flynn called Kislyak in early 2016 to express condolences when Sergun died in Lebanon.

In his FBI interview, Flynn also recalled that his second trip to Russia came in late 2015, when he was famously invited to a gala hosted by RT, a Russian media outlet. Pictures of the event show that he was seated at the same table as Putin. Flynn told agents that he and his son paid a visit to Kislyak around the time of this trip as a courtesy — and he noted that he had received a “threat briefing” from the Defense Intelligence Agency before attending.