Mary McCord announces the indictments of Russian spies and hackers who attacked Yahoo, March 16, 2017. (Credit: Reuters)
(…) Former acting Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord told Mueller’s prosecutors that FBI agents did not tell Flynn he was under investigation during the interview and did not give him the usual notification that he could be charged with a crime if he misled the agents.
“The FBI did not want to insinuate the existence of a criminal investigation to Flynn, and to that end they did not give a Title 18 United States Code Section 1001 warning to Flynn,” the Mueller correspondence said. “The FBI also indicated there was no need to reinterview Flynn at the time.”
McCord told the special counsel she understood that the initial focus of the FBI in investigating Flynn “was to determine whether or not Flynn had a clandestine relationship with Russia.”
By Jan. 30, 2017, the FBI sent senior DOJ officials a memo declaring the bureau did not believe Flynn was acting as an agent of Russia, the Mueller correspondence states.
Though exonerated on Russia collusion, Flynn still faced the possibility that the agents might prosecute hm under the obscure Logan Act on the premise that his December 2016 conversations with Kislyak about sanctions might be construed as undercutting the Obama administration’s authority. The idea was even leaked to the news media, further building pressure for Flynn to resign, which he did in mid-February 2017.
But while the media was suggesting Flynn was in jeopardy of being charged under the Logan Act, senior DOJ officials dismissed the idea internally, according to the Mueller documents.
“McCord said that upon learning of Flynn’s phone calls with Ambassador Kislyak, a Logan Act prosecution seemed like a stretch to her,” the Mueller summary of her interview stated.” (Read more: Just the News, 3/17/2020) (Archive)