Gen. Michael Flynn was the first sacrificial lamb of the Trump administration. But behind the gory details of this scandal, there lies a question which nobody seems to be asking: how much of Gen. Flynn’s actions did President-elect Trump know about, and when?

 

Let us quickly recap the situation: at the end of December, President Obama put another layer of sanctions on Russia for its meddling in the US election – a charge that Russia denies, but for which there is as good corroborating evidence coming out of the US intelligence community as you can hope for. On the very same day that the sanctions were announced, it later emerged, Gen. Flynn had been on the phone with the Russian ambassador in Washington no fewer than five times.

 

Coincidentally or not, Russia then did not retaliate to the new sanctions. This is completely out of character for the Russians. And Gen. Flynn had since been appointed National Security Adviser to the President, when President Trump moved into the White House.

 

Gen. Flynn has previously denied the phone calls. Then he admitted that some phone calls happened, but denied their content. Unfortunately for Gen. Flynn, the ambassador’s phone was, naturally, tapped by the American intelligence agencies and the transcript of the exact content of the calls emerged.

 

Gen. Flynn did not, strictly speaking, “negotiate” with the Russians to not retaliate to the sanctions. Rather, he just gave every assurance that relations between the United States and Russia would be very different once Donald Trump took office. Which is to say that President Obama’s sanctions would be pointless, and they would not warrant a diplomatic response.