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For emphasis, FLYNN case:
THE UPSHOT: There was no substance to the accusation of wrongdoing that supposedly drove the Prosecution to indict FLYNN. On the contrary, the Prosecution knowingly pursued an innocent man.
Sauces:
https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.191592/gov.uscourts.dcd.191592.237.0.pdf
Footnote 1, p6
One of the many problems with the Special Counsel’s allegations of any wrongdoing by General Flynn depends on conflating “US sanctions” with expulsions—which are distinct issues with different meanings and cannot be used interchangeably—especially for allegations of a felonious “false statement.” See Margot Cleveland, New Flynn Transcripts Confirm Mueller Team Lied to The Court And The Country, THE FEDERALIST (June 1, 2020), https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/01/new-flynntranscripts-confirm-mueller-team-lied-to-the-court-and-the-country/
Russian Expulsions Were Not Sanctions
According to the Statement of Offense, during questioning by the FBI agents, “FLYNN falsely stated that he did not ask Russia’s Ambassador to the United States (‘Russian Ambassador’) to refrain from escalating the situation in response to sanctions that the United States had imposed against Russia,” and “also falsely stated that he did not remember a follow-up conversation in which the Russian Ambassador stated that Russia had chosen to moderate its response to those sanctions as a result of FLYNN’S request.”
However, the transcripts released Friday establish that, contrary to the special counsel office’s attestation, Flynn never asked the Russian ambassador to “not escalate the situation and only respond to the U.S. Sanctions in a reciprocal manner.” In fact, Flynn never raised the “U.S. Sanctions” — defined by the special counsel’s office as the sanctions announced by Obama Dec. 28, 2016, in Executive Order 13757 — with the Russian ambassador at all.
While the Obama administration ejected the Russian personnel in response to the Kremlin’s interference with the 2016 election, the expulsions were not part of Executive Order 13757 and thus were not “U.S. Sanctions” as defined in the Flynn Statement of Offense. This distinction matters because the recently released transcripts establish that Flynn did not ask Kislyak to do anything — or refrain from doing anything — in response to the sanctions.
Flynn reiterated his request, making clear he was discussing only the expulsion.
It is impossible to square Flynn’s actual conversation with Kislyak with the facts the special counsel’s office presented to the D.C. District Court in its Statement of Offense. In short, it is blatantly false to say, as Mueller’s team did, that “FLYNN called the Russian Ambassador and requested that Russia not escalate the situation and only respond to the U.S. Sanctions in a reciprocal manner.”