On Monday, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team filed the 302 forms from former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s interview with the FBI in January 2017 after being ordered to produce “any 302s or memoranda relevant” to Flynn’s case by U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan.
The filing comes as Flynn is scheduled to be sentenced on Tuesday morning after “Mueller submitted material regarding the former national security adviser’s questioning by the FBI,” CBS News reported.
“Nothing about the way the interview was arranged or conducted caused the defendant to make false statements to the FBI on January 24,” Mueller’s team wrote in a memo on Friday. “A sitting National Security Advisor, former head of an intelligence agency, retired Lieutenant General, and 33-year veteran of the armed forces knows he should not lie to federal agents. He does not need to be warned it is a crime to lie to federal agents to know the importance of telling them the truth.”
An important point to remember in regards to the 302 forms is the fact that it was produced by disgraced former FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was fired over text messages that revealed his extreme anti-Trump and pro-Clinton bias during the course of investigations into both then-presidential candidates.
Fox News notes that the 302 states that “Flynn told agents ‘not really’ when asked if he had told the Russian ambassador not to escalate the diplomatic conflict over sanctions with the U.S. — although he later admitted to doing so.”
“I don’t remember,” Flynn told the agents on January 24, 2017, according to the 302. “It wasn’t, ‘Don’t do anything.'”
Fox News added that “Flynn, in fact, had asked the ambassador to ‘refrain from escalating the situation in response to sanctions that the United States had imposed on Russia that same day,’ according to prosecutors, who said the Russian ambassador ‘had chosen to moderate its response to those sanctions as a result of his request.'”