The Conservative Cave
Current Events => Politics => Topic started by: SVPete on September 10, 2026, 01:09:03 PM
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Declassified FBI notes expose discrepancies between Flynn interview, official FBI records
https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/hld6am-declassified-fbi-notes-reveal-discrepancies-flynn (https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/hld6am-declassified-fbi-notes-reveal-discrepancies-flynn)
Two FBI agents' long-secret handwritten notes of their 2017 interview with Mike Flynn have been declassified and highlight fresh discrepancies with the bureau's official documents that were used to criminally prosecute President Donald Trump's first national security advisor and pressure him to reach a plea deal nearly a decade ago.
The notes from former Special Agents Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka were released Wednesday by the White House Government Transparency Task Force at a time when federal prosecutors are ramping up a grand jury investigation into whether the FBI's probe of Russia collusion amounted to a criminal conspiracy to falsely impugn Trump and his supporters during the 2016 election and its aftermath.
The contemporaneous notes show differences between what the agents wrote down when they interviewed Flynn on Jan. 24, 2017, and what was recorded in the official typed summary of the interview, known as an FD-302, that was entered into the FBI system more than 20 days later and later used to underpin his prosecution.
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According to prosecutors, Flynn “falsely stated and represented” to agents that he “did not ask the [Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak] to refrain from escalating the situation in response to sanctions the United States had imposed against Russia” for alleged 2016 election interference.
On December 20, 2016, the same day that Flynn had at least one call with Kislyak, the Obama administration expelled 35 Russian diplomats and authorized the government to respond to Russian cyber operations.
But Pientka's handwritten notes contain a tantalizing notation apparently attributed to Flynn in the interview about his conversation with Kislyak: "Hey, don't do anything."
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Though Flynn initially pleaded guilty to the charges, he later filed to withdraw his plea under new representation. His new lawyer, Sidney Powell, argued that the FD-302, which formed the basis for the charges against her client, had been altered by Strzok, one of the agents who interviewed Flynn, and Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer who did not attend the interview.
In the pair’s text messages, which were publicly exposed in 2020, Strzok and Page discussed how Strzok had made significant edits to the FD-302. In fact, Strzok told Page he was “trying not to completely re-write” the summary because of its poor original state. Page also provided edits, the text messages show.
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Strzok and Pientka’s FD-302 file records show that Flynn said that he did not remember discussing with Kislyak the expulsion of diplomats and new sanctions. According to the agents, when asked whether he asked the Russians to refrain from escalating with their own sanctions, Flynn is said to have responded, “Not really. I don’t remember. It wasn’t, ‘Don’t do anything.’”
But, the wording departs from how one of the agents first memorialized Flynn’s response in the interview more than 20 days earlier. According to Pientka's handwritten memo, Flynn was asked whether he had any recollection of such a conversation with Kislyak and he replied, “Not really. I don’t remember. Hey don’t do anything.”
The agent separately records that Flynn said there was no “long drawn out” discussion “about don’t do anything.” But, the notes show that Flynn did not tell agents that he never spoke with Kislyak and never asked him to refrain from escalating with further expulsions and the sanctions, which prosecutors later accused him of lying about.
Setting on a shelf the ultra-partisan politics of this specific situation, why in Hades is an after-the-fact summary report of an interview "evidence" rather than the contemporaneous notes taken during the interview?
Clearly the initial draft summary report had been jiggered for partisan purposes, and then a third person who was not present during the interview helped re-jigger the report, for partisan purposes.