With Flynn’s plea deal, Mueller has nowhere to go but up—up the chain, that is. As the former national security adviser, Flynn is a critical link tying contacts with Russia to Trump’s inner circle, and possibly to the president himself. The statement of facts included with Flynn’s plea deal states that Flynn was essentially a go-between from top members of the Trump team to the Russian ambassador on the subject of President Obama’s sanctions and on Russia’s vote on a United Nations resolution presented by Egypt. The senior members of the Trump transition to whom Flynn was reporting back his contacts with Russian officials are not named in the statement, but are likely Mueller’s next targets.
As for Trump, his knowledge of Flynn’s contacts with Russia (and other potentially illegal acts to which Flynn did not plead guilty) could not only tie him to the collusion case taking clearer shape, but also to the obstruction of justice case against the president specifically. After all, Trump’s main goal, starting with his initial meetings with former FBI Director James Comey, was to have the case against Flynn dropped. If Trump was knowingly trying to keep the FBI from discovering Flynn’s activities, that would seal the deal for Mueller’s obstruction case. For both collusion and obstruction, Flynn holds the key to who knew what when, and Mueller now has his cooperation.
“President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia called President Donald J. Trump today to thank him for the advanced warning the United States intelligence agencies provided to Russia concerning a major terror plot in Saint Petersburg, Russia,” read the statement from the White House. “Based on the information the United States provided, Russian authorities were able to capture the terrorists just prior to an attack that could have killed large numbers of people. No Russian lives were lost and the terrorist attackers were caught and are now incarcerated.”
The statement also noted that the Russian president even extended his gratitude to CIA chief Mike Pompeo, which Trump promptly passed on to the agency. The two leaders agreed that this operation against terrorism “serves as an example of the positive things that can occur when our countries work together.”
In a series of overnight raids on Wednesday and Thursday, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) arrested members of a terrorist cell linked to Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) in the Russian city of St. Petersburg, seizing a large amount of explosives, weapons and ammunition and dismantling a bomb-making workshop. The extremists were planning a series of attacks on public places, including a suicide bombing and an explosion in the Kazan Cathedral in the center of the city.
During his phone call with President Trump, Vladimir Putin said that Russian intelligence agencies would also pass on any intelligence about attacks being planned against the United States to their American counterparts.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that his US counterpart Donald Trump had made some "fairly serious achievements" since he took office and derided what he called the "espionage mania" surrounding meetings held by Trump associates with Russian officials.
The Trump administration has been embroiled for months in investigations into potential collusion between Russian operatives and Trump associates during the 2016 US presidential campaign and transition -- a claim Trump fiercely denies.
Asked for his assessment of Trump's first year in office during his annual end-of-year press conference in Moscow, Putin said that "objectively we can see a number of fairly serious achievements over the short period he's been working."
He cited the strength of the markets as an example, saying this indicated "investor confidence in the American economy, which means that they trust what President Trump is doing in this area."
Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya believes she had a brief encounter with Ivanka Trump following her infamous meeting with three top Donald Trump advisors in June 2016.
The Kremlin-linked lawyer had met with Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka's husband Jared Kushner, and then campaign chair Paul Manafort under the offer of dirt on Hillary Clinton, though Veselnitskaya says she was there to lobby on a Russia sanctions issue.
When it was over, she told NBC she exchanged pleasantries with a blonde haired woman she believes was Ivanka Trump.
The Justice Department has recovered previously missing text messages exchanged by two FBI officials who are now at the center of a Republican campaign to show that the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election is biased against President Trump.
In a Thursday letter to Congress, Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz said investigators "succeeded" in unearthing five months of communications between Peter Strzok, a counter-intelligence agent, and bureau lawyer Lisa Page. Both had been assigned to the Russia inquiry headed by Justice special counsel Robert Mueller.
The discovery of other communications between the two last year, which disparaged Trump, prompted Strzok's removal from Mueller's staff. Page had previously returned to her duties at the FBI when an initial cache of message were turned over to the inspector general as part of a separate inquiry into FBI's handling of its investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of private email server while secretary of State.
Earlier this week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions told Congress that a glitch in the FBI's information system resulted in a failure to preserve communications between December 2016 and May 2017. That failure not only affected the phones of Strzok and Page, but thousands of other bureau-issued devices.
"The (inspector general) has been investigating this matter and, this week, succeeded in using forensic tools to recover text messages from FBI devices, including text messages between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page," Horowitz said.