Posted on 12/01/2017 9:17:26 AM PST by Pinkbell
Former national security advisor Michael Flynn spoke with a "senior official" in Presidents Trump's transition team at the Mar-a-Lago resort to discuss what he should communicate to the Russian ambassador in a highly-scrutinized series of phone calls in December of 2016, according to federal prosecutors.
Flynn and the senior officials discussed both the recently implemented U.S. sanctions on Russia, as well as the fact that they did not want Russia to escalate friction between the two nations, lawyers on special counsel Robert Mueller's team told a federal judge Friday.
After the discussion, Flynn telephoned the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. Afterwards, he called the senior transition official and reported the sanctions discussion, prosecutors said.
Kislyak later followed up with Flynn and affirmed that Russia would moderate its response to the sanctions, put in place by then-President Obama. Flynn communicated that exchange to other transition officials, prosecutors said.
Flynn on Friday pleaded guilty to one count of providing false statements to federal investigators, thereby admitting to the charges made by Mueller's prosecutors.
According to court documents filed by Mueller, Flynn lied when he told investigators that he did not ask Kislyak to "refrain from escalating the situation" in response to sanctions that Obama had levied on the Russian Federation.
Flynn also lied, the counsel said, when Flynn said he did not ask the ambassador to either delay or defeat a related U.N. Security Council vote. Prosecutors told Judge Rudolph Contreras that Flynn was told by the senior member of Trump transition team to reach out to other countries to influence the U.N. vote, in an effort to delay or defeat the resolution.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
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"RT [Russia Today] was conceived by former media minister Mikhail Lesin,[32] and Russian president Vladimir Putins press spokesperson Aleksei Gromov.[33]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_(TV_network)
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Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, with Mikhail Lesin
during a meeting in Moscow
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Nov 7, 2015
Mikhail Lesin, a prominent Russian political figure and mass media expert credited with inspiring the creation of Russia Today (now RT), has died in Washington, DC after a heart attack.
Lesin, a former press minister and ex-head of Gazprom-Media, Russias largest media holding, died at the age of 57 on Wednesday, according to family members. Mikhail Lesin died from a heart stroke, a family member told RIA Novosti.
Meanwhile, TASS has reported that Lesin was found dead in his hotel room in Washington, DC, citing the Russian Embassy in the US. Police found no signs of foul play, but a formal investigation has been launched. It has been reported that Lesin had been suffering from a prolonged unidentified illness. ..."
https://www.rt.com/news/321121-lesin-dies-heart-attack/
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Nov 2015...
"Nicknamed the 'Bulldozer', Lesin was one of the key props of the Putin presidency, personally masterminding a wide-ranging media crackdown which has left the vast majority of Russian TV stations and newspapers obedient to the Kremlin."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3315994/Vladimir-Putin-s-media-mastermind-dead-DC-hotel-murdered-FBI-informant-alive-claim-Russians.html#ixzz3rOUopg7Q
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"On Friday, November 6 [2015], RIA Novosti reported that Lesin died of a heart attack citing a spokesman for the family as saying: "Today, Mikhail Lesin died ... His death came supposedly from a heart attack."[35][38]
RT [Russia Today] reported the next day that the cause of death was a heart attack.[31][39][40][41]
https://web.archive.org/web/20161026095000/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Lesin
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"Vladimir Putins former media czar "was murdered in" Washington, DC, on the eve of a planned meeting with the US Justice Department, according to two FBI agents whose assertions cast new doubts on the US governments official explanation of his death.
[Lesin] was going to talk about the inner workings of RT basically, how the propaganda machine works. DOJ was investigating RT. ..."
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jasonleopold/putins-media-czar-was-murdered-just-before-meeting-feds?utm_term=.koLV9zmDz#.cuo1YjnWj
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UPDATE: MAR 2016...
A former aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin found dead in a Washington hotel room was killed by a blunt force trauma to the head, U.S. authorities said Thursday.
Mikhail Lesin, 57, was found dead on the floor of his room in Dupont Circle on November 5.[2015]
Autopsy results show that he died from blunt-force injuries of the head, according to a joint statement Thursday from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and Office of the Chief Medical Examiner reported by NBC Washington , but the exact manner of death was undetermined.
Also contributing to his death were blunt-force injuries of the neck, torso, upper extremities and lower extremities, the statement said.
Russian media originally reported that Lesin, a former government minister, had suffered a heart attack. ...
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"...the plot thickened late Thursday with one U.S. official apparently telling
The New York Times that [Mikhail] Lesin's wounds came from an altercation that happened before he staggered back to his hotel room that night.On Friday, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty uncovered another wrinkle, reporting that Lesin had confirmed his attendance at an event in the U.S. capital 48 hours earlier, but he never showed. ..."
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Backup link to NY Times article:
https://web.archive.org/web/20171126103233/https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/11/us/former-putin-aide-found-in-washington-died-from-blows-to-head.html?smid=nytcore-iphone-share&smprod=nytcore-iphone&_r=0
Backup link to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty article:
https://web.archive.org/web/20171126104000/https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-lesin-mysterious-death-key-facts/27604577.html
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A onetime aide of Russian President Vladimir Putin whose body was found last year in a D.C. hotel room died of head injuries suffered in accidental falls after days of excessive drinking, authorities in Washington said Friday as they closed the death investigation.
Mikhail Y. Lesin, 57, a former Russian advertising executive who helped create the Kremlins global English-language Russia Today television network, was found dead Nov. 5 in the upscale Dupont Circle Hotel, and for much of a year, the manner of death was ruled undetermined.
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July 28, 2017:
"Two of the agents said they were told that the FBI has obtained evidence and conducted witness interviews that indicate that Lesin was murdered. Neither agent would describe the evidence or give details about who the witnesses were, or what exactly they said. The third said that a colleague working on the case told him in January that Lesin was beaten to death.
The intelligence officer would not say how he knew Lesin was bludgeoned but said that the weapon was a baseball bat. Another source with direct knowledge of the autopsy performed by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Washington, DC offered new information about Lesins injuries: He had fractured ribs, a detail that has not been previously reported.
One of the FBI agents said that he learned Lesin was put up by the Justice Department at the Dupont Circle Hotel a midrange hotel out of keeping with Lesins extravagant lifestyle during an informal water cooler talk with a case agent working on the investigation.
Lesin, he was told, was going to talk about the inner workings of RT basically, how the propaganda machine works. DOJ was investigating RT. These are the types of meetings we have with people when we want to recruit them as informants.
Does he believe Lesin was murdered over RT?
Whether it was over RT, money, pissing off Putin or a combo or all of it, I dont know, he answered. But falling down drunk? Come on. Thats bullshit..
The second FBI agent said he learned that the Justice Department had put Lesin up at the hotel from a DOJ official on the case. The DOJ was investigating something with RT, he recalled being told, and investigators planned to ask Lesin how the station operated how it was run and how the Kremlin used it.
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The following article is from December (2014)
"Mikhail Lesin has stepped down as head of major state-controlled media holding Gazprom-Media, the company said late last week.
Gazprom-Media, whose holdings include independent radio station Ekho Moskvy, said Lesin's resignation was due to family reasons, Russian media reports said Friday.
The holding's board of directors will finalize his resignation at an upcoming meeting, Gazprom-Media was cited by Ekho Moskvy as saying. No replacement has been named.
Earlier, a flurry of reports of Lesin's imminent resignation appeared on Russian news wires, all based on undisclosed sources and giving divergent accounts of the motive.
Forbes Russia cited sources in the media and government as confirming the resignation, with one of the individuals claiming that the decision was made personally by President Vladimir Putin."
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/513690.html
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"When he [Mikhail Lesin] quit Gazprom Media in December [2014], a move seen as a shock, he cited family reasons although there were unconfirmed claims he had fallen out with other influential figures close to Putin. ..."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3315994/Vladimir-Putin-s-media-mastermind-dead-DC-hotel-murdered-FBI-informant-alive-claim-Russians.html
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" [RT (Russia Today) founder, [Mikhail] Lesin was a central figure in the early Putin years, spearheading the Kremlin's effort to silence the country's independent television, the first step in the consolidation of authoritarian rule.
The first target was NTV, at that time Russia's largest and most popular independent TV channel, whose hard-hitting news broadcasts, talk shows, and satirical programs criticized the government over growing corruption and the war in Chechnya and gave airtime to the opposition.
In June 2000, a month after Putin's inauguration, NTV's founder and majority shareholder, Vladimir Gusinsky, was arrested and placed in Moscow's infamous Butyrka prison.
While he was there, the information minister made an offer: Gusinsky could have his freedom if he agreed to transfer his media holdings to Gazprom, the state-owned energy monopoly. ..."
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/vladimir-kara-murza/ominous-return-putins-media-enforcer
Exactly! Every new administration makes contact with foreign governments.
...and something I note about the news...every time we hear something from “sources,” some lawyer from Mueller’s staff is BREAKING THE LAW.
Trump should just pardon Flynn, and every other potential target of the Deep State, then fire Mueller. If Republicans abandon him, we will abandon them.
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