President Trump's former deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland told a friend in an email when she was on Trump's transition team that Russia "threw" the U.S. election to Trump, The New York Times reported Saturday.
McFarland reportedly wrote in the email that sanctions then-President Obama levied on Russia in response to Moscow's election meddling would make it more difficult for Trump to improve relations with Russia, "which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to him."
The Times reported that it was unclear whether the transition official was saying she believed that the election had been thrown. A White House lawyer told the newspaper that McFarland was referring to the Democrats' portrayal of the election.
Emails obtained by the Times show that Trump's team moved quickly to develop a strategy on how to reassure Russia after learning that Obama would expel 35 Russian diplomats in the weeks before he left office.
The report comes one day after Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with then-Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak in the month before Trump took office.
Flynn had previously denied that he discussed sanctions with the Russian official, but later acknowledged that the issue came up. Trump fired him over the issue in February, 24 days after he took the White House post.
McFarland was reportedly aware of Flynn's contact with Moscow. An Associated Press report on Friday identified McFarland as a senior transition official mentioned in court documents who discussed with Flynn in 2016 the U.S. sanctions against Russia and potential retaliation from Moscow.
Outlets also identified Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner as the "very senior transition official" referenced in the documents who reportedly pushed Flynn to persuade the Russian government to vote against a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements. The U.N. vote ended up advancing.
McFarland served as Trump's deputy national security adviser until May and is currently awaiting confirmation to be his ambassador to Singapore.
magicsonar on December 2nd, 2017 at 22:34 UTC »
K. T. McFarland was Flynn's assistant. She handled communications between Trump and Flynn. So she was in a good position to know what was going on. And it seems clear from the correspondence they were a bit panicked that the Russians would react badly to the US hitting them with new sanctions.
An interesting line that she wrote:
Flynn had been trying to sell people on an audacious plan to roll out nuclear reactors all over the Middle East. The plan was said to have the support of Trump. It was to be a US-Russia plan and it relied heavily on Russian companies. One of the key companies in the plan was a Russian state company called Rosoboron. This company was under US sanctions. The deal would have likely been worth tens of billions of dollars to the Russian company. Flynn was being paid to make trips to Egypt and Israel to sell the deal and failed to disclose any of this when he undertook his security clearance. The deal was to be financed by Saudi Arabia and the reactors were to be built in Jordan. On Jan 5, Bannon and Kushner met with King Abdullah II at the Four Seasons hotel in New York. It was reported they discussed this deal. Kushner also failed to disclose any of this in his security clearance.
EDIT: removed some of my sloppy conjecture.
catpor on December 2nd, 2017 at 22:23 UTC »
I, for one, would love to know the full context of that quote. I hope the NYT publishes the full email minus any parts that require redaction.
CEBVIII on December 2nd, 2017 at 21:58 UTC »
Seeing as how The Hill isn't the most reputable nor is it the original source of information, here is the article they are repeating:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/02/us/russia-mcfarland-flynn-trump-emails.html