Last December 29th, Michael Flynn interrupted his Caribbean vacation to
conduct a bit of diplomatic business. Earlier that day, Barack Obama,
who was still President, had announced sanctions against Russia and the
expulsion from the United States of nearly three dozen purported Russian
spies—actions taken in response to Russia’s meddling in the 2016
Presidential election. Flynn and his boss, President-elect Donald Trump,
who had appointed Flynn to be his national-security adviser, had made
improving relations with Russia a campaign pledge. Russia’s President
Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, “developed a clear preference for
President-elect Trump” during the race, according to U.S. intelligence
officials.

Trump’s Inauguration was still a few weeks away, but, after Obama
announced the sanctions, Flynn, who was in the Dominican Republic with
his wife, apparently felt compelled to assure his contacts inside the
Russian government not to worry. He spoke with Sergei Kislyak, then the Russian
ambassador to the United States, by phone. According to
documents unsealed on Friday in federal court as part of the special
counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, Flynn made a “request that
Russia not escalate the situation.” Kislyak, presumably, carried that
message to Putin, who subsequently announced that Russia would not
retaliate; Kislyak later told Flynn that Putin’s decision was a
result of Flynn’s request.

In 1799, President John Adams signed the Logan Act, prohibiting
unauthorized citizens from conducting diplomacy on behalf of the United
States. No one has ever been charged with violating the act. But Flynn,
it seems, felt that his conversation with Kislyak was
something he needed to lie to reporters and federal investigators about. On Friday, he pleaded guilty to “willfully and
knowingly [making] materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent
statements” to F.B.I. agents who asked him about his contacts with
Kislyak. The charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

Almost immediately, Trump’s lawyer, Ty Cobb, sought to distance Trump
and the White House from Flynn’s admission. In a statement, Cobb said
that Flynn’s false statements to the F.B.I. “mirror” the ones he gave to
White House officials. In other words, he implied, Flynn was bamboozling
them all. “Nothing about the guilty plea or the charge implicate anyone
other than Mr. Flynn,” Cobb added. Just after Cobb issued his statement,
however, a more robust account of Flynn’s “statement of offense” was
unsealed, detailing his contacts, before and after the Kislyak call,
with “senior members” of Trump’s transition team, including a “very
senior member.”

Flynn, a retired lieutenant general, released a statement of his own
after news of his plea broke. Citing his thirty-three years in the Army,
“including nearly five years in combat away from my family,” he asserted
himself as, above all, a family man and a patriot. Of his criminal acts,
he said, “I am working to set things right.” He added, “My guilty plea
and agreement to cooperate with the Special Counsel’s Office reflect a
decision I made in the best interests of my family and of our country.”

In January, two days before Trump’s Inauguration, I met Flynn at a
restaurant in Washington. I was working on a Profile of him for this
magazine. I asked him then about his conversation with Kislyak.
Dissembling, he started talking about the trip he took to Russia in
2015, which, he said, had been “so overblown” by the media. There, in
Moscow, he said, he was entertained by a Russian military choir. It was
unclear what any of this had to do with my question. (I later realized that members of that
choir had died in a plane crash on Christmas Day, 2016, and Flynn told
the Washington Post that he had called Kislyak to offer his condolences,
though he made no such justification to me.)

“But when you called the ambassador?” I asked.

He replied, “I’ve had a relationship with him since my days at the
D.I.A.”—the Defense Intelligence Agency, which Flynn directed from 2012
to 2014. Then, getting up, he said that he needed to run to another
appointment. “We’ve got to go,” he said.

In another interview, on the phone, Flynn spoke to me at length about
his commitment to serving his country. “Service was something our family
was always encouraged to do,” he said. “I made some mistakes, sure. But
it’s like being a priest, you know. I’ve been called to serve.”
Washington is sometimes said to be a city of second chances. Flynn’s
statement, saying that he is “working to set things right,” suggests
that he hopes for one. Coöperating with Mueller’s team may well turn out
to be his most significant act of public service yet.