Declassified FBI notes expose discrepancies between Flynn interview, official FBI records

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.

Flynn was charged in federal court in Washington, D.C., in November 2017 with one count of false statements to the FBI agents investigating allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

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."

Likewise, the FBI summary report stated that Flynn recalled making four or five calls the day he talked with the Russian diplomat from a Christmas vacation spot in the Dominican Republic. But Strzok's notes quoted Flynn as saying: "If so, don't remember. If so, busy place to make phone calls."

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. 

Trump pardoned Flynn in November 2020, ending the prosecution. Flynn filed a civil suit in 2023 alleging malicious prosecution, claiming DOJ investigators, under what he called “virulently anti-Trump leadership” within the FBI, had targeted him because of his association with Trump's 2016 campaign, and that he was “falsely branded as a traitor,” lost business opportunities and incurred significant legal costs. 

A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2024, but he filed again when Trump returned to office. In March 2025, the Justice Department under Attorney General Pam Bondi settled the suit for approximately $1.2 million, The Associated Press reported.  

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. 

In another instance, the agents appeared to have altered Flynn’s response to a question about the number of calls he remembered having with the Russian ambassador and others related to the diplomatic incident. In the FD-302, the agents write that “FLYNN remembered making four to five calls that day about this issue, but that the Dominican Republic was a difficult place to make a call as he kept having connectivity issues.”

However, in both memos, the agents note that Flynn did not recall making four to five calls. “I [do not] remember making 4-5 calls,” one agent wrote, using a common symbol for “do not” or “no.” “If did lousy place to call,” he added to Flynn’s response. The other agent wrote that Flynn answered “if so, don’t remember,” to a question about the number of calls. 

You can read both sets of handwritten interview notes and the FD-302, released by the White House Government Transparency Task Force, below: 

For years, the timing and circumstances of Strzok and Pientka’s interview of the newly installed national security advisor has stirred concerns, both ethical and constitutional.

In fact, just weeks before that interview, the FBI agents in the Washington Field Office filed a memo arguing an investigation into Flynn should be closed after investigators had found “no derogatory” information to suggest Flynn committed a crime or posed a national security threat because of his contacts with Russian government officials, Just the News previously reported. 

The files show the plan was to provide Flynn with a defensive briefing so he could be aware of potential pitfalls with Russians as he started in his new job in the White House. But then the lead agent in the larger Russia case, Strzok, intervened to stop the case from being closed and pivoted the discussion toward seeking an interview with Flynn, FBI text messages released in 2020 show. 

The messages show that shortly after Strzok’s intervention, the discussion pivoted from closing the case to seeking an interview with Flynn. However, then-Assistant Director for Counterintelligence William Priestap, one of the FBI’s top counterintelligence officials, appeared to be concerned the FBI was being unfair to Flynn. 

Handwritten notes that a federal court released in April 2020 show Priestap harbored concerns in early January 2017 after a meeting inside the Obama White House that the FBI was “playing games” with the Flynn investigation and may have been trying to use the interview to “get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?”

Strzok proceeded to interview Flynn anyway. 

There were several other issues with the way the FBI under Director James Comey handled the case against Flynn, Just the News previously reported. 

• FBI officials debated whether they could avoid, disguise or slip in the required FBI admonition against lying to agents at the start of Flynn's interview to keep him off guard. “It would be an easy way to just casually slip that in,” Page texted during the discussions. 
• The FBI agents who interviewed Flynn, including Strzok, did not believe Flynn intended to lie or be deceptive in his interview. “Strzok provided his view that Flynn appeared truthful during the interview,” a memo from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team later stated. 
• The FBI agents who interviewed Flynn indicated in a draft report that Flynn did not directly deny talking to Kislyak about sanctions, as he was accused by Mueller. Instead, they noted, he couldn't remember, wasn't sure and even conceded it was possible. 
• Justice Department officials immediately did not believe Flynn could realistically be prosecuted under the Logan Act – a 1799 law that prohibits private citizens from conducting unauthorized diplomacy – for his conversations with Kislyak. Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe testified he was told such a prosecution was a "long shot," and former Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord "said that upon learning of Flynn’s phone calls with Ambassador Kislyak, a Logan Act prosecution seemed like a stretch to her,” DOJ memos say. 
• Senior Justice officials expressed concern and alarm at the way the FBI was treating Flynn, including trying to interview him without the normally required notification to the Trump White House. 
• According to Justice Department officials and Flynn's lawyers, the majority of the above evidence was withheld from the courts and Flynn's legal team for years despite repeated orders that all exculpatory Brady materials, i.e., evidence of innocence, be produced.

Editor's Note: John Solomon is working as an unpaid Special Government Employee as the chairman of the White House Government Transparency Task Force and has taken a leave of absence as Editor in Chief of Just the News while he serves in that role.