Kushner told Flynn to make calls over anti-Israel UN vote: Sources
Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, had told Michael Flynn to make calls about an anti-Israel vote at the UN Security Council in Dec. 2016, sources say.
Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser, was told by Kushner to make the calls regarding a resolution condemning Israel for its settlement policy, two former officials with the Trump transition team who worked closely with Flynn told Bloomberg.
Kushner contacted foreign ambassadors and foreign ministers of countries on the council and told them to either oppose the vote or delay it until after then-President Barack Obama, who had instructed his ambassador to the UN to abstain from voting on the resolution, left office.
According to Bloomberg, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s envoys also shared their own intelligence about the Obama administration's lobbying efforts to convince member states to back the resolution with the Trump transition team.
After a 1-day delay, the council finally passed the resolution on December 23, with Washington abstaining. It was the first resolution on Israel and the Palestinians that the 15-member body had passed in about eight years.
Prior to the vote, Obama had said that the Israeli settlements posed an obstacle to the so-called Middle East peace process.
News about the phone calls comes as Flynn pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia hours after the Justice Department's special counsel Robert Mueller had charged him with “willfully and knowingly” making “false, fictitious and fraudulent statements” to investigators over his Russian contacts.
One of Flynn’s lies to the FBI was that he said he had never asked Russia's ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak, to delay the vote.
The indictment released from Mueller’s office describes the lie: "On or about December 22, 2016, Flynn did not ask the Russian Ambassador to delay the vote on or defeat a pending United Nations Security Council resolution."
"I recognize that the actions I acknowledged in court today were wrong," said Flynn, who had resigned in February over allegations that he had contacts with Russia.
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