Russia used Michael Flynn to deliver plan for Donald Trump to blackmail the Ukrainian president

| 6:52 pm EST February 19, 2017
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For all the growing suspicion that the government of Russia is blackmailing Donald Trump into doing its bidding, evidence has now surfaced that the Russian government is instead trying to blackmail Donald Trump into blackmailing the Ukrainian president into leaving office, so that his replacement can hand Crimea over to Russia. At the center of this new revelation is Trump’s National Security Adviser Michael Flynn — and the plan was in motion just before Flynn resigned.

The bizarre storyline, which increasingly reads like a spy novel, centers around Donald Trump’s longtime attorney Michael Cohen having hand delivered a proposal to Flynn’s office shortly before Flynn unexpectedly quit. The proposal involved using Russian kompromat, or compromising material, to blackmail Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko such that he would no longer be in office. He would then be replaced by a new Ukrainian president more friendly to Russia, who would then take steps to “lease” Crimea to Russia, essentially giving up the territory which Russia invaded three years ago.

And this proposal delivered by Cohen to Flynn, which would have been a gift to Russia while not helping the United States at all, appears to have come from Russia itself. The proposal passed through the hands of Russian businessman Felix Sater, who has done financial business with Donald Trump in the past, and Andrii Artemenko, a Ukrainian politician whose positions suggest he’s under the thumb of the Kremlin. Meanwhile Michael Cohen, who delivered the proposal to Flynn, is the same Michael Cohen who was previously accused by the MI6 Russia dossier of having met with with Russian representatives in Prague before the election to work out the terms of Russia’s supposed blackmail of Trump (Cohen denies this).

Michael Flynn resigned to due to his role in the Russia scandal being exposed, shortly after Cohen brought him the Russia-Uktraine proposal, as detailed by the New York Times in this intricate expose. It’s not clear how far the proposal would have gone if Flynn hadn’t resigned when he did. But we’ve reached the point where Russia may now be trying to blackmail Donald Trump into blackmailing the president of the Ukraine. Contribute to Palmer Report