1252 members were present. During the briefing, President-Elect Trump asked McFarland if the Russians did “it,” meaning the intrusions intended to influence 1253 the presidential election. McFarland said yes, and President-Elect Trump 1254 expressed doubt that it was the Russians. McFarland also discussed potential Russian responses to the sanctions, and said Russia’s response would 1255 be an indicator of what the Russians wanted going forward. President-Elect Trump opined that the sanctions provided him with leverage to use with the 1256 Russians. McFarland recalled that at the end of the meeting, someone may have mentioned to President-Elect Trump that Flynn was speaking to the 1257 Russian ambassador that evening. 1258 After the briefing, Flynn and McFarland spoke over the phone. Flynn reported on the substance of his call with Kislyak, including their discussion of 1259 the sanctions. According to McFarland, Flynn mentioned that the Russian response to the sanctions was not going to be escalatory because they wanted a 1260 good relationship with the incoming Administration. McFarland also gave 1261 Flynn a summary of her recent briefing with President-Elect Trump. The next day, December 30, 2016, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov 1262 remarked that Russia would respond in kind to the sanctions. Putin superseded that comment two hours later, releasing a statement that Russia would not take retaliatory measures in response to the sanctions at that 1263 time. Hours later President-Elect Trump tweeted, “Great move on delay (by 1264 V. Putin).” Shortly thereafter, Flynn sent a text message to McFarland summarizing his call with Kislyak from the day before, which she emailed to 1265 Kushner, Bannon, Priebus, and other Transition Team members. The text message and email did not include sanctions as one of the topics discussed with 1266 Kislyak. Flynn told the Office that he did not document his discussion of sanctions because it could be perceived as getting in the way of the Obama 1267 Administration’s foreign policy. On December 31, 2016, Kislyak called Flynn and told him the request had been received at the highest levels and that Russia had chosen not to retaliate to 1268 the sanctions in response to the request. Two hours later, Flynn spoke with