certainly would have been okay with me if he did. I would have directed him to do it if I thought he wasn’t doing it. I didn’t direct him, but I would have directed 248 him because that’s his job.” In listing the reasons for terminating Flynn, the 249 President did not say that Flynn had lied to him. The President also denied having any connection to Russia, stating, “I have nothing to do with Russia. I 250 told you, I have no deals there. I have no anything.” The President also said he “had nothing to do with” WikiLeaks’s publication of information hacked from 251 the Clinton campaign. 9. The President Attempts to Have K.T. McFarland Create a Witness Statement Denying that he Directed Flynn’s Discussions with Kislyak On February 22, 2017, Priebus and Bannon told McFarland that the President wanted her to resign as Deputy National Security Advisor, but they suggested to her that the Administration could make her the ambassador to 252 Singapore. The next day, the President asked Priebus to have McFarland draft an internal email that would confirm that the President did not direct Flynn 253 to call the Russian Ambassador about sanctions. Priebus said he told the President he would only direct McFarland to write such a letter if she were 254 comfortable with it. Priebus called McFarland into his office to convey the President’s request that she memorialize in writing that the President did not 255 direct Flynn to talk to Kislyak. McFarland told Priebus she did not know whether the President had directed Flynn to talk to Kislyak about sanctions, and 256 she declined to say yes or no to the request. Priebus understood that McFarland was not comfortable with the President’s request, and he 257 recommended that she talk to attorneys in the White House Counsel’s Office. 258 McFarland then reached out to Eisenberg. McFarland told him that she had been fired from her job as Deputy National Security Advisor and offered the ambassadorship in Singapore but that the President and Priebus wanted a letter from her denying that the President directed Flynn to discuss sanctions with 259 260 Kislyak. Eisenberg advised McFarland not to write the requested letter. As documented by McFarland in a contemporaneous “Memorandum for the Record” that she wrote because she was concerned by the President’s request: