It was one year ago today that Michael Flynn met with FBI investigators at his West Wing office. Less than a month later, he was fired after the revelation that he'd lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Ousted after just 24 days, Flynn was the shortest-tenured national security adviser in the more than 60-year history of the position. By December, he had pled guilty to lying to the FBI at that January 24 meeting and agreed to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

(Trump later said he knew Flynn lied to the FBI before firing him, sparking a firestorm. It's unclear how long Trump knew Flynn had lied to Pence before grabbing the hook. Sally Yates told his White House counsel that Flynn lied to the vice president—and that Flynn was consequently vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians—on January 26.)

Thanks to NBC News, we have some more details on how that meeting went down:

Two people familiar with the matter said Trump was unaware that Flynn had spoken with the FBI until two days after the interview took place...A brief phone call from the office of Andrew McCabe, the deputy FBI director, to a scheduler for Flynn on January 24 set the interview in motion, according to people familiar with the matter. The scheduler was told the FBI wanted to speak with Flynn later that day, these people said, and the meeting was placed on Flynn’s schedule. The scheduler didn't ask the reason for the meeting, and the FBI didn't volunteer it, one person familiar with the matter said.

Andrew McCabe Getty Images

Later that day, two FBI agents arrived at the White House to speak with Flynn. A lawyer for the National Security Council typically would be informed of such a meeting and be present for it, one person familiar with the procedures said. But that didn't happen in this instance, and Flynn didn't include his own personal lawyer, two people said. He met with the two federal agents alone, according to these people.

"No one knew that any of this was happening," said another senior White House official who was there at the time. "Apparently it was not clear to Flynn that this was about his personal conduct," another White House official said. "So he didn't think of bringing his own lawyer."

So it appears that, through a combination of amateurism and deception, Flynn found himself in a meeting alone with two FBI agents. By now, we know he tried to lie his way out of it. From this account, McCabe could have made the nature of the meeting clearer. Flynn might have gotten sandbagged. But he was also national security adviser to the President of the United States—not exactly a teenager who gets pulled over and doesn't know his rights. He had been sloshing around in backchannels with a foreign adversary and he had taken money from a different foreign government while serving in a U.S. presidential campaign. A little more savvy is required.

White House counsel Don McGahn was the first senior official to learn of Flynn's interview during a meeting on January 26 with Yates in which she warned him that Flynn had lied to Vice President Mike Pence and other top Trump officials about his conversation with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, and could be vulnerable to blackmail by the Russian government.

So the president only heard his national security adviser had been questioned by the FBI after the acting attorney general told his White House counsel that Flynn might be compromised by the Russians?

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The counsel, Don McGahn, has been questioned twice by Robert Mueller's team, according to NBC. He joins Yates, former FBI Director James Comey, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, NSA Director Mike Rogers, and a host of Trump campaign and White House staffers among those who have chatted with the special counsel. Pompeo, Coats, and Rogers are considered "peripheral witnesses" to Comey's infamous firing, which Trump told NBC's Lester Holt on national television shortly after was at least partly due to "the Russia thing." Trump allegedly asked Pompeo to lean on Comey to drop the investigation into Flynn, which Trump reportedly also tried himself. This has the hallmarks of an obstruction-of-justice case, and Mueller is reportedly seeking to interview Trump himself soon.

And that's not all. CNN reported Tuesday night that Rick Gates, the longtime consigliere to one-time Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort, might be making moves. Gates and Manafort were snared on eight separate charges of money laundering and failing to register foreign lobbying in October. They both pled not guilty. The charges relate to activity years before they joined the Trump campaign, though CNN reports that could change:

For months, court-watchers -- including Gates' own attorneys -- have anticipated additional charges against the defendants. Superseding indictments, which would add or replace charges against both Gates and Manafort, have been prepared, according to a source close to the investigation. No additional charges have been filed so far. When there is a delay in filing charges after they've been prepared, it can indicate that negotiations of some nature are ongoing.

To that end, Gates has apparently added a prominent white-collar defense attorney to his team named Tom Green, who was seen at Mueller's Washington offices twice last week. Green's addition could signal Gates may be changing his position—that is, he may be moving to cooperate. CNN adds that the prosecution has treated Gates and his team with kid gloves compared to Manafort throughout the process so far. Gates and Manaforts' lawyers operate separately, which opens the possibility that their interests may diverge at some point. That may have been Mueller's intention from the beginning, when he picked them up together.

Rick Gates with Trump Getty Images

If Gates did choose to cooperate, he would join Flynn and campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos among those in Trump world working with Mueller's team. CNN reminds us there's more to chew on with regard to Papadopoulos:

The charging documents against Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulosrevealed that Papadopoulos emailed Manafort about his contacts with government-connected Russians and that the Russians were "open for cooperation" and wanted an opportunity to meet Donald Trump. Manafort forwarded the message to Gates and said, "Let's discuss. We need someone to communicate that (Trump) is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal."

Manafort and Gates were also in charge during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, where a handful of Trump campaign advisers met with then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and a group of campaign aides controversially changed the Republican Party platform regarding Ukraine.

Russia, of course, is very interested in Ukraine. The charges against Manafort and Gates partly stem from their activity in Ukraine, which also got Manafort pushed out of the campaign. Things seem to be happening quickly now.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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