One of the stranger moments of Robert Mueller’s special counsel probe is Michael Flynn’s Dec. 1, 2017 guilty plea for lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The former White House national security adviser pleaded guilty to a single count of making false statements, even though then FBI director James Comey had told Congress in March that the two FBI agents who interviewed Mr. Flynn believed he hadn’t lied.

These columns reported this Comey testimony based on sources at the time of Mr. Flynn’s plea (“The Flynn Information,” Dec. 1, 2017). Now comes confirmation from a less redacted version of the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia report released late Friday.

On pages 53-54, the report notes that in March 2017 “Director Comey testified to the Committee that ‘the agents . . . discerned no physical indications of deception. They didn’t see any change in posture, in tone, in inflection, in eye contact. They saw nothing that indicated to them that he knew he was lying to them.’” The quotes are from the committee transcript of Mr. Comey’s remarks.

The report goes on to say that then Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe “confirmed the interviewing agent’s initial impression and stated that the ‘conundrum that we faced on their return from the interview is that although [the agents] didn’t detect deception in the statements that he made in the interview . . . the statements were inconsistent with our understanding of the conversation that he had actually had with the ambassador.’”

Recall that the inconsistency concerned whether Mr. Flynn had discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. Vice President Mike Pence had said publicly that Mr. Flynn had not discussed sanctions, and once it came to light that he had, Mr. Flynn resigned.