Trump Adviser Had Five Calls with Russian Envoy on Day of Sanctions: Sources — Reuters
It remains to be seen, of course, how much notice Trump takes of what Kelly, Tillerson, and Mattis tell him. If he follows the model of President Obama during his first term, he will largely run foreign policy out of the White House, where he will be advised by a retired general of a different stripe, Michael Flynn, a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Some of Flynn’s ties to Russia are well known: in 2015 he attended a banquet in Moscow that Putin also attended. This week, it emerged that late last month, on the day that the Obama Administration kicked out dozens of Russian diplomats in retaliation for Kremlin-inspired interference in the election, Flynn spoke on the phone five times with the Russian ambassador to Washington. Also on Friday, it was reported that Russia will invite representatives of the Trump Administration to join talks on Syria that the Obama Administration had been excluded from.
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