Did US Intelligence keep secret what they knew of Flynn's trip to Russia? For nearly two years now, the intelligence community has kept secret evidence in the Russia collusion case that directly undercuts the portrayal of retired Army general and former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn as a Russian stooge. .....Before Flynn made his infamous December 2015 trip to Moscow - as a retired general and then-adviser to Donald Trump's presidential campaign - he alerted his former employer, the DIA. .....He then attended a "defensive" or "protective" briefing before he ever sat alongside Vladimir Putin at the Russia Today (RT) dinner, or before he talked with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. .....The briefing educated and sensitized Flynn to possible efforts by his Russian host to compromise the former high-ranking defense official and prepared him for conversations in which he could potentially extract intelligence for U.S. agencies such as the DIA.  .....When Flynn returned from Moscow, he spent time briefing intelligence officials on what he learned during the Moscow contacts. Between two and nine intelligence officials attended the various meetings with Flynn about the RT event, and the information was moderately useful, about what one would expect from a public event, according to my sources. Rather than a diplomatic embarrassment bordering on treason, Flynn's conduct at the RT event provided some modest benefit to the U.S. intelligence community, something that many former military and intelligence officers continue to offer their country after retirement when they keep security clearances. the Pentagon did give a classified briefing to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in May 2017, but then it declined the senator's impassioned plea three months later to make some of that briefing information public. "It appears the public release of this information would not pose any ongoing risk to national security. Moreover, the declassification would be in the public interest, and is in the interest of fairness to Lt. Gen. Flynn," Grassley wrote in August 2017. There's no sugar-coating the mistakes Flynn did make. By his own admission, he misled the FBI and Vice President Mike Pence about the fact that sanctions did come up in a December 2016 conversation with Kislyak, then Moscow's ambassador to the United States. He didn't file proper foreign-lobbying paperwork for money he received from Turkish sources. And he likely did not file the proper paperwork disclosing or seeking permission for the $45,000 in speaking and travel fees he got for the RT event.  Those are sins for which Flynn has paid, and will pay, dearly. Flynn's attendance at the RT event was disclosed in advance to the intelligence community, he took proactive steps to ensure he could not be compromised by attendees, and he then came back to the United States and reported intelligence designed to benefit America. Flynn was never charged with any wrongdoing related to the RT event, so the belated revelations about his pre- and post-event conduct won't have any effect on his sentencing in the court of law. But in the court of public opinion, they should have a real impact. On that score, the first accounts of the Russia-Flynn story - like many others in the still-unproven collusion narrative - should be amended to reflect that the retired general acted like a patriot, not a traitor, when he visited Moscow for the RT event https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/423558-exculpatory-russia-evidence-about-mike-flynn-that-us-intel-kept-secret