for russian tv, which earned him tens of thousands of dollars. sources have told cnn russian officials bragged to each other during the 2016 presidential campaign that they had cultivated a strong relationship with flynn and could use him to influence donald trump, even calling flynn an ally, although some former officials caution that the russians could have been exaggerating the relationship. what is clear is that in december 2016, shortly after the election, flynn met with kislyak at trump tower and later exchanged text messages and phone calls with him during the transition. it was flynn's conversations with the then-russian ambassador later in december which got flynn into legal trouble when he asked kislyak not to sanction the u.s. after the obama administration sanctioned russia for interfering in the election. flynn has now admitted to lying to investigators about his discussions with kislyak, but experts say that outreach probably didn't start from scratch. kislyak was, according to analysts, the ideal russian to get next to flynn. >> i think kislyak cultivated