spoken with russia's ambassador to the u.s. on december 29th, 2016. the day the u.s. announced sanctions and other measures against russia in response to that government's actions intended to interfere with the 2016 election. again, this is right after christmas 2016, so this is after the election, we know that donald trump is the incoming president, but obama is still president. obama after christmas, during the transition, orders new sanctions against russia to punish russia for what they did to mess with our election. between christmas and new years, mike flynn calls the russian ambassador, according to the washington post and says, hey, hey, hey, don't worry about those sanctions. we're going to have a different attitude toward those sanctions, don't retaliate, et cetera. the washington post reports that, that ends up being relevant to the subsequent interview of flynn on that subject. the post's story queried whether