The big question presently before us: Was the outreach to UN members illegal?

Everybody has the Flynn guilty plea on the front burner. It's the big dog of the hour at Memeorandum. A lot of people and outlets are preoccupied with the question of how vulnerable Jared Kushner is.

Kushner, it appears, told Flynn to contact the big players at try UN and persuade them to hold off on voting on the resolution condemning Israel for building "settlements" in "occupied areas" - in late 2016, when the previous administration was still in power. It further appears that Kushner's father-in-law was on board with this outreach effort.

I think Susan Wright at Red State focuses on the more important question:

The big question now seems to be: Was it illegal?

Trump had already won the election. This was the transition period, with only a month left to the horrendous Obama administration.
As a final knife in the back to our Middle East allies [sic], Israel, Obama instructed his ambassador to the UN to abstain from the vote – something that hasn’t been done since 1980.
Before that happened, however, Kushner reportedly told Flynn to get every ambassador or foreign minister from a nation represented on the UN Security Council he could reach and ask them to delay or vote against the resolution.
It is also reported that this was under coordination with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

For now it’s unclear what to make of all of this. Lying to the FBI is a felony and always a serious matter. We also know from Flynn’s “statement of the offense” that he lied to FBI agents as the bureau was investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and any links between Russia and the Trump campaign in this period. Nonetheless, nothing in the Flynn plea sheds any light on whether the Trump campaign actually colluded with Russia to influence the election.

So is that all there is?

ABC News reported Friday that Flynn is prepared to tell Mueller’s team that Trump had instructed him to make contact with Russia during the campaign itself. If those contacts involved the emails the U.S. intelligence community charges Russia stole from leading Democrats, then Mueller will have uncovered evidence of actual collusion between the president and a foreign adversary during the election. Impeachment could then be in the cards.

The reports coming out earlier today were that Flynn is saying Trump asked him to set up a backchannel line of communication with Russia, in order to work together on stopping ISIS in Russia.

One stretch is possibly the Logan Act, which makes it illegal for a private citizen to contact a foreign government, attempting to undermine the foreign policies of a sitting president.

A Logan Act investigation would explain the bureau’s interest in Flynn’s conversations about the U.N. Security Council resolution on Israel. This is what Senator Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on Friday: “This shows a Trump associate negotiating with the Russians against U.S. policy and interests before Donald Trump took office and after it was announced that Russia had interfered in our election. That’s a stunning revelation and could be a violation of the Logan Act, which forbids unauthorized U.S. citizens from negotiating with a foreign power.”

This thing seems to be branching out in a lot of little tributaries. Will it ultimately lead to a bigger pond, with bigger fish?

Questionable. 

It appears that Kushner, an at-least-somewhat-devout Jew, wanted to get a jump on heading off a late-in-the-game anti-Israel move by the outgoing administration. But there's the related issue of the degree and nature of Russian meddling in last year's US election. Did one or more of these transition people work to enlist Russia in this effort knowing full well the concurrent adversarial move regarding US politics?

One to watch as further unfoldings come along.