NATION/WORLD
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
East Oregonian
Page 7A
Trump knew Flynn misled White House weeks before ouster
WASHINGTON (AP) — Just
six days into his presidency, Donald
Trump was informed his national
security adviser had misled his vice
president about contacts with Russia.
Trump kept his No. 2 in the dark and
waited nearly three weeks before
ousting the aide, Michael Flynn,
citing a slow but steady erosion of
trust, White House officials said
Tuesday.
Flynn was interviewed by the FBI
about his telephone conversations
with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S.,
a sign his ties to Russia had caught
the attention of law enforcement
officials.
But in the White House’s retelling
of Flynn’s stunning downfall, his
error was not that he discussed U.S.
sanctions with the Russian before the
inauguration — a potential violation
of a rarely enforced law — but the
fact that he denied it for weeks,
apparently misleading Vice President
Mike Pence and other senior Trump
aides about the nature of the conver-
sations. White House officials said
they conducted a thorough review of
Flynn’s interactions, including tran-
scripts of calls secretly recorded by
U.S. intelligence officials, but found
nothing illegal.
Pence, who had vouched for
Flynn in a televised interview, is
said to have been angry and deeply
frustrated.
“The evolving and eroding level
of trust as a result of this situation
and a series of other questionable
incidents is what led the president
to ask General Flynn for his resigna-
tion,” White House spokesman Sean
Spicer said Tuesday, one day after the
president asked Flynn to leave.
Flynn, in an interview with The
Daily Caller News Foundation,
said Monday “there were no lines
crossed” in his conversations with
Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
The explanation of the episode
left many questions unanswered,
including why Trump didn’t alert
Pence to the matter and why Trump
allowed Flynn to keep accessing
classified information and taking part
in the president’s discussions with
world leaders up until the day he was
fired.
White House officials also strug-
gled to explain why Trump counselor
Kellyanne Conway had declared the
president retained “full confidence”
in Flynn just hours before the adviser
had to submit his letter of resignation.
The White House shakeup, less
than one month into Trump’s tenure,
Ruptly via AP
In this image made from a video taken on Dec. 10, 2015, President
Donald Trump’s former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn,
right, shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in Mos-
cow. A U.S. official has told The Associated Press that Flynn was
in frequent contact with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on the day
the Obama administration imposed sanctions on Russia after U.S.
intelligence reported that Russia had interfered with the election.
marked another jarring setback for a
new administration already dealing
with tensions among top aides and a
legal fight over the president’s travel
ban order. Flynn’s firing also height-
ened questions about the president’s
friendly posture toward Russia.
Democrats called for investigations
into Flynn’s contacts, and Republican
Sen. Lindsey Graham said Congress
needed to know whether he had
been acting with direction from the
president or others.
Trump initially thought Flynn
could survive the controversy,
according to a person with direct
knowledge of the president’s views,
but a pair of explosive stories in The
Washington Post in recent days made
the situation untenable. As early as
last week, he and aides began making
contingency plans for Flynn’s
dismissal, a senior administration
official said. While the president was
said to be upset with Flynn, he also
expressed anger with other aides
for “losing control” of the story and
making his young administration
look bad.
Pence spokesman Marc Lotter
said Pence became aware that he
had received “incomplete informa-
tion” from Flynn only after the first
Washington Post report Thursday
night. Pence learned about the Justice
Department warnings to the White
House around the same time.
The officials and others with
knowledge of the situation were
not authorized to discuss the matter
publicly and requested anonymity.
“The evolving and
eroding level of trust ...
is what led the presi-
dent to ask Gen. Flynn
for his resignation.”
— Sean Spicer,
White House spokesman
Ahead of the Jan. 20 inauguration,
Pence and other officials insisted
publicly that Flynn had not discussed
sanctions in his talks with Russian
Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. On Jan.
26, Acting Attorney General Sally
Yates contacted White House counsel
Don McGahn to raise concerns about
discrepancies between the public
accounting and what intelligence
officials knew to be true about the
contacts based on routine recordings
of communications with foreign
officials who are in the U.S.
The Justice Department warned
the White House that the inconsis-
tencies would leave the president’s
top national security aide vulnerable
to blackmail from Russia, according
to a person with knowledge of
the discussion. The president was
informed of the warnings the same
day, Spicer said.
Flynn was interviewed by the
FBI around the same time, according
to a U.S. official was briefed on the
investigation.
It was not immediately known
what questions the FBI asked of
Flynn or what he told law enforce-
ment officials.
McGahn, along with chief of
staff Reince Priebus and strategist
Steve Bannon, also questioned
Flynn multiple times in the ensuing
weeks, a White House official said.
Top aides also reviewed transcripts
of Flynn’s contacts with the ambas-
sador, according to a person with
knowledge of the review process.
At the same time, the official said
Trump aides began taking steps to
put some distance between the pres-
ident and Flynn. CIA Director Mike
Pompeo and retired Lt. Gen. Keith
Kellogg, a top Flynn aide, started
taking part in Trump’s daily security
briefings.
Top Trump advisers quietly met
with Vice Admiral Robert Harward
last week and spoke with the former
Navy SEAL again Monday, the
White House official said. Harward
is seen as the top contender for the
job, though former CIA Director
David Petraeus and Kellogg, who
has temporarily stepped into the role,
are also under consideration.
Spicer said other “questionable
incidents” had contributed to Flynn’s
firing. According to one person
with knowledge of the matter, those
incidents included Flynn seeking a
security clearance for his son during
the transition.
At the time, it was Pence who was
again put in the position of defending
Flynn on television, saying he had
not sought a clearance for the retired
general’s son.
A U.S. official told The Associ-
ated Press that Flynn was in frequent
contact with Kislyak on the day the
Obama administration slapped sanc-
tions on Russia for election-related
hacking, as well as at other times
during the transition. Spicer said
Flynn was not discussing sanctions at
the president’s behest.
Before he resigned Monday night,
Flynn told the investigative news
nonprofit affiliated with the website
The Daily Caller that he and Kislyak
spoke only generally about the
Russian diplomats expelled by Pres-
ident Barack Obama as part of the
previous administration’s response
to Moscow’s interference in the U.S.
presidential election.
“It wasn’t about sanctions. It was
about the 35 guys who were thrown
out,” Flynn said. “It was basically:
‘Look, I know this happened. We’ll
review everything.’ I never said
anything such as, ‘We’re going to
review sanctions,’ or anything like
that.”
Flynn exit creates
vacuum that
pragmatists may fill
WASHINGTON (AP) — The
dramatic departure of President
Donald Trump’s hard-hitting
national security adviser creates
a vacuum of power and raises a
key question about U.S. foreign
policy: Will the pragmatists in the
administration now gain clout?
Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson and Defense Secretary
Jim Mattis, both known as level-
headed technocrats, stand to fill
some of the void. It would be a
shift that would mollify anxious
U.S. allies and even Republicans
who worry Trump is veering
too far from traditional U.S.
positions. But the duo will be
contending with Steve Bannon,
Trump’s influential senior
adviser, and Jared Kushner, the
president’s son-in-law, who is
already playing an outsize role
in his diplomacy.
“It’s dysfunctional as far as
national security is concerned,”
Republican Sen. John McCain
said. “Who is in charge? I don’t
know of anyone outside of the
White House who knows.”
Critics of Trump’s foreign
policy plans are hoping the
shakeup leads to a rethink
of his desire to seek closer
U.S.-Russian relations and a less
hostile administration stance on
Islam — a tone Flynn helped to
set through often inflammatory
statements about the religion.
Many lawmakers from both
parties were appalled to learn
that Flynn, in the weeks before
Trump’s inauguration, discussed
with Russia’s ambassador sanc-
tions that the Obama administra-
tion was imposing as punishment
for Russia’s alleged interference
in the presidential election.
Flynn, who in 2015 was paid
to appear at a gala for Russian
state-controlled
television
network RT, was the face of
Trump’s potential Russia reboot,
designed around working with
Russia to fight the Islamic State
group. In Moscow, Russian
lawmakers bitterly mused that
paranoia had forced Flynn out,
while analysts there surmised
that the Kremlin’s honeymoon
with Trump was ending.
Russia cloud over Trump not likely to fade with Flynn
WASHINGTON (AP) —
Questions about the Trump
administration’s ties to Russia
are hardly going to disappear
with the firing of national
security adviser Michael
Flynn. Investigations are
underway, and more are likely
by the new administration and
on Capitol Hill.
U.S. agencies, including
the FBI, have been probing
Russian interference in the
2016 presidential election.
And three congressional
committees are conducting
their own investigations that
include looking at contacts
between Russian officials
and members of the Trump
campaign and administration.
This isn’t the first time
Trump has distanced himself
from an adviser in light of a
relationships with Moscow.
In late August, Paul Manafort
resigned as Trump’s campaign
chairman after disclosures by
The Associated Press about
his firm’s covert lobbying
on behalf of the former
pro-Russian ruling political
party in Ukraine. Trump’s
own ties to Russia have been
questioned in light of his
friendly posture toward the
long-time U.S. adversary
and reluctance to criticize
President Vladimir Putin,
even for Putin’s annexation of
Ukraine’s Crimea region.
“This isn’t simply about
a change in policy toward
Russia, as the administration
would like to portray. It’s
what’s behind that change
in policy,” said California
Rep. Adam Schiff, the top
Democrat on the House
intelligence committee, one
of the congressional bodies
investigating. Schiff said there
are continuing questions about
the Trump campaign’s ties to
Russia and whether anyone
assisted Moscow in hacking.
“It’s not just that an
administration official was
caught lying. It’s that the
national security adviser to
the president was caught lying
and on a matter of central
importance. So this is big,”
Schiff said.
The Obama administration
said Russia interfered in the
2016 election with the goal
of electing Trump. Trump has
acknowledged that Russia
hacked Democratic emails but
denies it was to help him win.
The investigations and
the unusual firing of the
national security adviser just
24 days into his job have put
Republicans in the awkward
position of investigating the
leader of their party. Senior
GOP lawmakers continue to
deny Democrats’ requests
that an independent panel
be established to carry out
the Russia investigation. So
the congressional probes are
ultimately in the hands of
the Republican chairmen,
and the executive branch’s
investigation
has
been
overseen ultimately by Trump
appointees.
On Tuesday, Republican
leaders focused on the idea
that Flynn misled Vice
President Mike Pence about
the nature of his contacts
with the Russian ambassador.
Democrats say a key issue is
whether Flynn broke diplo-
matic protocol and potentially
the law by discussing U.S.
sanctions with Moscow
before Trump’s inauguration.
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