Trump kept Flynn close even after warning that his national security adviser was vulnerable to blackmail

The Washington Post reports: The acting attorney general informed the Trump White House late last month that she believed Michael Flynn had misled senior administration officials about the nature of his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States, and warned that the national security adviser was potentially vulnerable to Russian blackmail, current and former U.S. officials said.

The message, delivered by Sally Q. Yates and a senior career national security official to the White House counsel, was prompted by concerns that ­Flynn, when asked about his calls and texts with the Russian diplomat, had told Vice ­President-elect Mike Pence and others that he had not discussed the Obama administration sanctions on Russia for its interference in the 2016 election, the officials said. It is unclear what the White House counsel, Donald McGahn, did with the information.

Flynn resigned Monday night in the wake of revelations about his contacts with the Russian ambassador.

In the waning days of the Obama administration, James R. Clapper Jr., who was the director of national intelligence, and John Brennan, the CIA director at the time, shared Yates’s concerns and concurred with her recommendation to inform the Trump White House. They feared that “Flynn had put himself in a compromising position” and thought that Pence had a right to know that he had been misled, according to one of the officials, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

A senior Trump administration official said before Flynn’s resignation that the White House was aware of the matter, adding that “we’ve been working on this for weeks.”

The current and former officials said that although they believed that Pence was misled about the contents of Flynn’s communications with the Russian ambassador, they couldn’t rule out that Flynn was acting with the knowledge of others in the transition. [Continue reading…]

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4 thoughts on “Trump kept Flynn close even after warning that his national security adviser was vulnerable to blackmail

  1. Dieter Heymann

    Garry Kaparov. This affair was a political King’s gambit and it resulted in check mate because the King was not sufficiently protected.

  2. David Airey

    ‘So-called President’; Yes, I like it – entirely fitting and appropriate! I think this should be his title in the media from now on.

  3. Pierre Gilly

    The twitter account you quote and link to is a fake. The real Flynn has deleated his twitter. How could you get fooled? The real Flynn twittered much crazier stuff than the fake… 😉

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