Dr_Krippen — 9 years ago(February 15, 2017 07:02 AM)

Even Republicans want answers now.
Flynn departure erupts into a full-blown crisis for the Trump White House
President Trumps ouster of national security adviser Michael Flynn, and the circumstances leading up to it, have quickly become a major crisis for the fledgling administration, forcing the White House on the defensive and precipitating the first significant breach in relations between Trump and an increasingly restive Republican Congress.
Even as the White House described Trumps immediate, decisive action in demanding ­Flynns resignation late Monday as the end of an unfortunate episode, senior GOP lawmakers were buckling under growing pressure to investigate it.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday that it was highly likely that the events leading to Flynns departure would be added to a broader probe into Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election. Intercepts showed that Flynn discussed U.S. sanctions in a phone call with the Russian ambassador a conversation topic that Flynn first denied and then later said he could not recall.
McConnells comments followed White House revelations that Trump was aware for weeks that Flynn had misled Vice President Pence and others about the content of his late-December talks with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
White House counsel Donald F. McGahn told Trump in a briefing late last month that Flynn, despite his claims to the contrary, had discussed U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia by the Obama administration in late December, press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday. That briefing, he said, came immediately after Sally Q. Yates, then the acting attorney general, informed McGahn on Jan. 26 about discrepancies between intercepts of Kislyaks phone calls and public statements by Pence and others that there had been no discussion of sanctions.
Trump brought in senior strategist Stephen K. Bannon and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus to join the discussion with McGahn, according to two officials familiar with the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
McGahn then conferred with Yates again the following day, Jan. 27, to try to glean more information, these two officials said. Within the White House, the matter was viewed skeptically, and Trump, Bannon, Priebus and McGahn for several days remained among the few people briefed, they said.
Over the next two weeks, the officials said, Flynn was asked multiple times about what exactly he had said. He brushed aside the suggestion that he had spoken about sanctions with the ambassador denials that kept him afloat within the White House even as he was being actively evaluated, they said.
It was not until a Washington Post report last Thursday, in which Flynn was quoted as saying that he had no recollection of discussing sanctions but couldnt be sure that he hadnt, that the downward slide culminating in Mondays forced resignation began, several administration officials said.
Weve been reviewing and evaluating this issue with respect to General Flynn on a daily basis for a few weeks, trying to ascertain the truth, Spicer said at the daily White House press briefing. He emphasized that an internal White House inquiry had concluded that nothing Flynn discussed with the Russian was illegal but that he had broken trust with Trump by not telling the truth about the talks.
When asked whether Trump told Flynn to talk to Kislyak about sanctions, Spicer responded: No, absolutely not.
Asked why Trump had waited nearly three weeks to act after what Spicer called a heads-up from the Justice Department, he said that once the question of legality was settled, then it became a phase of determining whether or not [Flynns] action on this and a whole host of other issues undermined Trumps trust. He declined to specify the other issues.
In an interview conducted early Monday and published Tuesday by the Daily Caller, Flynn said that he did not specifically discuss sanctions with Kislyak but rather President Barack Obamas simultaneous expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats. He said he told the ambassador that well review everything following Trumps inauguration.
Current and former U.S. officials have said, however, that much of the conversation was about sanctions and that Flynn suggested that Moscow not respond in kind to the expulsions advice that Russian President Vladi­mir Putin took in declining to take retaliatory action.
Although Trump has not publicly mentioned his view of the sanctions, Spicer said that the president has made it very clear he expects the Russian government to de-escalate violence in the Ukraine and return Crimea, even as he hopes to cooperate with Putin on terrorism.
Asked Tuesday on a flight to Brussels about Flynns ouster, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said it has no impact on his job. It doesnt change my message at all, and who is on the presidents staff is who I will work with, he said.
Mattis was on his way to a meeti