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Business News/ News / World/  White House said to prepare for NSA Michael Flynn’s ouster last week
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White House said to prepare for NSA Michael Flynn’s ouster last week

The Trump administration was preparing to replace NSA Michael Flynn as early as last week, a senior administration official said

The White House and official Washington continue to reel from the chaos in Donald Trump’s national security council after Michael Flynn’s abrupt ouster. Photo: AFPPremium
The White House and official Washington continue to reel from the chaos in Donald Trump’s national security council after Michael Flynn’s abrupt ouster. Photo: AFP

Washington: The Trump administration was preparing to replace National Security Advisor (NSA) Michael Flynn as early as last week, a senior administration official said, after a warning from the Justice Department that he may have misled the president and vice president about his conversations with a Russian envoy.

White House officials spoke with Robert Harward, a potential replacement for Flynn, last week and again on Monday, the official said, requesting anonymity to discuss a personnel issue. Flynn submitted his resignation at President Donald Trump’s request late on Monday.

The White House and official Washington continue to reel from the chaos in Trump’s national security council after Flynn’s abrupt ouster. An administration official said the FBI interviewed Flynn about his pre-inauguration conversations with the Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, after Trump took office. The Department of Justice warned the White House counsel, Don McGahn, on 26 January that Flynn may have misled officials about whether he and Kislyak discussed US sanctions against Russia, White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters on Tuesday.

Trump was briefed “immediately" after McGahn received that warning. But Vice President Mike Pence—who had defended Flynn in a 15 January appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation," asserting that the national security adviser hadn’t discussed sanctions with Kislyak—didn’t learn of the Justice Department’s warning until 9 February, his spokesman Marc Lotter said.

Expanded probes

Several congressional Republicans called for expanded probes of the administration’s relations with Russia and of Moscow’s alleged interference in US politics.

“I think there needs to be fulsome investigation on all angles relative to nefarious activities that were taking place with Russia, beginning in March but even going back before that time," said Senator Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican and chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. He said Flynn’s resignation “heightens" the need for GOP leaders to conduct an expanded probe, although he stopped short of endorsing an independent commission as Democrats have demanded.

Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both Republicans, also said that more needs to be learned about Flynn’s discussions with Kislyak and Russia’s involvement in US politics.

Mounting issues

The Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, meanwhile, called for a look at Mar-a-Lago security, and the Office of Government Ethics said that top Trump aide Kellyanne Conway probably violated ethics rules by promoting Ivanka Trump’s clothing line in a television interview inside the White House.

The developments contributed to a sense of an administration back on its heels amid questions about its handling of a range of issues, including high-level diplomatic contacts with Russia and a North Korean missile launch.

Democrats, too, stepped up their attacks, eager to turn the questions from Flynn to Trump himself, over what he knew and when about his national security adviser’s contacts with the Russians.

Spicer defended the administration’s actions, saying that Flynn hadn’t violated any laws.

“The issue pure and simple came down to a matter of trust," Spicer said at a news briefing Tuesday. “That’s why the president asked for his resignation, and he got it."

But the timeline leading up to Flynn’s departure is muddy.

Seeking truth

Spicer said the White House had been “reviewing and evaluating" Flynn’s situation “for a few weeks trying to ascertain the truth," the first time the administration had made any such admission. Trump told reporters on board Air Force One on Friday that he was unaware of a Washington Post report that the Department of Justice had warned the White House about Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak and that he would “look into that."

And Trump’s public surrogates, led by his counselor, Conway, have repeatedly maintained since last week that Flynn retained the president’s confidence.

The Justice Department informed the White House last month that Flynn had discussed US sanctions with the Russian envoy and misled officials about the conversation, according to a US law enforcement official with knowledge of the matter. That warning was delivered to the White House counsel’s office by Sally Yates, the acting attorney general, the official said.

Spicer questioned why the Justice Department waited to provide the information 11 days after Pence’s televised defence of Flynn. “Where was the Department of Justice?" Spicer said.

Yates’s exit

Trump fired Yates on 30 January after she said she wouldn’t defend his executive order barring entry to the US by people from seven predominantly Muslim nations.

Pence learned of the Justice Department’s warning “based on media accounts," Lotter said. It isn’t clear on what day last week that White House officials first spoke to Harward about potentially replacing Flynn. Pence has “tremendous respect" both for Flynn’s decision to resign and Trump’s decision to accept the resignation, and the vice president is “grateful" for Flynn’s service, Lotter said.

Harward is a retired Navy vice admiral who once served under defence secretary James Mattis at US Central Command.

A number of other Republicans, including the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, are still downplaying the need to investigate Flynn and said any probe should instead be focused on news leaks about Flynn’s phone call.

Leaks in focus

Devin Nunes, a California Republican, said the leaks are “absolutely" the most troubling part of the episode, adding, “We want to get to the bottom of it."

But McCain said in a statement that Flynn’s White House exit “raises further questions about the Trump administration’s intentions toward Vladimir Putin’s Russia, including statements by the president suggesting moral equivalence between the United States and Russia despite its invasion of Ukraine, annexation of Crimea, threats to our NATO allies, and attempted interference in American elections."

Graham told CNN Tuesday that questions remain about whether anyone else in the White House knew about Flynn’s conversation with Russia’s ambassador shortly after President Barack Obama announced a series of sanctions against Russia prior to Trump’s inauguration. Flynn, in his resignation letter, said he had “inadvertently" misinformed Pence and Trump about discussing sanctions during his talk with the official.

“I think most Americans have a right to know whether or not this was a General Flynn rogue maneuver or was he basically speaking for somebody else in the White House," Graham said. He said lawmakers should have access to transcripts of Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak.

‘Future questions’

Michael Bahar, minority staff director and general counsel for the House Select Intelligence Committee, told reporters in San Francisco Tuesday that Flynn’s resignation will impact the committee’s investigation already under way on Russian interference in the elections.

“That leads to a whole series of future questions," he said. “Why cover it up? Why not just say if it was perfectly fine ‘hey, I spoke to the Russians, this was part of an incoming transition, this is what we do, we talk to foreign diplomats’? Why not say that? What was the point of covering it up? That’s what we need to get to."

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said the Intelligence panel is already looking at questions of Russian involvement in the US election and added that it’s “highly likely that they would want to look at this episode as well."

North Korea

House Oversight chairman Jason Chaffetz of Utah rejected the idea of an independent investigation or a probe by his panel. “That situation is taking care of itself," he told reporters.

Chaffetz also released a letter asking White House chief of staff Reince Priebus to tell the committee whether Trump and other officials viewed or discussed any classified information while hosting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the dining room of the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida Saturday night following news of a missile launch by North Korea.

Some members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus said intelligence agencies should provide the facts to the relevant committees to decide whether there should be an investigation of Flynn’s conversations with Russian officials. They stopped short of criticizing Flynn’s actions and said there needs to be a better understanding of the extent to which sanctions were actually discussed.

“If it is impactful, if it goes beyond the scope of what I imagine the Intelligence chairman thinks that it should, I suspect there’s going to be a look-see," Scott Perry of Pennsylvania said. “But I also get the impression that it was the Russian ambassador that brought up sanctions and that Flynn just acknowledged it and moved on."

Independent commission

Democrats in both chambers said the matter underscores the need for a broader investigation of Russia’s activities that would be akin to the outside bipartisan commission that examined the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington.

“If the speaker is unwilling to support a full congressional investigation, then he should get out of the way and allow an independent commission to look into the matter," Representative Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. “Russia is a large and growing threat to the United States and liberal democracy around the world."

So far, GOP leaders have said that the Senate Intelligence Committee will continue to lead the main probe into any contacts between presidential campaigns and Russian officials. The panel announced its probe weeks ago, backed by subpoena power. Panel Chairman Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, said Tuesday that the panel will conduct “active oversight" on the Flynn issue and that he’s inquiring about any transcripts of Flynn’s conversations.

“I can’t verify the facts in the stories but I’ll go where intelligence and the agencies lead us," Burr said.

Missouri Senator Roy Blunt, a Republican who sits on the panel, said “it’s likely" that Flynn will be asked to testify before it. Bloomberg

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Published: 15 Feb 2017, 12:05 PM IST
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