Russia Questions Mount for Trump White House Reeling From Flynn Fallout

by Laura Litvan , Margaret Talev , and Steven T. Dennis

February 14, 2017

Questions about ties between President Donald Trump’s team and Russian intelligence agents mounted Wednesday after new reports of extensive contacts between the two, which are sure to fuel Republican calls for a deeper look at Trump’s links to the country. The New York Times reported that Trump campaign aides and associates “had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before” the November 2016 election, citing four current and former U.S. officials the newspaper didn’t identify. But it’s unclear whether the talks pertained to Trump personally. The report comes as top Republicans say Congress needs to take a hard look at Trump’s ties to Russia after his ousting of national security adviser Michael Flynn, who the administration says may have misled the president and vice president about his communications with a Russian envoy. “The fake news media is going crazy with their conspiracy theories and blind hatred,” Trump said Wednesday morning on Twitter. “This Russian connection non-sense is merely an attempt to cover-up the many mistakes made in Hillary Clinton’s losing campaign,” he wrote in another tweet. “Information is being illegally given to the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost by the intelligence community (NSA and FBI?). Just like Russia,” Trump added. Intercepted Calls Trump associates’ contacts with Russians before the election were shown in phone records and intercepted phone calls, the Times reported, around the time they learned of Russia’s hacking of Democratic Party e-mails. The officials cited by the Times said they haven’t seen evidence of cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russia on the hacking. It’s not unusual for American businesspeople to unwittingly interact with foreign intelligence agents, the report said. One of the Trump associates heard in the calls was former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who had done business in Ukraine and who told the Times that he had “never knowingly spoken to Russian intelligence officers.” Expanded Probes Several congressional Republicans called for expanded probes of the administration’s relations with Russia and of Moscow’s alleged interference in U.S. 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 Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, and Russia’s involvement in U.S. politics. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in an MSNBC interview that aired Wednesday a select committee was unnecessary. “We know how to do our work. We have an intelligence committee and the judiciary committee -- Lindsey Graham’s got a subcommittee that’s going to take a look at it.” But Russia’s involvement in the U.S. election is “a significant issue,” he said. “We know they were messing around with it. We don’t think it had any impact on the outcome. But obviously we’re not going to ignore something like that.” Flynn’s Replacement The Trump administration was preparing to replace Flynn as early as last week, a senior administration official said, after a warning from the Justice Department that he may have misled Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. 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 Trump’s request late Monday. An administration official said the FBI interviewed Flynn about his pre-inauguration conversations withKislyak, after Trump took office. The Justice Department warned the White House counsel, Don McGahn, on Jan. 26 that Flynn may have misled officials about whether he and Kislyak discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia, White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters Tuesday. Trump was briefed “immediately” after McGahn received that warning. But Pence -- who had defended Flynn in a Jan. 15 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 Feb. 9, his spokesman Marc Lotter said. Harward is a retired Navy vice admiral who once served under Defense Secretary James Mattis at U.S. Central Command. Mounting Issues The White House and official Washington were reeling from the chaos in Trump’s national security council after Flynn’s abrupt departure. Meanwhile, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee called for a look at Mar-a-Lago security, and the Office of Government Ethics said that Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway probably violated ethics rules by promoting Ivanka Trump’s clothing line in a television interview inside the White House. Together, 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. ‘Matter of Trust’ 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. 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 Justice Department had warned the White House about Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak and that he would “look into that.” Before Flynn resigned, Trump’s public surrogates, led by Conway, repeatedly maintained that he retained the president’s confidence. Sally Yates The Justice Department informed the White House last month that Flynn had discussed U.S. sanctions with the Russian envoy and misled officials about the conversation, according to a U.S. law enforcement official with knowledge of the matter. The 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 defense of Flynn. “Where was the Department of Justice?” Spicer said. Trump fired Yates on Jan. 30 after she said she wouldn’t defend his executive order barring entry to the U.S. 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. Leaks in Focus A number of other Republicans, including the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, are downplaying the need to investigate Flynn and said any probe should instead be focused on leaks about Flynn’s phone call. 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.” 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 Sept. 11, 2001, 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.

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Idiotic from Donald J Trump deflecting and not addressing the substance of Flynn communication to Russia.

Flynn was not a solo act, not Oliver North act again, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me  – if you believe that I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale.