Flynn: Trump told me to contact Russians

WASHINGTON DC: A former top White House aide has admitted that Donald Trump ordered him to contact Russians when he was running for president.

Ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty yesterday to lying about his Russia connections to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The charges were brought as part of a probe into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 United States presidential election.

US insiders said Flynn felt his former boss and friend Trump had abandoned him, and now he had to pay crippling legal bills.

He faced up to five years in prison for misleading FBI agents about the nature of his conversations with Russian ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak.

Citing a “close confidant” of Flynn, ABC News said he was ready to testify that Trump told him to contact the Russians, initially to work together against the Islamic State group in Syria.

Flynn said it had been “extraordinarily painful to endure many months of false accusations”.

However, he accepted he had lied and was “working to set things right”.

Trump insisted again that there was no collusion between his campaign and Russia.

“What has been shown is no collusion. There’s been absolutely no collusion. So we’re happy,” Trump said after Flynn pledged to cooperate with special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s probe.

He said he was “not worried” by what his ex-adviser might say.

Meanwhile, fired FBI director James Comey wasn’t shy about voicing his opinion on the bombshell guilty plea of Flynn. And he used the Bible to make his point.

“Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream, Amos 5:24,” Comey wrote on Instagram with a picture of a flowing stream. Agencies