A compromised presidency
President Trump’s White House was furiously distancing itself from former national security adviser Michael Flynn on Friday after he admitted lying to federal agents about his conversations with Russia’s ambassador. That is not surprising given the administration’s perpetual readiness to contradict plain facts, but it is nevertheless absurd.
With Flynn’s guilty plea and agreement to cooperate with authorities, the fourth formal case against a Trump associate, Special Counsel Robert Mueller effectively entered the West Wing and knocked on the Oval Office doors. A federal crime committed by a top Trump official within the first week of the presidency has been proven within its first year.
Flynn’s National Security Council perch capped his service as a Trump confidant despite a series of increasingly grave warnings. A retired Army general and onetime defense intelligence chief forced out of President Barack Obama’s administration, Flynn had emerged as a strident Obama critic, Islamophobe and Russophile when he became a key Trump campaign adviser in early 2016.
He was later floated as a potential vice president and given a headlining speech at the Republican convention, during which he infamously (and, it turns out, ironically) encouraged audience members chanting of Hillary Clinton, “Lock her up!”
Flynn went on to become a vice chair of the Trump transition and, despite advice to the contrary from Obama himself, national security adviser. Trump continued to stand by his man even after then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates warned that Flynn’s deceptive accounts of his contacts with Vladimir Putin’s regime, with which he had a long-standing and lucrative relationship, could expose him to blackmail.
Trump reluctantly fired Flynn only when Vice President Mike Pence was caught up in his dissembling, giving the president little choice. Even then, Trump tried to talk FBI Director James Comey into “letting Flynn go,” according to Comey, and publicly defended him as a “wonderful man.”
While Flynn’s crime is punishable by up to five years in prison, his plea deal suggests authorities won’t lock him up — in large part because he has agreed to tell them everything he knows. Given that he says his Russian contacts were directed by a top transition official, reportedly first son-in-law and presidential consigliere Jared Kushner, that should sound ominous to the president and his allies, not least the lawmakers hastening to work with him to rewrite federal policy on taxes, health care and more.
An administration that was already hampered by lack of fitness, qualifications and popular support has now been deeply compromised by corruption.