Pence says he didn’t know Flynn was lobbying Turkey
Report says Flynn told transition team of probe in January
WASHINGTON Vice President Pence is standing by his claims that he did not know former national security adviser Michael Flynn had been secretly lobbying for the Turkish government until March, despite a new report claiming Flynn had in fact disclosed to the Trump transition team back in January that he was under a federal investigation.
Pence’s office, in a statement Thursday, said the vice president “stands by his comments in March upon first hearing the news regarding General Flynn’s ties to Turkey and fully supports the president’s decision to ask for General Flynn’s resignation.”
However, on Wednesday, The New York Times reported that Flynn first told Trump’s transition team on Jan. 4 that team he was under federal investigation for not initially reporting he was a paid lobbyist for Turkey during the campaign. The Times said the disclosure was first made to the transition team’s chief lawyer, Donald F. McGahn II, who is now the White House counsel.
All this renewed questions about why Flynn was still hired for the national security adviser position — and whether Pence, who was head of the Trump transition team, knew about it.
Pence told Fox News in March that he was hearing about Flynn’s work for Turkey for the first time after news reports. “It’s the first I heard of it, and I think it is an affirmation of the president’s decision to ask General Flynn to resign,” Pence said.
Flynn was fired in February for misleading Pence about discussions with a Russian official. He didn’t officially file the papers required for lobbyists of foreign governments until March.
Flynn was fired after misleading administration officials — including Pence — that sanctions placed on Russia by the Obama administration hadn’t been discussed during a December phone call between Flynn and Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the U.S. Eavesdropping by U.S. intelligence officials undercut Flynn’s denial, which Pence had repeated on national TV.
Now, the FBI is in the middle of a counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump campaign associates, including Flynn, colluded with Russia in the country’s attempts to interfere in the U.S. presidential election.
On May 8, former acting attorney general Sally Yates testified to Congress that she had been so disturbed that Flynn misled Pence about his talks with Kislyak that she alerted the White House counsel that he was vulnerable to blackmail.
Yates recounted before a Senate panel details of a Jan. 26 meeting in which she alerted McGahn that Flynn had lied.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon Inspector General is investigating whether Flynn accepted payments from a foreign government without seeking the required prior approval.
The Justice Department one day earlier appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller to be a special counsel, taking over the ongoing probe examining possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.