Reality is winning
talking to the Russian ambassador before Trump took office, and assuring him that the new administration would take a softer line than its predecessor on economic sanctions against Moscow.
Dogged reporting by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius surfaced the story in mid-January, and Team Trump went into complete denial mode. A Trump spokesman told the Post that “economic sanctions were not discussed whatsoever” on the call. White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that the call concerned only logistics: “That was it, plain and simple.”
Those were both falsehoods. Further reporting by the Post and The New York Times revealed that the acting attorney general, Sally Yates, had warned the White House about Flynn’s actual conversation weeks before. Hours after those stories appeared, Flynn resigned.
Trump reacted by blaming others, of course. “The real story here is why there are so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington?” he tweeted. And in a sense, he’s right.
The “real story” here is that reality is revolting against the president. Professional fact-finders refuse to be intimidated by the Emperor of Information. To answer the president’s question: There are “so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington” because the Trump administration so often refuses to tell the truth.
The president’s executive order, barring refugees for 120 days and banning all travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries, also demonstrates his aversion to veracity. The president and his lawyers insisted that the order was essential to protect the nation’s security. But two district court judges, whose main job is factfinding, disputed that assertion.
One of them, Leonie M. Brinkema, who sits in Virginia, said the president’s lawyers “have not offered any evidence to identify the national security concerns that allegedly prompted this EO (executive order).” She then quoted approvingly from a statement by 10 former “national security professionals”: “We view the Order as one that ultimately undermines the national security of the United States, rather than making us safer.”
The president also maintained