The President & his adviser
Michael Flynn, President Trump’s national security adviser and a central figure shaping his foreign policy, is out of a job. And necessarily: Anyone who schemes with a foreign government before taking power, and then lies about it, simply cannot hold such a sensitive post.
But painful questions for the President remain — and must be put to him again and again. Namely, why it took this long to remove Flynn from his post even as serious questions about his Kremlin ties piled up, and what all that says about the administration’s relationship, past, present and future, with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
The official narrative now being peddled by the administration is that Flynn lied to his bosses and the public about his contact with Russian officials just before Trump took office, and paid the price as soon as his lies were discovered. The truth is much more complicated. In mid-January, apparently based on Flynn’s assertions to him, then-Vice-President-Elect Mike Pence wrongly told the world that Flynn did not discuss lifting American sanctions with Russia’s ambassador.
Soon after that assertion — weeks ago — senior Justice Department officials informed the White House of their concerns that Flynn had violated the Logan Act barring private citizens from engaging in diplomacy and that he had lied about it, which had exposed him to possible blackmail by the Kremlin.
The DOJ knew what Flynn said because calls to the Russian ambassador were not only monitored; they were recorded and transcribed.
What Trump must explain — right away — is why it wasn’t knowledge of the lie itself, about highly consequential contacts with the Kremlin, that brought Flynn down but, rather, the public exposure of that lie.
The United States is not at war, hot or cold, with Russia. Russian interests, however, are often diametrically opposed to American interests. And in the 2016 election, unprecedented Russian government interference — including the hacking of emails from the Democratic National Committee and of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair — rightly heightened tensions.
Trump consistently downplayed, and to this day consistently downplays, evidence of Russia’s meddling.
On Dec. 29, President Obama announced the U.S. government was punishing Russia with sanctions and expelling 35 of its diplomats for election hacking. That was the very day Flynn had five phone calls with Russia’s ambassador to Washington, in at least one of which he discussed lifting those sanctions.
The very next day, Trump himself took to Twitter to praise Putin for delaying a decision about retaliatory action.
“Great move on delay (by V. Putin) - I always knew he was very smart!” he wrote.
It strains credulity to read that as anything but a signal that Trump himself likely planned to relax the sanctions when taking over. In other words, far from being a rogue operator, Flynn seemed to be on the same page as the President.
If Flynn’s conversations with the ambassador were not freelancing but carrying out Trump policy, if his lies were not to save himself but to shield the President, this story is just beginning. It is the responsibility of Congress — in the interest of national security — to fully investigate.