WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump knew for three weeks that former national security adviser Michael Flynn misrepresented his contacts with a Russian diplomat before firing him under pressure, the White House acknowledged Tuesday in offering an account of Flynn’s downfall that differed strikingly from what it said a day earlier.
And the New York Times reported late Tuesday that members of Trump’s campaign had repeated contacts with Russian intelligence officials during the year before the election.
After days of questions about whether Flynn had spoken with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. in December about new sanctions implemented by the Obama administration, White House officials said Monday that Trump was “evaluating” the situation. Trump’s review appeared to come to a swift conclusion with the announcement that he had accepted Flynn’s resignation Monday night.
But on Tuesday, the White House said Flynn’s actions had been under internal review for three weeks. And while the White House concluded that Flynn hadn’t acted illegally in phone calls and text messages with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, a “trust issue” arose that ultimately led the president to conclude that “he had to make a change,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said.
“The evolving and eroding level of trust as a result of this situation and a series of other questionable instances is what led the president to ask for a Gen. Flynn’s resignation,” Spicer said in his daily media briefing. He didn’t elaborate on the other issues.
The contrasting accounts underscored that Trump’s concern over Flynn appeared to deepen only once his falsehoods became public, and it served to ramp up questions about Russia’s influence on Trump and his administration.
Republican senators called for a full and open investigation into Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak.
“We should look into it exhaustively so that at the end of this process nobody wonders whether there was a stone left unturned, and shouldn’t reach conclusions before you have the information that you need to have to make those conclusions,” Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee told a St. Louis radio station.
The White House insisted that if Flynn had acted out of line, it was not at Trump’s behest.
Democratic lawmakers called for Flynn to testify on the matter; House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has pushed for a 9/11-style panel to investigate Russia’s role in the election.
The White House moved Tuesday to distance itself from Flynn.
“Misleading the vice president really was the key,” Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, said on NBC’s Today show. “That made the situation unsustainable.”
She tried to portray Trump as divided between his loyalties and the distraction Flynn had become: “The president’s very loyal. He’s a very loyal person.”
Meanwhile, the New York Times reported late Tuesday that members of Trump’s campaign, including former campaign manager Paul Manafort, had repeated contacts with Russian intelligence officials during the year before the election. The U.S. knew about these contacts through phone records and intercepted calls, the Times said.
Reached late Tuesday, Manafort told the Associated Press he has not been interviewed by the FBI about these alleged contacts.
Current and former U.S. officials interviewed by the Times declined to identify other Trump associates contacted by the Russians.
Conway ethics probe
In another blow to the administration, the U.S. government’s ethics watchdog urged the White House to investigate and possibly discipline Conway for comments she made about Ivanka Trump’s fashion line, according to a letter made public Tuesday.
The Office of Government Ethics wrote to White House attorneys that there was reason to believe that Conway violated the standards of ethical conduct for executive employees by endorsing the president’s daughter’s products during a television interview last week.
Ivanka Trump photo
Meanwhile, Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, is getting a strong reaction online after posting on social media a photo of herself seated at the Oval Office desk while her father and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stood on either side of her.
Critics said she hadn’t earned the right to sit behind the desk.
On Tuesday, the first daughter posted video of herself dancing with balloons for Valentine’s Day.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.