[ad_1]
February 9 to February 10, 2017
At 9:30 p.m. on February 9, the Post published its article. It immediately sparked a firestorm inside and outside the White House. Almost everyone in the West Wing was blind.
“We went to the banana,” said a senior White House official who was there at the time.
It was only then that McGahn, who had been commissioned by Trump to review Flynn’s conduct, decided to refocus on the issue.
Priebus was having dinner with the President in the White House residence when McGahn, who still had not read the transcripts of Flynn’s calls with Kislyak, urged him to leave the dinner party to discuss the Post article. Priebus was furious. They summoned Flynn from the National Security Advisor’s suite, and a handful of senior White House officials, including a White House lawyer, dropped him off in Priebus’ office.
“What is happening?” Priebus asked Flynn.
Flynn replied that he was no longer quite sure that sanctions had been imposed on Kislyak’s call.
“Well, you told me that didn’t happen, so what is it?” Priebus told Flynn, who again replied that he wasn’t sure.
At around 6:20 a.m. the next morning, Pence’s aide, Marc Lotter, headed to the West Wing to see Anton.
“We have a problem,” he said, adding that Flynn had “essentially made the Vice President of the United States a liar” by telling him he had not discussed sanctions with Kislyak – a lie which Pence then repeated in a nationwide television interview. Pence wanted to read the transcripts of Flynn’s Kislyak calls.
When the Washington Post’s David Ignatius first reported that Flynn spoke to Kislyak on the day the Obama administration’s sanctions were announced, Flynn ordered his deputy, KT McFarland, to call the columnist and to say that he and the Russian ambassador had not discussed the sanctions during the appeal.
“I want to kill the story,” Flynn told McFarland.
After McFarland spoke to the columnist, the Post updated his article with an anonymous Trump official saying Flynn and Kislyak had not discussed the sanctions.
Pence knew he would be asked questions about it in an interview the following Sunday on CBS, and he wanted to hear Flynn’s explanation directly. He called the new national security adviser, who told the vice president-elect that the subject of sanctions had never been discussed. And that’s what Pence said on national television.
It was almost a month after Flynn told Pence that he hadn’t discussed sanctions with Kislyak that Pence wanted to compare his conversation with Flynn to the one Flynn had with Kislyak.
McCabe was at the White House for an unrelated briefing that morning. When he got to his car outside the West Wing, his driver told him the White House had been frantically trying to reach him.
He contacted Priebus by phone who said the vice president wanted to see the transcripts – now. McCabe said he should get them.
“Where is your office?” Priebus asked.
McCabe, the deputy director of the FBI, explained that he worked at the FBI headquarters.
The transcripts of Flynn’s phone calls with Kislyak were brought to the White House in a secure briefcase, as they were eight days earlier.
Pence, his chief of staff Nick Ayers, Priebus and McGahn huddled in a conference room in the Situation Room suite to read the transcripts. McCabe stayed in the room and at one point was asked if Flynn had broken Logan’s Law. He told the group it was a possibility the FBI was investigating.
Pence asked Ayers to get him a printed copy of his interview with CBS. After Ayers returned with it, Pence compared the transcript of his interview with the transcripts from Flynn and Kislyak.
He barely spoke as he read the documents line by line.
“First, what would I ask you to do – and make sure this, make sure you pass that on, okay?” the transcript showed that Flynn told Kislyak in their December 29 appeal – the day the Obama administration announced the sanctions against Russia – “don’t allow this administration to lock us in now, okay?”
“I know you have to have some sort of action,” Flynn continued. “Make it a reciprocal. … Do not go further than necessary. Because I don’t want us to get into something that has to escalate.
Kislyak explained that one of the problems faced by Moscow is in addition to expelling Russian diplomats from the United States, the Obama administration has just sanctioned the main Russian intelligence entities.
“So that’s something we have to deal with,” Kislyak told Flynn. “But I heard what you are saying, and I will certainly try to make the people of Moscow understand.”
Flynn argued that “we need the composure to win.”
Pence compared this to the transcript of his response on CBS, when asked about Flynn’s Dec. 29 phone call with Kislyak.
“I spoke to General Flynn about this conversation,” Pence said in the interview. “They haven’t discussed anything to do with the US decision to expel diplomats or impose censorship on Russia.”
“So, have they ever had a conversation about sanctions on those days or any other day?” Pence was asked.
“They didn’t,” replied the vice-president-elect.
Pence read the transcript of a follow-up call between Flynn and Kislyak on December 31, after Russia announced it would not fight back for the sanctions.
“I have a little message for you from Moscow,” Kislyak told Flynn.
“I appreciate the actions taken by your president. I think it was wise, ”Flynn interjected.
“I just wanted to let you know that our conversation was also taken into account in Moscow,” Kislyak said.
“Good,” Flynn said.
“Your proposition that we have to act coldly, uh, is exactly what was invested in the decision,” Kislyak added.
“Good,” Flynn repeated.
In Pence’s interview on CBS, according to the transcript, he had dismissed the idea of more than one conversation between Flynn and Kislyak. “I don’t think there were more conversations,” he says.
“He was brooding,” one person in the room described as he read the transcripts.
Priebus got up in the middle of the meeting, said he had seen enough and left the room.
Afterward, Pence was made clear: the transcripts revealed that Flynn had not been being honest. But Pence wanted to wonder if he would advise the president to fire Flynn.
More than two weeks after Yates’ first warning about Flynn, McGahn, Priebus, and Bannon had the first serious conversation with Trump about whether to fire the national security adviser. They told Trump they reviewed the transcripts of Flynn’s call with Kislyak and it was clear he lied to Pence.
Priebus, who had thought early that Flynn had to go, was even more certain. Flynn knowingly lied to the Vice President – which Priebus and McGahn believed they had done – or he was too incompetent to serve as a National Security Advisor if he couldn’t recall details like the subjects of his conversation with the Russian ambassador. Neither, from their point of view, was acceptable. All three advisers recommended Trump fire Flynn.
The drama took place behind the scenes as Trump welcomed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to the White House for official meetings, followed by a weekend at his sprawling South Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago .
As a national security adviser, Flynn was instrumental in Abe’s visit that day.
That afternoon, Flynn joined Trump and senior White House officials on Air Force One for the flight to Florida and the weekend with Abe.
Trump went to the press booth in the back of the plane while showing his wife around the plane and told reporters he had not seen the Post’s report on Flynn.
“I don’t know about it,” he said.
February 11 to February 12, 2017
“What is he doing here?” Trump spoke to a friend when he saw Flynn this weekend in Mar-a-Lago.
The controversy over Flynn’s contact with Kislyak has shown no signs of abating. Still, Flynn was convinced he would weather the firestorm.
He was instrumental in the rush that night to the outdoor terrace of Mar-a-Lago as the US and Japanese delegations dined, to craft a response to a North Korean missile test.
White House aide Stephen Miller was asked the next morning about Sunday’s news whether Trump trusted Flynn, and he had no answer.
Meanwhile, Flynn was among those who helped plan Trump’s Monday meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the White House.
On the president’s flight home to Washington on Sunday, Flynn was in the boardroom on Air Force One, leaning over an assistant to review some documents, his image splashed on a large flat-screen TV behind him showing media coverage to see if it would be. fired.
During the flight, Trump asked Flynn if he lied to Pence. Flynn said he may have forgotten the details of his conversations with Kislyak, but he didn’t believe he lied. “OK,” Trump said. “That’s very good. Got it.”
After landing at the Maryland military base where Air Force One is located, Flynn was one of the handful of assistants who joined the president on his helicopter for the flight back to the White House.
[ad_2]
Source link