White House spokesman Sean Spicer rejected Democratic charges that President Trump waited too long before firing former national security adviser Mike Flynn, and said instead that administration officials “did what we were supposed to do.”
“I think the process worked, frankly, when you think of the time in which we had the information,” Spicer told reporters.
He spoke a day after Democrats played up the 18 days it took from when former acting Attorney General Sally Yates told the White House that Flynn did not tell the truth about his meetings with Russian officials during the transition, and Trump’s decision to fire Flynn. Democrats played up that timeline during and after a Senate hearing in which Yates testified that Flynn was “compromised” and was a possible blackmail threat.
Spicer disputed that finding somewhat on Tuesday.
“For her to come to that conclusion without any investigatory method seems a little premature, don’t you [think]?” he said.
Still, Spicer said that once Yates warned the White House, officials tried to weigh the matter carefully, and said Yates’ office took seven days to get certain materials to the White House that officials needed to make their decision.
“Sally Yates came here on the 26th of January,” Spicer said. “Then she informed the counsel’s office that there were materials that were relevant to the situation.”
“It wasn’t ’til about seven days later that they had access to those documents,” he noted.
“After that time, they did what you should, frankly … an element of due process, reviewing the situation,” Spicer said. “They informed the president right away after they were informed of her giving us a heads up.”
Spicer also reiterated that Yates was a “political opponent” of Trump’s, and that it would not have made sense to fire Flynn immediately based on her advice.
“Just because someone comes in and gives you a heads up about something and says, ‘I want to share some information,’ doesn’t mean that you immediately jump the gun and go take an action,” he said.
“I think if you flip this scenario and say, what if we just dismissed somebody because a political opponent of the president had made an utterance, you would argue that it was pretty irrational to act in that manner,” Spicer added. “We did what we were supposed to do.”
