Amid mixed messaging from the Trump administration, House speaker Paul Ryan was the first major Washington official on Tuesday to announce that the president had asked former national security advisor Michael Flynn for his resignation. Ryan’s take, which contradicted White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and earlier reports citing administration officials who said Flynn stepped down of his own volition, was partly backed up by White House press secretary Sean Spicer during the afternoon.
“I think the administration will explain the circumstances that led to this. … I think it’s really important that as soon as they realized that they were being misled by the national security advisor, they asked for his resignation,” Ryan told reporters Tuesday morning. “I can’t speak to the rest of the circumstances. I think we need to get all of that information before we prejudge anything.”
But it was reported Monday night that Flynn made the offer of resignation, citing the president’s aides, raising the question of if and when Trump would have taken disciplinary action against him. “Trump did not fire him. Trump was going to give him more time before deciding, per senior WH official,” the Washington Post’s Philip Rucker wrote.
Additionally, Conway said Tuesday morning, prior to the Ryan press event, that Flynn’s departure was his decision. “He knew he had become a lightning rod and he made that decision,” she told NBC’s Today show.
Finally, Spicer said during the White House press briefing Tuesday afternoon that President Trump made the call to let Flynn go. “We got to a point not based on a legal issue, but based on a trust issue, where the level of trust between the president and Gen. Flynn had eroded to the point where he felt he had to make a change.”
Ryan’s comments introduced a new possibility to the complicated and uncertain circumstances that led to Flynn’s exit. It was unknown when the Oval Office learned of acting attorney general Sally Yates’s warning that Flynn had deceived senior administration officials about the nature of his late December communication with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador. The Washington Post reported that Yates informed the White House counsel’s office of her concerns in late January, but it was unclear what White House counsel Donald McGahn did with the information.
Spicer said the Justice Department informed the White House of their findings on Jan. 26, and the president was “immediately” informed of the situation.
Had the president learned of Flynn’s deception just in recent days, then it would have seemed valid to describe his alleged request for the national security advisor’s resignation as immediate, as Ryan did. But Spicer also noted the following on Tuesday: “We’ve been reviewing and evaluating this issue with respect to Gen. Flynn on a daily basis for a few weeks.”
He noted that the situation was “evolving and eroding” heading into Monday.
