President Trump asked for the resignation of his former national security adviser, Gen. Mike Flynn, over “a trust issue,” not over any illegalities in his pre-inaugural dealings with Russia, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on Tuesday.
Trump’s trust in Flynn “eroded to the point where he felt he had to make a change” after a “series of questionable instances,” Spicer said.
Flynn reportedly misrepresented his December phone conversation with the Russian ambassador to the U.S., during which he may have discussed potential sanctions relief. The former national security advisor told Vice President Mike Pence at the time that the issue of sanctions had not come up, and Pence repeated his denial as fact in a subsequent interview.
“The president was very concerned that Gen. Flynn had misled the vice president and others,” Spicer said on Tuesday.
The press secretary said Trump had been reviewing Flynn’s actions “on a daily basis for a few weeks, trying to ascertain the truth” — a claim that seemed to contradict Trump’s own statements from Friday, when he told reporters aboard Air Force One he had not seen reports that suggested leaked transcripts of the phone call contained references to sanctions.
Spicer said Trump responded that way because he had not seen the specific Washington Post report about which he was asked.
“The White House Counsel briefed the president and a small group of senior advisors” on Flynn’s talks with the Russian ambassador, Spicer noted. The White House Counsel concluded that Flynn’s potential discussion of sanctions had not violated any laws, arguing Flynn’s dismissal was “not a legal issue, but rather a trust issue.”
“The issue here was that the president got to the point” where questions about Flynn’s honesty “had created a critical mass and an unsustainable situation,” Spicer added.
Spicer’s characterization of Flynn’s exit — that Trump asked for his resignation, not that Flynn offered it first — did not mesh with a characterization offered earlier Tuesday by White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, who suggested Flynn had stepped down on his own volition.
Spicer partially blamed the delay in action on Flynn’s employment on the Department of Justice, saying the agency didn’t inform the Trump White House what it knew about Flynn’s phone calls until Jan. 26.
“I think the first question should be, where was the Department of Justice in this?” Spicer said. “They were aware of this. We were making statements based on what Gen. Flynn was telling us starting on January 13th.”
Recalling the sequence of events, Spicer said Pence first made public comments about Flynn’s interaction with the Russian ambassador on Jan. 15. But “they didn’t notify the White House Counsel’s office until January 26th,” Spicer said of the Justice Department
Once Trump was informed, the White House’s first review examined whether any laws were broken, Spicer noted. Only after that review concluded that Flynn’s interactions were legal did White House officials start considering what the incident did to erode Trump’s trust in Flynn, he added.
