During the president’s morning rage tweets, he claimed that it would’ve been nice to know his national security adviser Michael Flynn was under investigation for his relationships with shady folks, including Russians.
This, of course, came after a federal judge ordered the release of recordings that allegedly show Flynn, a Russian ambassador and an individual “connected to” Congress discussing a pardon for Flynn after he pleaded guilty for lying to the FBI.
Trump says he didn’t know that Flynn was trash, Well, The Root’s lie detector has determined “that is a lie” (Maury voice).
According to the good folks over at Raw Story, Trump was fully aware that Flynn was in over his head and double-dipped in Russian sauce, so much so that even former President Barack Obama tried to warn Trump not to have him around.
From Raw Story:
President Barack Obama warned the president-elect against having Flynn serve in his administration during a 90-minute meeting held shortly after the November 2016 election, but Trump administration officials believed Obama was joking about one of his more vocal critics.
Rep. Elijah Cummings sent a letter to Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who led the transition team, in November 2016 warning that Flynn’s work for Turkey and a speech he gave in Russia could violate the campaign’s code of ethics if he advised Trump on those two foreign nations.
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump ignored warnings from Chris Christie about Flynn—and that kind of makes sense considering that Kushner hates Christie for sending his father to jail. But the power couple with top-level security clearances also ignored other top officials’ warnings about Flynn, “who the president’s son-in-law reportedly instructed to make contact with then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and offered the retired general any administration job he wanted,” Raw Story reports.
On Jan. 4, 2017, Flynn told then-White House lawyer Don McGahn that he was under investigation and his lawyer discussed the case with Trump’s transition lawyers a few days later.
Also from Raw Story:
Acting attorney general Sally Yates then notified McGahn on Jan. 26, 2017, that the Justice Department was concerned Flynn was vulnerable to blackmail from Russia due to his contacts with Kislyak.
Flynn took part two days later in a phone call between Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin, and on Jan. 30, 2017, the president fired Yates.
Trump kept Flynn on the job until Feb. 14, 2017, after a senior administration official authorized the leak of Yates’ warning to the White House about the national security adviser.
If all of this wasn’t enough, in July 2016, after Trump became the Republican presidential nominee, the FBI even warned his campaign that Russia might use someone, like say a national security adviser, to infiltrate his campaign.
Trump folks never notified the FBI that Donald Trump Jr. and other high-ranking officials on his team met with a Russian attorney promising dirt on Hillary Clinton because, much like stealing the election, it favored the Trump campaign.
So when Trump claims he had no idea that Michael Flynn was messy he’s lying—but isn’t that just the Trump way?