Trump
security adviser Flynn quits after leaks suggest he tried to cover up
Russia talks
The
departure of Trump’s national security adviser is the most dramatic
development yet to hit the president’s chaotic administration
Julian Borger in
Washington
Tuesday 14 February
2017 08.05 GMT
The US national
security advisor, Michael Flynn, resigned late on Monday night amid a
flow of intelligence leaks that he had secretly discussed sanctions
with the Russian ambassador to Washington and then tried to cover up
the conversations.
The resignation,
with the Trump era less than four weeks old, is the latest and most
dramatic convulsion in the most chaotic start to an administration in
modern US history.
It was far from
clear whether Flynn’s departure would steady an inexperienced and
feuding White House, or resolve the lingering suspicions about the
Trump team’s pre-election contacts with the Kremlin.
The White House
issued a statement just after 11pm in Washington announcing the
resignation, shortly after reports broke that the Trump
administration had been warned weeks ago that Flynn might be
vulnerable to Russian blackmail.
The statement also
named retired army general Joseph Kellogg, who goes by his middle
name Keith, as acting national security advisor, pending the
appointment of a permanent successor. It was reported that a third
general, former CIA director, David Petraeus, was due to meet Trump
on Tuesday.
But Petraeus has
legal issues of his own. He is currently nearing the end of two years
probation for sharing classified information with his biographer and
lover, Paula Broadwell.
In his resignation
letter, Flynn claimed he had mistakenly misled vice-president Mike
Pence and other Trump officials about the nature of phone calls in
December to the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kisilyak. When
intelligence leaks about the communications began appearing last
month, Pence and other White House officials insisted that the
contact had only involved an exchange of Christmas greetings and
arrangements for a future phone conversation between Trump and
Vladimir Putin.
However, subsequent
leaks suggested that they had been more substantial, and concerned
sanctions the Obama administration was about to impose on Moscow for
interference in the presidential elections. Intelligence officials
claimed that Flynn had given the impression the sanctions might be
lifted once the Trump administration came to office on 20 January.
“In the course of
my duties as the incoming national security advisor, I held numerous
phone calls with foreign counterparts, ministers, and ambassadors,”
Flynn said in his resignation letter. “These calls were to
facilitate a smooth transition and begin to build the necessary
relationships between the president, his advisors and foreign
leaders. Such calls are standard practice in any transition of this
magnitude.”
“Unfortunately,
because of the fast pace of events, I inadvertently briefed the vice
president elect and others with incomplete information regarding my
phone calls with the Russian ambassador. I have sincerely apologized
to the president and the vice president, and they have accepted my
apology.”
Russian politicians
offered a fierce defence of Flynn. Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of
the foreign affairs committee at the upper chamber of the parliament,
said in a Facebook post that firing a national security adviser for
his contacts with Russia is “not just paranoia but something even
worse”.
Kosachev’s
counterpart at the lower chamber of the Russian parliament, Alexei
Pushkov, tweeted shortly after the announcement that “it was not
Flynn who was targeted but relations with Russia”.
Flynn is reportedly
being investigated by the army for accepting money in late 2015 for a
speaking engagement in Moscow. Photograph: Carlos Barria/Reuters
On Monday afternoon,
the White House appeared to struggle with how to handle the
accusations. A White House statement that the president was
“evaluating the situation” conflicted with White House counselor
Kellyanne Conway telling reporters that Trump had “full confidence”
in Flynn.
Flynn’s – and
the Trump administration’s – problems run far deeper than the
December phone calls with Kisilyak. The former Defense Intelligence
Agency (DIA) chief is also reportedly being investigated by the army
for accepting money in late 2015 for a speaking engagement in Moscow,
which could have breached military rules. Furthermore, the repeated
and detailed leaks by a disgruntled and alarmed US intelligence
community suggested that Flynn’s contacts with Kisilyak dated back
to before the election, raising more questions about whether the
Trump campaign had any knowledge of the Russian effort to skew the
elections.
A handful of
intelligence agencies are looking into those suspicions, as are four
separate congressional committees. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat
on one of those panels, the House intelligence committee, demanded to
know when contacts with Russian officials started and how far up the
Trump chain of command did responsibility for those contact rest.
Schiff said: “The
Trump administration has yet to be forthcoming about who was aware of
Flynn’s conversations with the ambassador and whether he was acting
on the instructions of the president or any other officials, or with
their knowledge.”
At the time of his
departure, Flynn appeared to have been losing a power struggle inside
the White House in which the established institution and processes of
the national security council (NSC) were being sidestepped by a small
group of Trump advisors, led by Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief
strategist and former head of Breitbart News, which has been a
platform for the far right.
Alongside him are
Stephen Miller, another rightwing ideologue, and Jared Kushner, the
president’s son-in-law and advisor. They have set up the Strategic
Initiatives Group, a parallel institution to the national security
council inside the White House, which produces policies, in the form
of quick-fire executive orders and memoranda, without consultation
with the staff experts on the National Security Council (NSC).
Ignored at best,
berated at worst, the NSC career staff began leaking copiously about
Trump’s erratic phone calls with other world leaders and other
missteps, infuriating the president, who ordered leak investigations,
further deepening the discontent and dysfunction inside the White
House. Any successor to Flynn would face the same struggle for
influence and the president’s ear as he did.
Mike
Flynn might be done – but Trump's nightmare has just begun
Richard Wolffe
This
resignation and scandal is not a surprise. After all, we have a
president who is too careless to handle a national security incident
in a confidential manner
Tuesday 14 February
2017 05.44 GMT
Cast your mind back
to four months ago, when Donald Trump was just a long-shot candidate
with a hot-headed adviser by the name of Michael Flynn.
It was the
homestretch of the presidential election and national security wasn’t
some side issue, mentioned in passing. Trump promised he would be a
tough national security president with the toughest national security
team.
In fact, one of his
favorite arguments was that Hillary Clinton couldn’t be trusted
with the country’s national security because, he claimed, she
couldn’t be trusted with her private email server.
It sounded
ridiculous at the time. But after a month of this gonzo president,
our memories are already fading. Propaganda will do that to you, as
George Orwell warned us all in 1984. Sometimes two and two are four.
Sometimes they are five.
Still, it’s true
that the Trump campaign seized on the preposterous FBI investigation
into Clinton’s emails to issue this press release: “Clinton’s
Careless Use of a Secret Server Put National Security At Risk.”
Less than a week
later, at their second presidential debate, Trump took the attack one
step further, threatening to jail Clinton if he ever took power: “She
didn’t know the word – the letter C on a document. Right? She
didn’t even know what that word – what that letter meant.”
Let’s just pretend
that Trump knew that C means Confidential, not Classified, as he was
suggesting. Let’s even play along with the notion that Clinton’s
server was a security risk to the country.
Now: what do Michael
Flynn and Mar-a-Lago mean for national security?
To the fee-paying
members of Trump’s Florida club, it means greater access to watch
the president and Japanese prime minister reacting to the news of a
North Korean missile launch in real time: huddling over documents and
making phone calls on cellphones in public.
Or as one guest,
Richard DeAgazio, put it on Facebook: “HOLY MOLY!!! It was
fascinating to watch the flurry of activity at dinner when the news
came that North Korea had launched a missile in the direction of
Japan. The Prime Minister Abe of Japan huddles with his staff and the
President is on the phone with Washington DC…Wow…the center of
the action!!!”
Never mind
classified information. Here is a president who is so careless that
he can’t handle a national security incident in a confidential
manner.
This kind of
spectacle does wonders for the fees at Mar-a-Lago, where initiation
has just doubled from $100,000 to $200,000 since its owner became
president. But it does little for the national security of the
country or its allies.
In case you think
this is just one small lapse over dinner, Mr DeAgazio also posted to
Facebook photos of the military aide carrying the nuclear codes that
are frighteningly close to Trump’s trigger-happy mouth.
These are just minor
details in the life of a commander-in-chief whose national security
adviser was himself a national security risk.
Michael Flynn was so
careless about his cellphone conversations, and so mistaken about his
foreign policy priorities, that he called the Russian ambassador to
the US before taking office.
Clearly clueless
about how such conversations are transcribed by all parties, he
talked about President Obama’s sanctions against Russia for
interfering with the election that ended with Trump in the White
House.
Then he denied
talking about those sanctions at all, allegedly misleading the
vice-president Mike Pence, who in turn misled the American people on
national television about the same call.
Based on those
reports that he misled the vice-president, Flynn could have been
compromised by Russian blackmail. But then again, the Russians might
already have enough ammunition against him if he accepted secret
payments from the Kremlin when he traveled to Moscow in 2015.
Thank goodness for
the independence and counter-intelligence activities of the justice
department, who allegedly warned the White House that Flynn was a
possible blackmail target several weeks ago.
Why didn’t Trump
do to Flynn what he has done to so many reality TV contestants in his
only real preparation for his current job? Why didn’t he just fire
him instead of allowing him to quit?
After all, that is
exactly what he did to the woman who warned him that Flynn was
compromised. Acting attorney general Sally Yates was removed from her
job for defending the Constitution by refusing to uphold the travel
ban on seven Muslim-majority countries that remains blocked by
several federal courts.
We can’t be sure
what’s going on underneath Trump’s coiffured combover. Unless
he’s watching cable news and simultaneously tweeting about his
thoughts in real time.
Instead we have to
rely on his public comments about Vladimir Putin’s Russia and his
own United States. Comments like the ones he made barely a week ago,
when Bill O’Reilly of Fox News dared to suggest that Putin was a
killer. “We’ve got a lot of killers,” said Trump. “What, do
you think our country’s so innocent?”
Trump is correct:
his version of America is not so innocent. It’s the kind of place
where a candidate can accuse his opponent of running a foundation
that is “a criminal enterprise” for accepting money from foreign
governments. Then, once that candidate becomes president, he can
allow foreign governments to give his businesses money in Washington
DC and Mar-a-Lago.
Perhaps Trump’s
real problem with the Clinton Foundation wasn’t about Hillary’s
character. It was just professional jealousy.
The only things
protecting Trump from impeachment for his egregious behaviour are his
poll numbers and the false sense of security they give to Republicans
in Congress.
Sadly for Trump,
those numbers are tumbling faster than the ratings of Celebrity
Apprentice. In just three weeks, Trump has lost 5 points in his
Gallup approval polls to hit 40%.
It took Richard
Nixon four years to reach this low point, just a year before he quit
the presidency. At this rate, Trump will reach Nixon’s all-time low
of 24% approval before the end of April.
We have barely begun
to scrape the surface of Trump’s fatal compromises with Russia. It
was only last week that US officials say they corroborated some of
the communications in the famous British dossier detailing those
compromising situations.
Trump can pretend
all he likes. He can bluster his way through TV interviews and at the
presidential podium about everything from the tiny crowds at his
inauguration to supposed illegal voting by non-citizens.
But sooner or later,
the presidency – and the constitution it is supposed to defend –
catches up with you. A commander-in-chief can’t compromise his own
nation’s security and expect to keep his job.
Flynn’s short
White House career may be over. But Trump’s nightmare-a-lago has
only just begun.
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