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#EndorseThis: Michael Flynn Is Out, But Is Gen. Petraeus On Deck?

#EndorseThis: Michael Flynn Is Out, But Is Gen. Petraeus On Deck?

If you’re glued to the TV watching every moment of the Michael Flynn scandal unfold like something out of a John le Carré novel, you’re not alone. Even President Trump’s outrageous tweets and rapid-fire executive orders aren’t distracting enough to pull our attention away from the current White House crisis.

After weeks of speculation surrounding Flynn’s involvement with Russia, he has finally been forced to resign. Why now? Stephen Colbert has a few ideas. As Colbert acerbically remarks, it’s obvious that Flynn was super tired of “winning” and resigned to spend more time with his Russian contacts. Or perhaps Flynn was going for a new Guinness World Record for the shortest time in office.

Press secretary Sean Spicer, the M.C. Escher of bullshit, claims Flynn’s resignation “isn’t a legal issue, it’s a trust issue.” But the Late Night host wonders if what Flynn did was so darn legal, then why did Trump ask for his resignation? Colbert explains,“It’s funny ‘cause it’s treason.”

Now the White House must scramble to find a suitable replacement, and Colbert contemplates the possibility of Gen. David Petraeus. It would be a bold and historic appointment as Petraeus would be the first national security adviser who would have to check with his probation officer before he can take the job.

If Petraeus doesn’t work out, there is always Trump’s third choice — Gen. Bradimir Puddin — who looks suspiciously like Flynn’s best friend, Vladimir Putin.

Watch as Colbert puts a funny spin on a very serious situation.

U.S. Lawmakers Seek Deeper Probe Into Flynn’s Russia Ties

U.S. Lawmakers Seek Deeper Probe Into Flynn’s Russia Ties

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers, including some leading Republicans, called on Tuesday for a deeper inquiry into White House ties to Russia, after national security adviser Michael Flynn was forced out in President Donald Trump’s biggest staff upheaval so far.

Flynn quit on Monday after only three weeks in the job amid revelations that he had discussed U.S. sanctions on Russia with Moscow’s ambassador to the United States before Trump took office, in a potentially illegal action, and had later misled Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations.

Trump asked for the former Army lieutenant general’s resignation and Flynn offered it to him, a senior White House official said.

His departure was another drama for an administration already repeatedly distracted by miscues and internal dramas since the Republican president took office on Jan. 20.

Transcripts of intercepted communications, described by U.S. officials, showed that the issue of U.S. sanctions came up in conversations between Flynn and the ambassador in late December.

The conversations took place around the time that then-President Barack Obama was imposing sanctions on Russia after charging that Moscow had used cyber attacks to try to influence the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favor.

Flynn, a former U.S. intelligence official, quit hours after a report saying the Justice Department had warned the White House weeks ago that he could be vulnerable to blackmail over his conversations with Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.

Democrats, who do not have control of Congress, clamored for more action over Flynn, and asked how much Trump knew about his connections to Russia.

“The American people deserve to know at whose direction Gen. Flynn was acting when he made these calls, and why the White House waited until these reports were public to take action,” Democrat Mark Warner, the Senate intelligence committee’s vice chairman, said in a statement.

Two leading Republicans in the Senate, Bob Corker and John Cornyn, also said the intelligence committee should investigate Flynn’s contacts with Russia and that he may need to testify.

Republican Senator Roy Blunt, a member of the same committee, told a St. Louis radio station that the panel should interview Flynn “very soon” as part of its investigation into attempts by Russia to influence the U.S. election.

But the highest-ranking Republican in Congress, House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, sidestepped questions about whether lawmakers should look into Flynn’s Russia ties, adding he would leave it to the Trump administration to explain the circumstances behind Flynn’s departure.

Democratic Senator Chris Coons asked why Flynn was allowed to remain in his post for so long after the White House was warned of the potential for blackmail.

“This isn’t just about what happened with General Flynn,” Coons told MSNBC. “What did President Trump know? What did the president know and when did he know it?” Coons said, echoing a question made famous by the Watergate scandal, which forced President Richard Nixon to resign in 1974.

Flynn, an early and enthusiastic supporter of Trump, was a strong advocate of a softer line toward Russian President Vladimir Putin, and his departure from the key post could hinder Trump’s efforts to warm up relations with Moscow.

“General Flynn’s resignation also raises further questions about the Trump administration’s intentions toward Vladimir Putin’s Russia,” said Senator John McCain, a leading Republican voice on foreign relations.

LEAKS WORRY TRUMP

The Washington Post reported last week that the issue of sanctions came up in the conversations with the ambassador, although Flynn told Pence they had not.

In his first public comment about the Flynn issue since the resignation, Trump deflected the focus to leaks from his administration. “The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington? Will these leaks be happening as I deal on N.Korea etc?” he wrote on Twitter.

In his resignation letter, Flynn acknowledged he had “inadvertently briefed the vice president-elect and others with incomplete information regarding my phone calls with the Russian ambassador.”

A U.S. official familiar with the transcripts of the calls with Kislyak said Flynn indicated that if Russia did not retaliate in kind for Obama’s Dec. 29 order expelling 35 Russian suspected spies and sanctioning of Russian spy agencies, that restraint could smooth the way toward a broader discussion of improving U.S.-Russian relations once Trump took power.

To the surprise of some observers at the time, Putin did not take retaliatory measures. Trump praised his restraint.

Despite Trump’s attempts to improve relations with Putin, The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Russia has deployed a new cruise missile in the face of complaints by U.S. officials that it violates an arms control treaty banning ground-based U.S. and Russian intermediate-range missiles.

Flynn’s discussions with the Russian diplomat could potentially have been in violation of a law known as the Logan Act, banning private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments about disputes or controversies with the United States. However, nobody has been prosecuted in modern times under the law, which dates from 1799.

Vice Admiral Robert Harward, who served under Defense Secretary James Mattis, is the leading candidate to replace Flynn, two U.S. officials said on Tuesday.

The scramble to replace Flynn began on Monday evening and continued with phone calls and meetings into the early hours of Tuesday in an effort to enable Trump to make a decision and put the matter behind him as soon as possible, said an official involved in the effort.

Also under consideration was retired General David Petraeus, a former CIA director whose reputation was tainted by a scandal over mishandling classified information with his biographer, with whom he was having an affair.

(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell, John Walcott, Doina Chiacu and Susan Heavey; Writing by Alistair Bell; Editing by Frances Kerry and Jonathan Oatis)

IMAGE: White House National Security Advisor Michael Flynn (C) arrives prior to a joint news conference between Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 13, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

National Security Adviser Flynn Resigns Over Russian Contacts

National Security Adviser Flynn Resigns Over Russian Contacts

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn resigned late on Monday under scrutiny over whether he discussed the possibility of lifting U.S. sanctions on Russia before Trump took office.

Flynn submitted his resignation hours after Trump said through a spokesman that he was reviewing the situation and talking to Vice President Mike Pence. Flynn had promised Pence he had not discussed sanctions with the Russians but it was later discovered that the subject had come up.

“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,” Flynn said in his resignation letter.

Retired General Keith Kellogg, who has been chief of staff of the White House National Security Council, was named the acting national security adviser while Trump determines who should fill the position.

Retired General David Petraeus, a former CIA director, is under consideration for the position, a White House official said.

Flynn’s resignation came after it was reported that the Justice Department warned the White House weeks ago that Flynn could be vulnerable to blackmail for contacts with Russian officials before Trump took power on Jan. 20.

A U.S. official confirmed a Washington Post report that Sally Yates, the then-acting U.S. attorney general, told the White House late last month that she believed Flynn had misled them about the nature of his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

She said Flynn might have put himself into a compromising position, possibly leaving himself vulnerable to blackmail, the official said. Yates was later fired for opposing Trump’s temporary entry ban for people from seven mostly Muslim nations.

Flynn, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, was an early supporter of Trump and shares his interest in shaking up the establishment in Washington. He has frequently raised eyebrows among Washington’s foreign policy establishment for trying to persuade Trump to warm up U.S. relations with Russia.

(Additional reporting by John Walcott; Editing by Peter Cooney, Robert Birsel)

Trump’s Rabbit Hole Is Getting Deeper By The Day

Trump’s Rabbit Hole Is Getting Deeper By The Day

If you’re feeling a little like Alice in Trumpland these days, it’s no wonder. Reality has been turned upside own, grossly distorted, rendered a hall-of-mirrors hallucination. We’re going down the rabbit hole to find the Mad Hair, er, Hatter.

It seems just a couple of months ago (it was, wasn’t it?) that Donald Trump was running on a pledge to “drain the swamp” of pernicious influences — lobbyists, corporate titans, Washington insiders and other influence peddlers. He’d return the White House to the people, the white working-class voters who had come to believe the system was “rigged” against them.

He battered his rival, Hillary Clinton, for her connections to Wall Street. She had given a few pricey speeches to financial firms, including Goldman Sachs, and Trump claimed that proved she was unfit for the presidency. She was “owned by the banks,” he said.

So it’s discombobulating — vertigo-inducing, really — to hear that Trump’s nominee for secretary of the treasury, Steve Mnuchin, comes straight from Wall Street; he was a partner at Goldman Sachs for 17 years. He later co-founded a bank called OneWest that took advantage of the devastating financial crisis to make millions off folks who were already hurting. According to Politico, OneWest once foreclosed on a 90-year-old woman over a 27-cent payment error.

In addition, Trump has tapped billionaire businessman Wilbur Ross, who also spent years on Wall Street, to be commerce secretary. Instead of draining the swamp, the president-elect has invited the alligators into the executive suite.

In a similar head-spinning move, Trump is considering retired general David Petraeus, former head of the CIA, for secretary of state. Here’s the irony: Petraeus’ political career ended when he pleaded guilty to mishandling classified materials. Isn’t that the very crime that Trump insisted Clinton, whom he bashed for using a private email server, should be sent to jail for?

Still, if any of this is a surprise, it shouldn’t be. Throughout the campaign — indeed, throughout his career — Trump was a world-class liar.

Somehow, though, that description fails to do justice to Trump’s talents, his sui generis capacities. It’s tempting to call him a con artist, but good cons are usually out to genuinely fool the mark. While a fraud such as Bernard Madoff was also a world-class liar, he tried hard to make his deceptions believable.

Trump does no such thing. He flits from one falsehood to another, even as proof of his mendacity is put before him. He doesn’t care; he’s not embarrassed. In Trumpland, there is no truth, just desires and needs; there are no facts, just impulses; there is no reality, just the force of power and will.

“In a world where nothing is true, the only real choice available to voters is between competing fictions,” Ned Resnikoff writes in a brilliant essay for the ThinkProgress website. “Trump offered a particularly compelling set of fictions, but he also found various ways to telegraph that he knew what he was doing. … If everything is a lie, then the man who makes his lies obvious is practicing a peculiar form of honesty. The president-elect is speaking the language of dictators.”

The Trump phenomenon and its distorted reality will prove costly — not just to the civic fabric, but also to the very working-class voters who put Trump in office. Take a look at his administration’s plans for Medicare, for example.

During the campaign, Trump sought to distinguish himself from the hated Republican elite with, among other things, a pledge to protect the social safety net, especially programs such as Medicare and Social Security, which make such a difference in the lives of less-affluent Americans. So what did the president-elect do as soon as the votes were counted?

He nominated a health and human services secretary, U.S. Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), who has made privatizing Medicare a crusade. Price, an orthopedist, is a member of the ultraconservative Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, which was formed in 1943 to fight “socialized medicine.” He plans to offer older Americans subsidies to purchase private insurance — which virtually guarantees they will receive less access to low-cost medical care than they do now.

Welcome to Adventures in Trumpland, where the madness has only just begun.

(Cynthia Tucker won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2007. She can be reached at cynthia@cynthiatucker.com.)

IMAGE: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Vice-President elect Mike Pence walk off Trump’s plane upon their arrival in Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S., December 1, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar