 | "Old news" from the "fake media," President Trump declared. Which means there's almost certainly something troubling for the Trump White House in the latest Michael Flynn revelations, courtesy of Sally Yates. Any time the Flynn scandal broadens beyond Flynn, with additional names, makes it harder for the White House to heap all the blame on Flynn, or on President Obama, for that matter. In this case, the facts as laid out by Yates are stark: The acting attorney general told the White House counsel, in three separate conversations, that the Russians could prove that the then-national security adviser was lying, to the vice president and to the public. "To state the obvious, you don't want your national security adviser compromised by the Russians," Yates said. To further state the obvious, Flynn was allowed to keep his job for more than two additional weeks, taking part in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a meeting with the prime minister of Japan and, famously, "officially putting Iran on notice." Yates, meanwhile, was fired. Trump is looking for distractions that make this story Trump vs. Democrats, Trump vs. the media, or Trump vs. Obama. What the president can't afford is this to become Trump vs. Trump, putting questions squarely on his own rationale, and own transition and administration decision-making. Yet for all the surprises still emerging, there was something politically predictable about Monday's Russia hearing, with senators' questioning veering toward talking points more often than not. |
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