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MAKE SURE YOU READ: Mike Pence, Star Witness
News summary:
Despite strong recommendations from Vice President Mike Pence, then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, and White House Counsel Don McGahn during a February 10, 2017, conversation that the president immediately fire his then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Trump still refused to do so, according to confidential White House records.
Earlier that day, Pence, Priebus, and McGahn had met in the Situation Room to read classified transcripts of Flynn’s conversations on sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. After reading those intercepts, the three men concluded that Flynn had lied to the American public, to the vice president, and perhaps even to the FBI. Pence, Priebus, and McGahn confronted Flynn before then recommending to Trump that Flynn be fired.
Trump would not undertake to do so—a refusal so inexplicable to the president’s men that they worried that he was protecting Flynn because he knew in advance of Flynn’s back-channel diplomacy with Russia, or had even authorized it, giving Flynn significant leverage over Trump, even the power to blackmail him, to keep his job.
Alarmed by Trump’s inaction on firing Flynn, two senior administration officials then arranged a leak to the press about Justice Department warnings to the White House concerning Flynn’s false statements in order to force the president’s hand.