Whitehouse's comments follow former acting Attorney General Sally Yates' testimony that she had warned the Trump administration that former national security adviser Michael Flynn was vulnerable to blackmail by Russian intelligence two weeks before he was dismissed.
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn was sacked in February as US President Donald Trump's National Security Adviser, less than a month after his appointment, over his undisclosed contacts with the Russian Ambassador in Washington, D.C., Sergei Kislyak.
Yates's testimony, along with a separate revelation on Monday that President Barack Obama had warned Trump not to hire Flynn, offered a more complete public account of Flynn's stunning fall from one of the nation's most important security posts.
On Tuesday afternoon, Sean Spicer characterized Yates not as a "good woman" or someone who served her country honorably - she had never been fired by the government.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer called Yates a "political opponent" of President Trump.
In a second tweet, Trump said Yates should be asked under oath "if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers" soon after she raised concerns about Flynn.
In the almost three weeks that passed between finding out Flynn misled the Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russia's ambassador to the US and Flynn's resignation, Spicer said, there were no known restrictions to his access to information.
Trump fired Flynn on February 13, citing broken trust over Flynn's misleading of Pence on his conversations with the ambassador.
Kent woman arrested as police shoot Willesden woman in terror raid
A 20-year-old woman and a 16-year-old boy were arrested at the address where the woman was shot, as was a 20-year-old man nearby. Britain's official threat level from global terrorism stands at the second-highest, meaning an attack is highly likely.
He went on to say that Yates was not excited about Trump taking office before getting interrupted by a reporter.
Federal prosecutors have issued grand jury subpoenas to associates of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn seeking business records, as part of the ongoing probe of Russian meddling in last year's election, according to people familiar with the matter.
The tweet itself came after former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing that he was not aware of any evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian Federation.
Flynn previously said, through a lawyer, that he would testify in exchange for immunity.
Russian officials also knew Flynn's misleading recounts of those conversations were inaccurate. He denied bringing up sanctions, but transcripts of the conversation from the tap on Kislyak's phone, a routine counter-intelligence measure deployed by most host governments against foreign missions, showed otherwise.
"Immediately after the Department of Justice notified the White House counsel of the situation, the White House counsel briefed the president and a small group of his senior advisers". And I knew, when I saw the lineup for this hearing, one, this was not going to be a happy day for the White House, who have tried to spin all of this in every possible direction.
A person familiar with Yates' plans says she is likely to testify she expressed alarm about discrepancies between the statements and what occurred.
Comments