If there is no evidence of misconduct (notwithstanding the GOP's anti-Susan Rice venom), can we count this as one more diversion in the White House's attempt to sidetrack the investigation and discredit intelligence professionals?
Trump made the top image on his Twitter page a photo of House Republicans celebrating passing the American Health Care Act, superimposed with a tweet the president had sent earlier that day about congressional testimony from former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on the subject of collusion between Trump's presidential campaign and Russian Federation.
The president has made this point about the Obama administration's clearance for Flynn before.
Logic wouldn't prevail for 18 days after the White House knew.
Did she campaign? Make any public statements?
Her testimony, coupled with the revelation hours earlier that President Barack Obama himself had warned Donald Trump against hiring Flynn shortly after the November election, made clear that alarms about Flynn had reached the highest levels of the US government months before.
He said: "Before I covered politics all the time, I used to cover the courts a lot". Flynn was later fired for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about his discussions with the Russian ambassador to the United States.
He described that 11-day period between the White House seeing the materials and Flynn being fired as a time dedicated to "an element of due process" during which they reviewed "the situation". She was a senior DOJ official. Investigators knew that Flynn had, in fact, discussed sanctions.
A few years ago, Yates told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that given that her grandmother became a lawyer when it was almost impossible, "I thought to myself that, if she did that, how hard could it be for me?"
Kushner Family Business Pitch In China Prompts Questions About Investor Visas
The visa program is so popular with China's wealthy elites that it's commonly referred to as the " golden visa ". This was a foul-smelling effort to use the White House, and Kushner's power, to boost the family's bottom line.
The former acting attorney general said that she walked McGahn through Flynn's conduct in two meetings, on January 26 and again on January 27. "We felt like the vice president and others were entitled to know that the information that they were conveying to the American people wasn't true".
Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) directly asked Yates on Monday whether she leaked information to the media or whether she asked the intelligence community to reveal Flynn's identity to her. She told the committee that she sought to meet with White House officials as "a matter of some urgency" after seeing the intelligence intercepts.
Kassam asked why Fitton thought Judicial Watch was not promptly provided with the Yates documents they lawfully requested under the Freedom of Information Act, obliging them to file a federal lawsuit.
"No", Yates replied. "If nothing was done, then certainly that would be concerning". Flynn was only dismissed after the news of his lie was reported by the Washington Post, which made keeping him on politically untenable. "This is a classic technique they would use going back to the Soviet era", said James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence, who testified alongside Yates. But he essentially told the Senate subcommittee that he was not in a position to know for certain. And lastly, because Trump took as gospel the words of a man who has a history of sitting before Congress and misleading them.
The revelations did not in themselves represent a development that could break open the mystery of Moscow's meddling with last year's election and increasingly vocal Democratic claims of collusion between Russian Federation and members of the President's inner circle.
Trump's campaign chairman was also forced to quit after he was "accused of accepting millions of dollars in cash for representing Russian interests in Ukraine and United States, including dealings with an oligarch with close ties to President Putin", says the BBC.
When Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked Clapper yesterday if he ever found a situation where a Trump business interest in Russian Federation gave him concern, Clapper replied, "Not in the course of the preparation of [last winter's] intelligence community assessment".
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer offered an interesting classification of two Trump administration appointees who were fired early during President Trump's tenure.
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