Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and National Intelligence Director James Clapper went before a Senate panel as part of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election on Monday. Trump’s detractors say it is beyond doubt that Muslims were the ban’s intended target, but the administration says it is motivated strictly by national security concerns, an area where U.S. presidents have wide powers. According to intelligence officials, the two discussed sanctions imposed by President Barack Obama to punish Russian Federation for its efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.
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That is sure as heck more than the generic “heads up” the White House has since claimed they understood Yates to be communicating.
No doubt White House spokesman Sean Spicer and Trump himself would much rather be talking about the House vote to repeal Obamacare last week or the President’s debut foreign trip in a couple of weeks.
She was sacked four days later by the Trump administration.
Obama advisers say the former president is still navigating his role in worldwide politics, but he is willing to consider requests for support from overseas candidates.
The banner in question has now been taken down from Trump’s Twitter page.
An Obama official who warned the White House about contacts between President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser and Russian Federation is set to speak publicly about her worries.
The White House later fired Flynn for misleading Vice President Mike Pence and other Trump administration officials.
“That created a compromise situation, where the national security adviser could essentially be blackmailed by the Russians”, she said. “Additionally, why did the Obama administration let Flynn go to Russian Federation for a paid speaking engagement and receive a fee?”
Flynn had been pushed out by Obama in 2014 from his job as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA.
In recent statements, both Trump and Spicer pointed at Obama and his administration for not properly vetting Flynn. Apparently Trump believed that Obama commented about it “in jest”. Trump fired Yates Jan. 30 after she said the Justice Department would not defend the president’s proposed travel ban. She said she was not.
Mr Trump hit back by dismissing suggestions that his team colluded with Russian Federation as a “hoax”, and calling the congressional investigations into Russia’s interference in the United States election a taxpayer- funded “charade”. Despite the warning, President Trump selected Flynn as national security advisor. “We were giving them all this information so that they could take action”.
Marshall Billingslea, a former Pentagon and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation official, wanted the information for Flynn, his boss.
Trump was told personally, by a man who has yet to be busted by the press for a lie anywhere near the level that Trump achieves on a daily basis, not to hire Flynn.
“We believed that Gen. Flynn was compromised”, Yates told the Senate Judiciary subcommittee.
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His aides are engaging in real-time political combat with Mr Trump, including revealing on Monday that Mr Obama personally warned his successor against hiring embattled Michael Flynn as his national security adviser.
