White House was warned that Donald Trump aide Michael Flynn was open to Russia blackmail

White House was warned that Donald Trump aide Michael Flynn was open to Russia blackmail

A former senior US law enforcement figure said on Monday she warned President Donald Trump's White House in January about then-national security adviser Michael Flynn because she feared he could have been open to blackmail by Russia.
Sally Yates, who was briefly the acting US attorney general earlier this year, told White House counsel Don McGahn on Jan. 26 that Flynn had not been telling the truth about his contacts with Russia's ambassador to Washington.
Yates, originally appointed by former President Barack Obama's administration, said she feared Moscow could try to blackmail Flynn because it also knew he was not being truthful about conversations with Ambassador Sergei Kislyak about US sanctions on Moscow


MICHAEL FLYNN
Flynn, a retired general who advised Trump's election campaign, has emerged as a central figure in probes into allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 US election and possible collusion between Trump's campaign and Moscow. Russia has repeatedly denied any such meddling.
Yates told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing she had been concerned that "the national security adviser essentially could be blackmailed by the Russians."
"Logic would tell you that you don't want the national security adviser to be in a position where the Russians have leverage over him," she said.
Trump waited more than two weeks after the warning before firing Flynn for failing to disclose the content of his talks with Kislyak and then misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations


OBAMA WARNED TRUMP
Obama warned Trump, then president-elect, not to give the post of national security adviser in his administration to Flynn, a former Obama aide said.
The Democratic president gave the warning in an Oval Office meeting with Trump two days after the Republican's surprise Nov. 8 election win. The warning, first reported by NBC News, came up during a discussion of White House personnel.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer, responding to the reports of the warning, told reporters: "It's true that the president, President Obama, made it known that he wasn't exactly a fan of General Flynn's, which frankly shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, given that General Flynn had worked for President Obama, was an outspoken critic of President Obama's shortcomings


RUSSIA ALLEGATIONS
Flynn had been pushed out by Obama in 2014 from his job as director of the military's Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA.
Congressional committees began investigating after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered hacking of Democratic political groups to try to sway the election toward Trump. The agencies said Russia was behind "fake news" reports that were disseminated on social media.
The Senate Judiciary subcommittee probe is one of three main congressional investigations of Russia and the 2016 US election. The FBI and US intelligence agencies are conducting separate probes