Michael Flynn Apologizes to Vice President Pence for Russia Controversy

Media captionIs losing top job in 24 days a record?

Following the annexation, EU, the United Nations, and countries including the U.S., Canada and Australia imposed sanctions on Russian Federation.

Reuters reported that Leonid Slutsky, the head of Russia’s lower house of parliament’s Committee on International Affairs, told a Russian news agency that “It’s obvious that Flynn was forced to write the letter of resignation under a certain amount of pressure”.

Mr Flynn had only been in the position for three weeks.

On January 27, when acting Attorney General Sally Yates contacted McGahn about discrepancies of Flynn’s account of his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the US, McGahn took the information directly to Trump in the Oval Office that day.

Any discussion about sanctions risked putting Flynn in violation of the Logan Act, a law that bars US citizens from unauthorized interactions with foreign governments with an intent to influence government actions.

As the fallout over the resignation of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn continues, President Donald Trump is accusing the intelligence community of leaking damaging information to media for political purposes.

Watch Spicer’s full news briefing in the player above. But the trust had gone.

The claims were addressed again in a Washington Post report on Thursday, in which “senior United States officials” interpreted Flynn’s statements to Kisalyak as “inappropriate and potentially illegal” promises of an easing in sanctions.

In an interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer on Tuesday morning, Conway repeatedly said that over time, Flynn’s misleading of Pence had become “unsustainable”. I think it has done tremendous damage to [America’s] reputation around the world, and no one’s talking about it – and this is because someone in the national security apparatus chose to leak this out.

“In some of these cases, you’re talking about stuff that’s taken off of a classified system and given to a reporter”.

Republicans supported Flynn’s resignation, but mostly stopped short of backing deeper inquiries into how far the Russian connections go.

Not to beat a dead horse or anything, but when you’ve said you won’t investigate key parts of what needs to be investigated while being outraged that leaks let the public know that there’s a thing that should be investigated to begin with, maybe you shouldn’t be using “we will continue to investigate … like we’ve done for many years” as the reason someone else shouldn’t step in to try to get to the bottom of things.

The White House offered no clear timeline for the president’s “evaluating” of Flynn – a term Spicer attributed to Trump and said best reflected his “current thinking”.

Texas Senator John Cornyn, the second-ranked Senate Republican leader, echoed calls for an investigation. He also said the Federal Bureau of Investigation should explain why Mr Flynn’s conversation had been recorded.

Meanwhile, disappointment in House Speaker Paul Ryan’s lack of leadership continues to grow.

“This is a judicial usurpation of power”, he said on “Fox News Sunday”.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russian Federation would not be commenting on the resignation.

And she added that “Congress must also launch an bipartisan, independent, outside commission” into ‘Russia’s on the election and this Administration’. “It’s nothing to do with us”.

In 2015, Flynn was paid to attend a gala dinner for Russia Today, a Kremlin-backed television station, and sat next to Russian President Vladimir Putin during the event.

Flynn’s departure less than one month into the Trump administration marks an extraordinarily early shakeup in the president’s senior team of advisers.

Congressional Democrats John Conyers and Elijah Cummings have demanded a classified briefing to Congress on Michael Flynn by the justice department and Federal Bureau of Investigation. When we have government employees who are entrusted with this and then leak it out, that undermines our national security, frankly.

Pence’s decision to try to stay out of the cliques that have plagued the White House has allowed him, so far, to maintain his standing as a neutral player committed to forwarding Trump’s agenda on Capitol Hill.

He added: “It will be a very good outcome if the president starts taking a firm line on Russian Federation”.