Skinned Like Flynn, Con't

Trump National Security Adviser Mike Flynn is OUT, resigning late last night.  His ties to Putin became too much to ignore after the questions raised this weekend over communication with the Russian ambassador over sanctions before Flynn or Trump were even in their jobs, and especially after the Washington Post dropped the bombshell that Trump was warned about Flynn's ties by the Justice Department.

The acting attorney general informed the Trump White House late last month that she believed Michael Flynn had misled senior administration officials about the nature of his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States, and warned that the national security adviser was potentially vulnerable to Russian blackmail, current and former U.S. officials said.

The message, delivered by Sally Q. Yates and a senior career national security official to the White House counsel, was prompted by concerns that ­Flynn, when asked about his calls and texts with the Russian diplomat, had told Vice ­President-elect Mike Pence and others that he had not discussed the Obama administration sanctions on Russia for its interference in the 2016 election, the officials said. It is unclear what the White House counsel, Donald McGahn, did with the information.

Flynn resigned Monday night in the wake of revelations about his contacts with the Russian ambassador.

You remember Sally Yates, right?  The acting Attorney General who was dismissed by Trump over advising the President that his Muslim ban was unconstitutional?   Turns out Yates had warned the White House along with Jim Clapper and John Brennan that Flynn was compromised by the Russians and was a threat to national security.

But here's the explosive stuff:

In the waning days of the Obama administration, James R. Clapper Jr., who was the director of national intelligence, and John Brennan, the CIA director at the time, shared Yates’s concerns and concurred with her recommendation to inform the Trump White House. They feared that “Flynn had put himself in a compromising position” and thought that Pence had a right to know that he had been misled, according to one of the officials, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

A senior Trump administration official said before Flynn’s resignation that the White House was aware of the matter, adding that “we’ve been working on this for weeks.”

The current and former officials said that although they believed that Pence was misled about the contents of Flynn’s communications with the Russian ambassador, they couldn’t rule out that Flynn was acting with the knowledge of others in the transition.

The FBI, Yates, Clapper and Brennan declined to comment on the matter.

Pence is the Vice-President.  There's only one other person who outranks him in the Trump camp, and that's Mango Mao himself.

Supposedly Flynn is being fried up and served over hot coals because he lied to Pence.  I'm wondering why he's being fired at all, the Trump regime said at late as yesterday afternoon that they had "full confidence" in Flynn and that he wasn't going anywhere.

That's all garbage of course.  But things have shifted in the Trump regime.  Nobody at this point believes the Trump line that Flynn acted on his own.  Democrats have been handed the keys to dismantle the Trump regime, and possibly to go straight for Trump, but they can't do it without help.

And that leads us to Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.  Sooner or later something's got to give there.

Whether or not Flynn ever testifies to Congress remains very much unknown.