expelled 35 russian diplomats. at the time, flynn told mike pence that he had not spoken about sanctions or the easing of sanctions with the russian ambassador. in turn, vice president pence denied publicly trump team had spoken with the russian envoy about easing sanctions which, if true, could have been a violation of the logan act. i talked to general flynn yesterday, and the conversations that took place at that time were not in any way related to new u.s. sanctions. against russia or the expulsion of diplomats. today, the white house changed its tune about the denial. flynn, indicated he had no recollection of discussing sanctions, but he can to be certain it never came up. the revised statement came after multiple news outlets reported the fbi has a transcript of the phone call and that current and
struck back at russia and expelled 35 russian diplomats. at the time, flynn told mike pence that he had not spoken about sanctions or the easing of sanctions with the russian ambassador. in turn, vice president pence denied publicly trump team had spoken with the russian envoy about easing sanctions which, if true, could have been a violation of the logan act. i talked to general flynn yesterday, and the conversations that took place at that time were not in any way related to new u.s. sanctions. against russia or the expulsion of diplomats. today, the white house changed its tune about the denial. flynn, indicated he had no recollection of discussing sanctions, but he can to be certain it never came up. the revised statement came after multiple news outlets reported the fbi has a transcript of the phone call and that current and
this has been one chance for a big bill that could have support from both sides of the aisle. we could ve had tax reform, particularly corporate tax or from under obama, but he stalle stalled. a lot of democrats agree, especially, that the corporate tax structure is utterly insane, worst in the world. easily fixed. that, i think, is low-hanging fruit. the washington post had a story today that, contrary to previous denial, the national security advisor, michael flynn, david, in fact, discuss sanctions in his conversations last december before he was in office with the russian ambassador just at the time that president obama was imposing sanctions on russia for its involvement in the election. general flynn had flatly denied it and so too relying on him, vice president pens. here he is. i talked to general flynn
investigation, and the facts will dictate the result, not politics. so i m confident of that. i m sorry to interrupt you. yesterday, rod rosenstein told members of the senate that he was, according to their accounts, that he was aware that president trump was going to fire fbi director comey before he wrote that memo. did you get any more information on that, number one? and number two, are you comfortable with the role that he played in the ousting of fbi director james comey? look, forget what he told us in the briefing. there is absolunswe absolutely in my mind that president trump was accurate when he said a, he had decided to remove mr. comey long before he discussed it with the attorney general and the deputy attorney general. b, that he removed him because of the russia investigation, which he thought was baseless. and three, because he thought comey was show boating.
we got to a point, not based on a legal issue, but based on a trust issue with the level of trust between the president and general flynn had eroded to the point where he felt he had to make a change. the white house insisted there was nothing illegal about phone conversations flynn had with the russian ambassador during the transition. even if the two had talked about sanctions. what cost flynn his job was telling the vice president he never talked about sanctions. i talked to general flynn yesterday and the conversations that took place at that time were not in any way related to new u.s. sanctions against russia or the expulsion of diplomats. the president was made aware of the phone calls with the department of justice called on january 26th to say russia might have information with which to blackmail flynn. the president turned the case to white house counsel. white house counsel undertook an extensive review of materials and questioning.