the saying the turkish americans simply responded in self defense. two members of the turkish security detail were briefly detained and later released after releasing a critical statement, the state department summoned the turkish ambassador to a meeting yesterday. senator john mccain is advocating a different response. we should throw their ambassador the hell out of the united states of america. this is the united states of america. this isn t turkey, this isn t a third world country. this kind of thing cannot go unresponded to diplomatically and maybe in other ways. so far the attack on the nonviolent protesters on american soil by the personal security detail of the turkish president has come in for widespread condemnation across the ideological and political spectrum. to date the white house has declin to condemn what happened. coming up, what did mike pence know and when did he know it? the new charge mike pence knew flynn was under federal
comey wrote at the time of the conversation, now denied by the president. and despite warnings from his lawyers, reportedly, the president apparently kept in touch with flynn, sending him a message to stay strong. he even reportedly has hopes for flynn to rejoin the white house in some capacity after the fbi investigation ends. joining me now, michael isikoff, chief investigative correspondent for yahoo! news who broke the story president trump had messaged flynn last month telling him to stay strong. start with what your story says about the ongoing relationship between flynn and the president. that s the remarkable thing, because it is ongoing. flynn is the central figure in this russia investigation. the fbi, he s getting grand jury subpoenas. the fbi is scrutinizing every aspect of his affairs. and yet the president is staying in touch wit him. this is the the piece i wrote
from the start, there were just a ton of red flags around flynn, even putting aside issues like his record of his islamphobia, his praise for milo or his reported attempt to get a security clearance for his pizzagate conspiracy theorist son. flynn was paid more than $45,000 to speak at a russian state tv gala in 2013, a payment lawmakers say he did not disclose. and that came after the obama administration fired flynn in 2014 as head of the dia, largely because of mismanagement and temperament issues. when president obama sat down with donald trump after election day, officials tell nbc news he offered two warnings. stay vigilant on north korea and don t hire michael flynn. weeks before the inauguration, according to the new york times, flynn told president trump s transition team he was under federal investigation for secretly working as a paid lobbyist for turkey during the
campaign. the trump administration denies they were told that. but we know flynn was paid more than half a million dollars for working as an unregistered foreign agent for turkey, even writing an election day op-ed headline, our all turkey is in crisis and needs our support. president trump hired flynn despite all that, and he kept him on for 18 full days after then acting attorney general sally yates warned the trump administration in two meetings that flynn was lying about secret conversations with the russian ambassador and was susceptible to russian blackmail. yates would also later be fired. president trump fired flynn after, and only after the story about those contacts with kislyak leaked. but instead of expressing anger, he defended flynn as a wonderful man who was treated very unfairly by the fake media and said flynn should ask for immunity in the russia witch hunt. the president also urged james comey to drop the fbi investigation into flynn, according to reporting on a memo
officials had plenty of chances to find out what flynn was up to. his turkish lobbying ties had been covered in the press and they were the subject of a november letter from congressman elijah cummings to vice president mike pence who was then running the transition. but in march when news broke that flynn had belatedly registered as a foreign agent, the vice president claimed, unprompted, to have been in the dark. let me say hearing that story today was the first i heard of it. and i fully support the decision that president trump made to ask for general flynn s resignation. you re disappointed by the story? the first i heard of it. and i think it is it is an affirmation of the president s decision to ask general flynn to resign. but that s neither the first nor the only time one of pence s statements has come into conflict with the facts. just last week, pence said on the record on camera that the president s decision to fire fbi