they parted ways because he lied. i think they finally accepted his resignation because it became a big explosive news story thanks to adam s great reporting. let s take a moment and listen to some new comments from republican congressman peter king of new york. he just spoke with our manu raju. he went further than paul ryan did on this. listen. do you think that the public has a right to know whether or not the president directed mike flynn to talk about sanctions or the russian ambassador? i think that should be asked of the president. again, the executive privilege. the president should discuss what he knows and what happened. you think he should divulge that? to the extent, diplomacy, talking about sensitive issues, it s important for the president to lay out what happened, yeah.
department warned the white house that because of these conversations, mike flynn could be compromised and be in a position of being blackmailed, according to a source. and then things got even more complicated, if you see the february 8th, 9th, 10th and so forth it was mike flynn s story changing. did he actually talk about sanctions with the russians? did he not? he told reporters and people in the white house, yes, and then said, oops, maybe i m misremembering that. that really is what all culminated in what happened last night in the fact that that discussion that he had with mike pence, the vice president of the united states told him he didn t talk about sanctions and later throughout the several weeks after that said, oh, maybe i did. maybe i don t remember. that i am told is what did him in because either he didn t tell the truth to the vice president or he didn t take notes and take the time to remember a critical
first right here on cnn by gloria borger that michael flynn had actually offered his resignation. so how did we get to this place where three weeks into an administration, the president s one of his most senior, most important aides in any administration is forced to resign? let s go back in time to late december. you look there. intelligence officials turned up communications between michael flynn and the russian ambassa r ambassador. fast forward a few weeks. mike pence, the critical, critical moment. mike pence was going on television on january 15th, asked mike flynn if he, in fact, had conversations about sanctions, critical sanctions the obama administration put on russia because of allegations of meddling in the u.s. elections. and he was told no. that s what mike pence reported on television. then fast forward about two weeks ago, the justice
appears clearly they were not forthcoming with information to vice president pence but also there s a lot of information that the american people deserve to know in this, and i think it s right to ask those questions. general flynn sorry, general hertling, there have been people joking that general michael flynn is now the one person who has been fired by both president obama and president trump. wasn t fired by president trump, he resigned. pushed out. he was pushed out of his job at dia under the obama administration. you know him, right? the personality traits here. they did rub some people the wrong way. what went wrong here for general flynn? i think it s a combination of a couple of things, john. first of all, the character piece. mike flynn is a very smart guy, and he s a good intelligence officer. but there have been these lapses in character and in this case, specifically and in other cases, some lapses of integrity. when you tell the truth or don t
is we figure out who will be looking into what or if anybody will be looking into anything at all is the senate intelligence committee. they already announced in a bipartisan fashion they ve launched an investigation into meddling into the u.s. election. and in that mandate is looking into contacts between campaigns and russian intelligence officials. i just spoke to mark warner, the vice chair, democrat from virginia, of that committee. and he told me, he believes mike flynn now needs to come up and testify in front of the committee as part of that investigation. now why does that meter? the committee has subpoena power. they ve made clear they re willing to use it. it would need republican sign-off. that s the big question here. in terms of who is looking into this, how much power do they have? if there s an investigation, one with teeth, the top democrat of that committee told me, mike flynn needs to come in front of that committee and testify. and that committee has subpoena power,