interest rules, also michael flynn committed a felony in omitting his contacts with saudi arabia prior to coming to the administration on his sf 86 form, the form required for security clearance and so forth. in terms of that last point there, one of the things that we have since come to learn is that as far as i understand it, there was a criminal referral from the democrats on the oversight committee to robert mueller to the special counsel s office specifically on that issue of mike flynn and his security clearance application and whether or not he was forthcoming about his contacts with saudi arabia about this plan. one thing i found interesting is i feel like we heard a lot of stories about officials leaving things off those security clearance applications, not mentioning things but in the case of mike flynn, it sounds like, i mean, he invented the name of a hotel that he s supposedly staying at, which is a hotel that doesn t exist.
oh, spicer also told reporters that the white house exhaustively investigated flynn after they receive that warning from the justice department according to white house lawyers concerned about mr. spicer s comments at the time, that was not true. they had not exhaustively investigated flynn after that warning. spicer also told reporters that trump administration lawyers had exhaustedly reviewed flynn s contacts with the russian government and the way he talked about it and concluded that there were no legal issues whatsoever surrounding what mike flynn had done and no being legally in the clear. according to the times today, all those concerns about what then became the white house public line about flynn s departure, white house lawyers wrote up a confidential memo detailing all of the lies that the white house was officially telling the public about mike flynn s departure from the white house, including the lie that the president fired him, that
try to protect himself. that s the kind of thing that theoretically could be prosecuted as a felony obstruction charge against a defendant even potentially against a defendant who is a president if the southern district of new york was in fact inclined to try to pursue something like that. again, we ll have more on that to come both over the course of this hour. the other piece of this we need to talk about is the other big new revelation from this times reporting about michael flynn. michael flynn was the first official fired at the brand-new trump white house. it didn t make it a month. michael flynn then became the first guilty plea and the first cooperating witness in the russia investigation. michael flynn then surprised just a few weeks ago became the first mueller defendant to have his sentencing hearing completely blow up in court when among other things the judge
officials pursuing this where themselves in a position to financially benefit from any knock-on effects on this change in american policy, but then the transfer of the technology itself is also something that s highly regulated, not just by american sort of tradition or reasonable restraint, but also by law. absolutely. there s something called the atomic energy act of 1954, and specifically section 123 of that act, which specifically requires congressional approval for the export of sensitive nuclear technology to other countries. this was clearly an end-run around congress. not to mention, as you previously said, an end-run around conflicts of interest rules. also michael flynn committed a felony in omitting his contacts with saudi arabia prior to coming to the administration on his sf-86 form. that s the form that s required for security clearance and so forth. in terms of that last point
well today what we learned in the new york times is that in fact we might have been looking at this the wrong way. what might seem mysterious, it took the white house 18 days to take action in response totally historically unprecedented warning about there being inside the white house in the form of the compromised national security advisor. what we learned is that it s not that they waited 18 days after that warning to act, to get rid of him, what this new reporting says is that even after those 18 days, they still didn t act at all. quote, it was february 14th, 2017 and mr. trump and his advisors were in the oval office debating how to explain the resignation of mr. flynn, the national security advisor. the justice department had already raised the questions that mr. flynn might be subject