It is about the president who appointed him, who earlier considered Flynn for vice president.
.. When Vice President Mike Pence was asked by Chris Wallace of Fox News on Jan. 15 if there had been any contacts between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, he answered: “Of course not. Why would there be any contacts?”
.. officials told The Times that they had seen no evidence of such cooperation in election manipulation.
.. As Jeffrey H. Smith, a former general counsel to the C.I.A., puts it: “The bigger issue here is why Trump and people around him take such a radically different view of Russia than has been the case for decades.
.. Flynn has now resigned, but he was steeped in the principle of a chain of command; I doubt he made these calls completely on his own. Daniel Benjamin, a former counterterrorism coordinator at the State Department who has known Flynn for years, says it would have been out of character for Flynn to do so. So who told Flynn to make these calls? Steve Bannon? Trump himself?
.. He reminds me of Nixon, who in 1974 said Watergate “would have been a blip” if it weren’t for journalists “who hate my guts.”
.. It’s dizzying to see a president who celebrated the hacking of his rival’s campaign emails suddenly evince alarm about leaks.
.. Published reports have quoted people in the intelligence community as fearing that information given to the White House will end up in Russian hands, even that the “Kremlin has ears” in the White House Situation Room.
.. his son Donald Jr. saying in 2008, “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” It’s all the more important now that Trump release his tax returns so that we can understand any financial leverage Russia has over him.
.. “I’m just appalled at how little people seem to care about the fact that Russians interfered in our presidential election, clearly, unequivocally, on the part of one candidate,” Michael McFaul, a former ambassador to Russia, told me. “What’s more important than that?” To which I add: Only one thing could be more important — if the Russians had help from within the U.S.
What Does It Mean to Have ‘Repeated Contacts’ With Russian Intelligence?
There is no way to say how many people they have. So some people say that maybe in the central apparatus it’s about maybe 6,000 people. But [counting the regional departments] it might be about 70,000 people. [And] we are talking only about the FSB, but [Russia has] lots of security services—we can also talk about SVR, the Russian foreign intelligence service. We can talk about the SBP, which is a presidential security service.
.. If, say, your business involved contacts with so-called state corporations, oil and gas corporations, or big important things for the Russian Federation, your chances are very high. If your business is something about retail or some small or middle-level companies, well it’s not that high.
.. Bob Baer, a former CIA officer, in his book See No Evil. He [recounts how] a contact of his met with Alexander Korzhakov, the chief of the [Russian] President’s Security Service, and Pavel Borodin, chief of the Kremlin’s administration, who offered to help Bill Clinton’s campaign. Baer refused, of course.
What Trump Is Doing Is Not O.K.
it will finally get the United States government, Congress and the news media to demand a proper answer to what is still the biggest national security question staring us in the face today: What is going on between Donald Trump and the Russians?
.. Every action, tweet and declaration by Trump throughout this campaign, his transition and his early presidency screams that he is compromised when it comes to the Russians.
.. Trump’s willingness to attack allies like Australia, bluster at rivals like China, threaten enemies like Iran and North Korea and bully neighbors like Mexico — while consistently blowing kisses to Russian President Vladimir Putin — cannot be explained away by his mere desire to improve relations with Moscow to defeat the Islamic State.
.. And the Flynn ouster gives our government another, desperately needed opportunity to demand the answers to these questions, starting with seeing the president’s tax returns.
.. We need to know whom Trump owes and who might own him, and we need to know it now.
.. they should ask themselves what they would be saying and doing right now if a President Hillary Clinton had behaved toward Russia the way Trump has
.. House Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, what are you thinking by looking away from this travesty? You both know that if the C.I.A., N.S.A. and F.B.I. had concluded that the Russians had intervened to help Hillary Clinton get elected you would have closed the government and demanded a new election.
Now it’s all O.K.? So you can get some tax cuts?
.. And yet “Mr. Patriotism” has barely uttered a word of criticism on Twitter or off about a Russian president who has intervened in our democratic process.
.. Putin. His regime will fail because he is forever looking for dignity in all the wrong places, by drilling for oil and gas instead of unleashing the creativity of his people.
.. Trump and his senior aides have spent their first weeks in power doing nothing more than telling us how afraid we should be of Muslim immigrants who have not been properly vetted by our intelligence and immigration authorities. Well, Putin was vetted by the F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A., and they concluded that he attacked our country’s most important institution — and Trump has acted as if he could not care less.
Divided Media on Michael Flynn: Patriotic Leaks or Political Espionage
In the hours since Michael T. Flynn resigned as national security adviser late Monday, two narratives have emerged.
One, embraced by many in the traditional legacy media, centered on what Mr. Flynn had done that led to his resignation: discussed sanctions against Russia in a conversation with the Russian ambassador, and then misled Vice President Mike Pence about it.
The other, which developed among the more right-leaning news media, focused on the leaks from Washington that had put pressure on Mr. Flynn to step aside, and whether these leaks were intended to damage President Trump.
One narrative holds Mr. Flynn, and others who knew about his discussions, accountable. The other portrays Mr. Flynn more as a victim.
.. The growing division means that some readers are getting their news through an ever-narrowing prism. Americans who get their information predominantly from Breitbart News, a right-wing news and opinion site, for instance, or from the conservative Fox News are getting a very different version of the news from Americans who read The Washington Post or watch CNN.
.. Late Monday night, as the news broke that Mr. Flynn had resigned, news organizations rushed to publish articles.
Not Breitbart.
.. The article also raised questions about how the news media got its information, reinforcing a distrust of the press that Mr. Trump and his administration have assiduously tried to foster.
“The fact that the contents of Flynn’s phone conversation — highly sensitive intelligence — were leaked to the media suggests that someone with access to that information also has a political axe to grind,” the article said.
.. “Some of these leaks have halted a Trump appointment and controversial policies in their tracks,” the article said, “and it’s a lesson showing how whistle-blowers and leaks to the press are vital for democracy.”