WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned late Monday after reports that he misled Vice President Mike Pence and other officials about his contacts with Russia's ambassador to the U.S.
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In a resignation letter, Flynn said he held numerous calls with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. during the transition and gave "incomplete information" about those discussions to Pence. The vice president, apparently relying on information from Flynn, initially said the national security adviser had not discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia in his calls with the envoy. Flynn later conceded the issue may have come up.
Trump named retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg as the acting national security adviser. Kellogg had previously been appointed the National Security Council chief of staff and advised Trump on national security issues during the campaign.
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Trump is also considering former CIA Director David Petraeus and Vice Adm. Robert Harward, a U.S. Navy SEAL, for the post, according to a senior administration official.
Flynn apologized privately to Pence, according to White House spokesman Sean Spicer.
Spicer said Trump was consulting with Pence about his conversations with the national security adviser. Asked whether the president had been aware that Flynn might discuss sanctions with the Russian envoy, Spicer said, "no, absolutely not."
A U.S. official said Flynn was in frequent contact with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on the day that President Barack Obama's administration slapped sanctions on Russia for election-related hacking, as well as at other times during the transition.
Earlier Monday, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Trump had "full confidence" in Flynn, though her assertions were not backed up by other senior Trump aides. Spicer would say only that Flynn was continuing to carry out "his daily functions."
The conflicting signals created confusion at the White House, with reporters crowding Spicer's office for hours Monday afternoon seeking information on Flynn's future.
Flynn was spotted near the Oval Office late Monday. Amid the uncertainty over Flynn's future, several of the president's top advisers, including Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and counsel Don McGahn, ducked in and out of late-night meetings in the West Wing.
Several House Democrats called on Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, to start an investigation into Flynn's ties to Russia. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California called for Flynn to be fired, saying he "cannot be trusted not to put [Russian President Vladimir] Putin before America."
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said that if Pence were misled, "I can't imagine he would have trust in Gen. Flynn going forward." She said it also would be "troubling" if Flynn had been negotiating with a foreign government before taking office.
Flynn's discussions with the Russian raised questions about whether Flynn offered assurances about the incoming administration's new approach. Such conversations would breach diplomatic protocol and possibly violate the Logan Act, a law aimed at keeping citizens from conducting diplomacy.
Warnings
Current and former U.S. officials said the acting attorney general informed the White House late last month that she believed Flynn had misled senior administration officials about the nature of his communications with Kislyak, and warned that it could make Flynn vulnerable to Russian blackmail.
The message, delivered by Sally Yates and a senior national security official to McGahn, was prompted by concerns that Flynn, when asked about his calls and texts with the Russian diplomat, had told Pence and others that he had not discussed the Obama administration sanctioning of Russia for its interference in the 2016 election, the officials said. It is unclear what McGahn did with the information.
In the waning days of the Obama administration, James Clapper, who was the director of national intelligence, and John Brennan, the CIA director at the time, shared Yates' concerns and concurred with her recommendation to inform the Trump White House. They feared that "Flynn had put himself in a compromising position" and thought that Pence had a right to know that he had been misled, according to one of the officials, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.
The FBI has been examining Flynn's phone calls as he has come under growing scrutiny about his interactions with Russian officials and his management of the National Security Council. The blackmail risk envisioned by the Justice Department would apply if Flynn had lied about the interactions and attempted to cover his tracks with his bosses. The agency worried that because the Russians knew what had been said on the call, they could have threatened to expose Flynn if he had lied.
A senior Trump administration official said the White House was aware of the matter, adding that "we've been working on this for weeks."
The current and former officials said that although they believed that Pence was misled about the contents of Flynn's communications with the Russian ambassador, they couldn't rule out that Flynn was acting with the knowledge of others on the transition team.
The FBI, Yates, Clapper and Brennan declined to comment on the matter. The White House said in a statement Monday, before Flynn resigned, that Trump was "evaluating the situation."
In addition, the Army has been investigating whether Flynn received money from the Russian government during a trip he took to Moscow in 2015, according to two defense officials.
Such a payment might violate the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which prohibits former military officers from receiving money from a foreign government without consent from Congress. The defense officials said there was no record that Flynn filed the required paperwork for the trip.
Information for this article was contributed by Julie Pace, Jonathan Lemire, Jill Colvin, Catherine Lucey, Eric Tucker and Matthew Daly of The Associated Press; by David E. Sanger, Eric Schmitt, Peter Baker, Maggie Haberman, Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Alan Rappeport, Matthew Rosenberg, Charlie Savage, Michael S. Schmidt and Glenn Thrush of The New York Times; and by Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima, Philip Rucker, Karen DeYoung and Greg Miller of The Washington Post.
A Section on 02/14/2017