Obama Warned Trump Against Hiring Mike Flynn, Say Officials
By Kristen Welker, Dafna Linzer and Ken Dilanian
Former
President Obama warned President Donald Trump against hiring Mike Flynn
as his national security adviser, three former Obama administration
officials tell NBC News.
The warning, which
has not been previously reported, came less than 48 hours after the
November election when the two sat down for a 90-minute conversation in
the Oval Office.
A
senior Trump administration official acknowledged Monday that Obama
raised the issue of Flynn, saying the former president made clear he was
"not a fan of Michael Flynn." Another official said Obama’s remark
seemed like it was made in jest.
NBC News Exclusive: Obama Warned Trump Against Hiring Flynn
May 8, 201701:37
According
to all three former officials, Obama warned Trump against hiring Flynn.
The Obama administration fired Flynn in 2014 from his position as head
of the Defense Intelligence Agency, largely because of mismanagement and
temperament issues.
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Obama’s
warning pre-dated the concerns inside the government about Flynn’s
contacts with the Russian ambassador, one of the officials said. Obama
passed along a general caution that he believed Flynn was not suitable
for such a high level post, the official added.
Two administration officials said Obama also warned Trump to stay vigilant on North Korea.
The revelations came on the same day that former acting Attorney General Sally Yates testified
about the events that led to Flynn's eventual firing. Separately, two
U.S. officials told NBC News that the Defense Intelligence Agency didn't
know Flynn had been paid nearly $34,000 by a Russian state media outlet when it renewed his security clearance in April 2016.
Trump
named Flynn as his national security adviser. Flynn, who was conducting
private conversations with the Russian ambassador regarding sanctions,
was then fired three weeks into the administration for misleading Vice
President Pence about those conversations.
News
of the Obama warning came as Trump sought to get ahead of a day of
unpleasant disclosures about his former top foreign policy aide, taking
to Twitter Monday to cast aspersions on Yates, the 27-year Justice
Department prosecutor who warned the White House that then-National
Security Adviser Mike Flynn had misled officials about his conversations
with the Russian ambassador.
"Ask
Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got
into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Counsel," Trump
tweeted, referring to Yates’ conversation with White House counsel
Donald McGahn.
But Trump has left many
other important questions about the Flynn affair unanswered, including:
What, if anything, did he know about his national security adviser’s
conversations with the Russian ambassador?
Monday
afternoon, Yates is scheduled to testify for the first time in public,
alongside James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence,
who pushed Flynn in 2014 from his job as director of the Defense
Intelligence Agency. The two are due to appear before a Senate Judiciary
subcommittee at 2:30 p.m.
It
was more than a week after Yates raised concerns about Flynn with
McGahn that the story leaked to the Washington Post, prompting a series
of events that led to Flynn’s ouster from his White House job.
In
a second tweet Monday morning, Trump noted that "General Flynn was
given the highest security clearance by the Obama administration, but
the Fake News seldom likes talking about that."
It’s
true that Flynn got his top level security clearance renewed in January
2016, but what Trump didn’t mention is that Flynn should have received a
far more thorough vetting in advance of his becoming national security
adviser, a job that allows access to the nation’s most closely-held
secrets. What was the nature of that vetting, and did it raise any flags
about Flynn’s lobbying work for Turkish interests during the campaign,
or his paid appearance on behalf of Russian state media, both now under
scrutiny by law enforcement agencies? The White House hasn’t said.
Another
big question that has never been answered: Did Flynn coordinate with
the president over his repeated contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey
Kislyak? Those contacts raised alarms not only within the Obama
administration, but within Trump’s own transition team, according to
reports Friday confirmed by NBC News. There were concerns that the Trump
administration was signaling Russia not to worry about the Obama
administration sanctions on Russia over its election interference, which
expelled Russian intelligence officers from the U.S. and blocked access
to Russian diplomatic compounds here.
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