If I’m not mistaken, Sean Spicer, presumably speaking for the administration, is making a series of distinct and perhaps contradictory arguments about why it doesn’t need to, can’t or just shouldn’t turn over documents tied to former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn.
Part of the White House’s argument is that it’s simply not fair to ask the White House to turn over information about Flynn’s conversations with foreign leaders after January 21st. There’s some logic to this. The National Security Advisor has numerous conversations, most of which likely aren’t relevant to the Trump/Russia probe.
But Spicer seems to be making the same argument for the Transition period. It’s just too much stuff. Perhaps also not ‘fair’, whatever that may mean in the context.
At the same time, he also seems to be making an entirely different, institutional argument which is that they are the White House. Stuff that happened before January 21st is the ‘Transition’. And they’re not the transition. So people need to go to the transition.
For events before to November 8th, that’s not the White House but rather the campaign. So people need to go to the campaign.
But neither the transition or the campaign exist anymore. So there’s no one to go to.
More to the point, the campaign, transition and White House are in practice life stages of a single organism. Or perhaps better to say, they involve almost all the same people.
It’s hard to discern any clear rationale other here than we don’t want to turn over any of the information you’re asking for about Michael Flynn.
