WH Press Secretary: Flynn’s Ouster Was ‘Based On A Trust Issue’

White House press secretary Sean Spicer speaks during the daily press briefing, Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2017, at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
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White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on Tuesday that President Donald Trump asked former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to resign from his position “based on a trust issue” rather than a legal problem.

“We got to a point not based on a legal issue but based on a trust issue,” Spicer said at his daily briefing on Tuesday. “The level of trust between the President and General Flynn had eroded to the point where he felt he had to make a change.”

Flynn resigned from his role as Trump’s national security adviser late Monday after questions arose about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador to the United States before Trump was sworn in. Current and former U.S. officials told several news outlets last week that Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak discussed U.S. sanctions during one call.

Those reports contradicted members of Trump’s administration, including Vice President Mike Pence, who previously denied that Flynn and Kislyak discussed sanctions.

Spicer said on Tuesday that Trump’s administration had reviewed and evaluated the circumstances eventually leading to Flynn’s resignation “on a daily basis for a few weeks.”

“The President was very concerned that General Flynn had misled the vice president and others,” Spicer said. “The evolving and eroding level of trust as a result of this situation and a series of other questionable instances is what led the President to ask for General Flynn’s resignation.”

Spicer said that Trump was briefed by White House counsel on Flynn’s actions and concluded that Flynn “did not do anything wrong.”

“The President got to the point where General Flynn’s misleading the vice president and others, or the possibility that he had forgotten critical details of this important conversation, had created a critical mass and an unsustainable situation,” Spicer said. “That’s why the President decided to ask for his resignation and he got it.”

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